I could get used to this

It's been a fun week, and this weekend isn't looking too bad either.

Tuesday night the four of us from U of O decided we'd had enough of $3.00 chinese dinners and decided to go out. We went to Boat Quay (pronounced "key"), which is a string of restaurants just across the Singapore River from the Asian Civilizations Museum of last weekend. It was early, and a week night, so the place was pretty empty. We were targets. Wait staff accosted us, demanding we read menus, admire fish tanks, and look at shiny food pictures while promising free drinks and steep discounts. I would have crumbled immediately and followed the first shouting man, but thankfully I wasn't in charge. When a place was chosen, a careful game began in which we tried not to get ripped off by the very polite waiter. This was the playing field:


Round 0: Drinks on the house - points for everyone.
Round 1: Appetizers
Our team was handicapped: we hadn't practiced together, we didn't all know we were playing, and we were hungry. Yong Su scored a point for us with an order of 6 grilled prawns, in butter. They were delicious, little legs and all.


Round 2: Main dishes
All dishes came in sizes small through large. Individual or family style? Let's share. How many? What size? Do you like fish? Who wants what? I don't care. You decide. I want vegetables. No spicy. What? We were swimming in unanswered questions. The waiter sensed his advantage and struck. This was the resulting meal:

Broccoli in butter: $22. Point for the waiter.



Grilled Grouper fish, in butter and garlic: $48.

We also wanted rice. Seafood fried rice?, suggested the helpful waiter. I said yes; Justin asked how much. Twenty-two dollars? We'll have white. Point for us.

White rice: priceless.


It was time to calculate the bill:
$2.50 x 6 = $15 for prawns
$22 for broccoli
$48 for fish
10% tip
=$93.50
-30% discount
Divide 4 ways
Convert to USD

The final cost was US$10 a person. It felt like we were getting ripped off, and we probably were, but by those standards eating in the US is a terrible deal, all the time. A couple hundred meals like this and I'll pay for my plane ticket.

The next day a slightly modified group of us had no class, so we went to Sentosa, the island beach resort located 200 m into the South China Sea from Singapore. It was probably the best Wednesday during the school year I've ever had. Pictures and story to come, but here's a hint: really big spider.

Coming up, this weekend Matt H. and myself will join 20 other exchange students and a brave NUS staff person to go camping in Malaysia, at Mt. Panti. Here's a satellite picture of roughly where we'll be:

View Larger Map
That's the island of Singapore at the bottom of the map. Use the "+" and "-" buttons to zoom in and out. You can click and drag on the map to pan around.

It's forecasted to be rainy, humid, and hot. I'm going to walk around in a rain forest! I'm so excited!

How hard is it?

I don't know how to explain the absence of comfortable chairs in this country. But it's very annoying.

In lecture this afternoon the plastic desks had sculpted seats - I suppose in an attempt to be ergonomic - that made me regret any change in position. The desks attached to the chairs would collaps to the side if pressure was put on them past the halfway mark. Every time this happens, everything on desk goes to the floor. I performed multiple tests.

The reading room in USP is equipped with chairs apparently designed for legless individuals (to their credit, the desks are flat). The chairs are light grey, matching the desks. The floor is white tile, the walls are flat white, the ceiling is thousands of fluorescent lights, the air is freezing cold, dry and sterile. The room feels like the inside of a brand new fridge, with a couple of books at the fringe and a large box of Arm and Hammer.

The chair I'm sitting in now is about a half inch of foam over flat wood. A large "U" shaped piece forms the top of the back and the arms. As a result, the arm rests are too low and the back is far too low. My rear hurts. This must end.

Here are pictures from a Hindu temple I visited a while back. Click on them to see a better view - the statues are amazing.

Professor Daly and Professor Mutalib

I'm sorry my last post was boring. I suppose writing about how little there is to do isn't a good subject. I guess it was just a product of the Sunday blues - you know, work to do, school tomorrow, don't stay up late, that sort of thing. Monday has come, and I have a lot to do. You know how that is too.

