Last weekend was pretty much a deja vu of the weekend before, except this time the French Table became the German Table, the museum I visited was about Southeast Asian civilizations and a special exhibit from Beijing featuring the Kangxi Emperor, and the club I went to on Friday was the world-famous Zouk. Foreign language-centric dinner, museum, clubbing... this has become my weekend routine.
German Table was of course a lot of fun: cheese fondue (brings back sweet memories of Zurich), games, good people, Li Siwei's cooking... the latter of which I would give high compliments even if I didn't know he's probably the only dude who sometimes visits this blog. Will not lie though, the Black Forest cherry cake was "interesting"... I'm not a fan of cake anyway (unless it's made from solid ice cream), so it's no big deal, don't kick yourself in the nads over it, Siwei. Everything else was great.
Also played some interesting games then, of which I remember none of the names. One involved purely betting on dice rolling, for which I was fortunate enough to be teamed up with an NUS statistics major. He actually misunderstood the rules of the game in the beginning, and hedged some really, really unusual bets then which all of us couldn't believe... but against all odds he won, and we just assumed he was a statistics genious. Then when he finally understood how to play even he was very surprised we did so well. I'm just a lucky teammate, what can I say. All you godless peons can join me or die.
I remember being very tired that night though, because the night before I was up late again at the club Zouk, after spending the evening at the Asian Civilizations Museum (special exhibit from the Forbidden City in Beijing was awesome) and touring along Orchard Road, including the seedy Orchard Tower. Zouk is supposed to be Singapore's most reputed club, and it was quite a large institution, with 3 different areas to the club meant to suit the particular tastes of various crowds. We spent our time in the main area, where they had a pretty good DJ from the UK playing... playing TECHNO YEAAA!! I like techno, but honestly horrible dancing to it. So many good dancers there that I saw though, quite impressive, too bad they're all out of my league.
Oh, and I'll mention here for my own future reference that I came up with a name for this new "operation" strategy. BEOWULF. Awesome, right? I'm such a badass "acronymist" (I'll spare you what it actually stands for). BEOWULF makes DILL from high school look like childsplay, just more complex, risky, and would only work if I started at the beginning of the semester, now I think it's too late to finish before I leave Singapore. But I've learned a lot.
On a more publically acceptable note, I think I can say a thing or two now about Singaporean student work ethics. Right now working on a group project for my magnetic materials information storage class. One of my group members does a lot of work for the project, more than I do for sure. He's Singaporean for sure. The other two, don't know if they're Singaporean, but they're also female (what does that say... don't ask me, I'm not sexist at all), and they do pretty much nothing. Singaporean students also seem very hesitant to become group leaders, they're pretty eager to hand over leadership responsibilities to me. Not that I complain, in the U.S. we tend to claw and bite for a chance to be the leader, because we think leaders don't have to do as much of the "dirty" work (when in reality, group leaders tend to get stuck with all the work). So I'm trying my best to get things rolling, this project is due Monday of next week, and we don't even have our paper report outlined. But I'm not afraid to let out a storm of racist/sexist slurs if things get dicey. Haha jk, that would result in an instant exchange student fatality, as I'm grossly outnumbered and outsmarted.
Oh and I finally have a trip planned! I'm going to Manila, Philippines with Leon Choong at the end of classes. I'll just be there for 3 days, unlike other groups of students who I know are also going there for the whole reading week or even longer (how do you do it, Rachel Chiu?!). I'm just way too paranoid, have to study for my 4 finals. So now I just have to figure out what there is that's interesting to do in Manila... unfortunately everyone says the other regions of the Philippines are what are worth visiting, with Manila just being the entry point, but in such a short travel time I think I can avoid getting bored.
Can I talk about food again now? I love food. And food in Singapore especially. Today I had a total of 5 meals. Yes, 5. Breakfast, lunch, afternoon "tea", dinner, and midnight supper. Yes, total spent was probably... mmm... S$ 15-20? So US$ 10-13. My fellow Singaporean students would probably gawk at how much I spent on food, but to me it's as if I've hit the jackpot. And what do these meals generally consist of? Breakfast is usually either, depending on my mood, a congee porridge or just curry/sugar pratha with some tea or coffee and pieces of fruit like watermelon. Lunch is a hearty meal, usually at the ENG canteen, of either Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Indonesian food. Particularly like the fried fish with "lady-fingers" (what we know as okra in the US). In the afternoon I might get some tea with spring rolls or a sweet pastry, usually the Apom Balik (sliced banana wrapped in a sort of pancake), from the the Dilly's stall near my research lab in Microelectronics. Dinner is another hearty meal, just like lunch. Midnight snack is if I'm still hungry while working late into the night in my room, in which case I'll walk 50 m from my room to the late-night burger/fried rice/waffle shop in PGP and order something to tide me over. I love being well-fed, just makes me so much happier throughout the day.
Holy cow it's 4:30 in the morning, what am I doing to myself?! Last night I was up all night doing my solar power on Mars presentation, which I think went alright. Now my sleep schedule is as messed up as it was at Rice during the typical ELEC problem set nights.
Time to sleep, even if I have to force myself. Good night!
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2 comments:
I hope that night was ok... pardon the lapses into german.
Next time you are at Dily's try the "mee suah cake"... My friends find it disgusting, but I love it. It's basically rice vermicelli set into a cake. Think yesterday's dinner.
interesting, I'll have to check it out. did try the doughnut last time, was decent but not as good as ones in the states.
and macdonalds? still owe you a treat.
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