I'm currently registered for three classes: Politics of Heritage, Eastern Political Thought, and Complexity. The problems are that the Complexity class is only offered second term (why did they enroll me in it then??) and that my request for four economics courses is still "pending." I submitted the request last Tuesday. I just talked to the department and they don't seem too concerned - and if they're not, then I suppose I have no reason to be. NUS has more leeway to get students registered for classes than U of O because they have an 18 week term instead of a 10 week term. Already I like the 18 week term more.

My class "Politics of Heritage" is taught by a research anthropologist/archeologist who was just converted this term to teaching. So he knows even less than I do. The lecture for that class is Monday at 10am - he emailed out the reading assignment the same Monday at 1am. He's from New York, and has an annoying habit of referring to "us Americans" and "the American students." He also uses America a lot in his lectures. Today we talked about how landscapes can have functional, symbolic, and evocative roles, after which he showed several example landscapes - we looked at small town America, the American west, and the LA freeway - diversity came from the shots of Western Europe. In his class, it's difficult to escape America. But he's a very smart guy with a lot of field experience, and he wants to take the class on a department-subsidized trip to Cambodia, so I can forgive the American twist.

On the other hand, the professor of my Eastern Political Thought class is very qualified. He is the department head and has been teaching for 30 years at many distinguished universities. The first half of the class looks at Islamic political thought, then later we look at Hindu political thought. Because the term is so long here, the time we spend on each is about equivalent to one U of O term. I think I can learn a lot from this class, even thought it will be less exciting than the Heritage class.

It's rained here every day for the past week. It rains in the morning - sometime before noon - and then clears up for the afternoon. The weather is very manageable because the rain cools everything down and drops the humidity. Today it was probably only 70 in the shade. Many of the rooms are so air conditioned ("air-con'd") that I get cold in jeans and a t-shirt.

Here's the picture for the day:

I found this in a junk/antique shop in Chinatown. It's a light and generator for an old bike - I think it's the same one that came with the Jaguar. The light had the two bulbs that we couldn't figure out how they worked and it looked all wired together. I didn't buy it though...I needed money to spend on the shirt.

Book Learnin

During the seemingly endless period of preparation for this trip, I was continually disappointed by the poor selection of travel books on Singapore. It seemed there were big, thick guides on every country except mine. The book I did end up with is the pocket sized, 96 page Best of Singapore published by Lonely Planet. I've since had an opportunity to read the book and tour the place, and now I understand why all the books on Singapore are short. Small city, small country, small book. In a week I've done nine of the fourteen "Highlights." What remains is expensive and not particularly enthralling. I don't know if I'll ever be in the mood for a $20 ride to the top of the 100m "Mt Faber."

But I think that just means that I have to explore the Singapore beyond the guidebook - in some cases, this happens to be beyond Singapore as well. Next weekend I am going with a group of exchange students to Mt Panti in Malaysia. We will camp on the summit and make it a two day trip. This weekend two women I met here went to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It's a six hour bus ride, but staying in hostels is very cheap and booking can be done online. I'm going to debrief them when they get back then plan my own trip.

Of course, I'm also meeting many interesting people. I heard from someone that one quarter of the students at NUS are foreign or exchange, which is easy to believe. There are a lot of students from Europe, particularly the UK and Germany, more from the Asia - I've met students from China, Japan, Malaysia and India, and fewer that you might think from the US.

Matt, Justin, and I wandered around downtown yesterday after going to the Asian Civilizations Museum. I opted to travel light and didn't take my camera, so I can't put up any pictures yet. But as soon as Justin emails me the ones he took I'll post them. That may well be before any of you wake up.

I was right. Here are the pictures from yesterday:

A bridge across the Singapore River (actually just an inlet from the ocean)


What does that say?



I met Mary Poppins


Every respectable city needs statues


If you order coffee, this is what you get


The smoke coming out of my ear is from a Panamanian ship

The Exchange Experience: I

Living in the United States, to a degree probably unknown in any other country, we are insulated from the rest of the world. Two years ago I barely knew Singapore existed, while my contemporaries here were discussing the finer parts of US policy, influence, and culture. This relationship flips direction in the realm of influence. Everyone here knows about the US, because it matters to them. Politics, economy, and military - these are the three engines by which the US influence, knowledge, and connections are spread throughout the world (they are also the symbolic targets of the 9/11 attack). But influence spreads through more than Singapore Ministers talking to US Secretaries or Exxon Mobile tankers docking at the port of Singapore. There's a micro level as well: 7/11s are ubiquitous in Singapore - more so than in the States (they're nicer, too); posters at bus stops advertise Matt Damon and Rush Hour 3; Coca-Cola, Milano cookies, Colgate, Dove, Bath and Body works: the cultural and economic exports of the US make ignorance at a certain level impossible. Not to mention - everyone here speaks English. Not surprisingly, culture shock for me is minimal. I was insulated from the rest of the world in the US, but here it hardly matters. While I was thinking of the rest of the world in vague continental terms, the rest of the world was thinking American.

Picture for the day:

A typical breakfast: green tea bread and bean curd humbao (steamed biscuit with bean curd filling). Cost: $1.10.

School: Day 2

Here at NUS we're on the British university system. This means that classes are "modules," class schedule is "timetable," the time it takes to get a degree is a "course," and that we're all "reading" for our bachelor's degree. Undergraduate students can major in medicine (it takes 5 years), do their residency, and be a doctor without going to grad school and in much less time than it takes in the US. Same for law. But in America doctors and lawyers are paid more comparatively than they are here - it's a draw.

I had my second class today, "Eastern Political Thought." About half of the students in the class were on exchange. Standing in the hallway before class, halfway around the world, I introduced myself to the person next to me. He was from California, knew all about Oregon - we had the same conversation I have with people from California in the halls of U of O. I blame California, but take solace in the fact that all the students from UC schools had their on-campus housing applications rejected and are living an hour away from NUS. Another reason why it's good to be from Oregon.

After class, I bought shark soup at the fair being held in the center of campus - it was a lot like egg drop soup, thick and ambery, with chewy bits of fishy meat that I suspect may have been crab or krab. More interestingly, I was shortly joined by three exchange students - Victor, Michael (finally! a name I can remember!), and Movy (not pronounced like movie). Victor introduced himself as being from Taiwan. I proceeded to make an ass of myself and ask if Movy and Michael were from Thailand as well? No. They were from (snicker) mainland China. We then had a very frank and fascinating conversation about everything that interested us in the others' culture. Why do Americans shake hands so much? Is Berkeley a private or public school - is it in the Ivy League? Why are there so many gun deaths in the US? We talked about neo-nazis, old nazis, Japan's WWII legacy in Asia and the US; I asked about the schism between Taiwan and mainland China, they pointed out that we made an unlikely group to talk about that. I decided to leave off questions about free speech, democracy, and the oppressive communist regime for our next talk. They were nice people and we exchanged numbers; I hope to see them in the future.

Sorry I don't have any pictures for today. Trust me that the inside of this university looks vaguely similar to every other university, and that the differences just aren't interesting. So here's a photo from a couple of days ago.


The Hindu Sri Mariamman Temple in Chinatown


Fountains abound in this city. Good Feng Shui, apparently.

Home sweet home

I've had a few requests for pictures of my room, but I was avoiding doing so because it was very messy. Well, I finally wore all my clothes, did laundry, cleaned my desk, and made my bed. My room is now a much more pleasant place to be, except that for the last 6 hours a strong smell of sour milk has been wafting in from somewhere. It's also pretty hot. I don't mind so much - it keeps visitors down.

Here are the pictures:


Desk.


Bed.


Closet.



Door.



The bus stop out my window. The busses run very often, and start early. They're all manuals and make a lot of noise coming up the hill.