"Hello!" (universal saying in Asia that can mean "Excuse me", "Watch out!", "Look at this!", "Do you want something?", or more...)

So lately I've been really pestered about the fact that I had my return flight to the US scheduled for just 2 days after my last final, as people around me even start telling me "Oh, you're not going to be here for long, well, hope you had fun..." Sometimes I was losing sleep over it, so I finally emailed my Mr. Fix-Everything-for-Me-Because-He's-So-Damn-Good Papa and asked him to call Cathay Pacific to see if they could do something for me. And guess what? Now I'm leaving a week later!!! And for NO extra charge!! Apparently Cathay is having a special offer for flights to the US, and they had a lot of available seats on May 14th, so they just moved me to that flight. YES!!!! I am so ready, so ready, so reeeeady... let the party never end!

Now I don't have to sneak away from studying for finals as much. I would just feel bad about doing that, although apparently other exchange students have very little qualms. So I'll maybe join them at times as well during the reading week. Now just have to decide where I want to go.

Again I don't know where to start with Singapore updates. Will say first though, my sister got into Rice!! Well, we sort of already knew that was safe to assume she would get in, but she definitely got in with style. Tons of merit-based scholarships were offered to her... practically a free ride... makes me look like the retard of the siblings, damn. Don't think she would choose Rice over some of the Ivies like Harvard and Yale, but I've still got a little time to change her mind if she gets into those as well haha.

So last weekend went to a "Francophile" dinner, where the NUS French-speaking club was having a gathering at a local French restaurant. Didn't speak any French at all haha, but it was nice to have a little French food in Asia for once. Emphasis on the word "little", typical French. After that meal I had to go out again and eat some more because I was still hungry.

The next day went to a Korean BBQ/hot-pot buffet place, pretty good. Met with some regular friends as well as an American guy who came to NUS on exchange like I am a few years ago, and now he is living here teaching English. Pretty cool. We ate a ton, too, because it was a buffet, so I made up for the previous night's dinner. I think we ate from like 11AM to 3PM, ridiculous. After that I went to a museum, because I actually haven't yet been to a museum in Singapore the whole time I was here. This one showcased Peranakan life in Singapore, pretty interesting. I'm always fascinated by histories of Chinese descendents making an adapted lifestyle of their own in a new culture, in this case Southeast Asia. Then went to a party that night, this time at a beach-club on Sentosa Island that was having its closing night. It was omega-crowded, people were packed on the beach and even standing in the water because they couldn't get a spot on the dry land. Lots of fun, but still trying to clean up all the sand in my room that traveled with me in my pants and shoes.

So I've decided today that California really is my home. Every time I go abroad, I'm always jittery with excitement at seeing new things and having that "man, the grass is so greener on this other side" feeling when I go out. But once the party dies down and the confetti settles, I really should go back to my original home, to grow up and become a man in my own domain. And what if I don't end up living in California, say if my job requires me elsewhere? I get a twinge just thinking about it, but there wouldn't be anything I could do about it. But where ever else I am, that will only be my temporary address, even if it is for years or even decades. I need a homeland, and my home is where those golden grassy hills with those grand oak trees and towering redwoods meet the vast ocean on the side where the Sun sets every evening. Haha, didn't know I could be that cheesy, but I'm afraid it's true. I'm just part of the Bay Area culture, and unless I'm in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, or somewhere nearby or in between, I will never feel completely at rest, anywhere else and I'll feel some odd bumps here and there on the streets where I walk, and watching my step wherever I go. Not that I can't make friends for life in the places I visit, as that is always a major plus, if not the best thing, about going abroad.

Reminds me though, this morning I had the hardest time of my life getting out of bed. I swear, I don't remember the last time I was ever that reluctant to get up. And it wasn't like I dreaded going to class or anything, I didn't have anything bad to avoid. I was just extremely comfortable, I didn't even budge when my alarm went off and kept ringing for 2 minutes or so. I think this current temperature in Singapore must be perfect for me, which according to Google is 88 F right now. 88, lucky number haha. Granted, I have my fan on too, so this is assuming there's a breeze as well, which in reality there isn't outside my room. I like warm evenings, which California only has sometimes during the summer, but that's OK, gives me something to look forward to every year. And I should be back in May, so just in time for when it starts to warm up there.

Ugh, have pictures too from last week but I'm too lazy to put them up... sorry! For my own reference, check the NUS photos in the S'pore folder and you'll see what I was thinking about.

Ok, time to find some dinner and do some catching up on emails. Au revoir!

Some relief...

So apparently it's not a big deal if I was to fail a course here. Just one though. Rice will not put a fail grade on my transcript from courses taken here... hallelujah, or however that's spelled. Still need 12 credit hours though, so I would have to make sure to pass at least 3 out of 4. Should be much less stressful than I originally imagined though. So I'm actually looking again at travel options over weekends, perhaps Bangkok, since I really enjoyed Thailand and it was easy to travel there, or Tioman Island, which is supposedly just a ferry ride away from Singapore. Was thinking about Bali, but if Aunt Sandra visits from Shanghai I said I would go with her to Bali.

Hmm nothing really new happened this week. Lots of projects and other work that I should be working on. I feel tired already, and it's only noon now, on a Friday. Hope to go out today again in the evening, but now I'm just sipping bubble tea and staring memorized at the personal fan I now I have on my desk, blowing right in my face. A friend lent me this extra fan... and I must admit, as much as I wanted to come to Singapore for warm weather, having this fan makes sitting in my poorly ventilated room much better. It's also fun to talk to, chopping up my voice and reflecting back a distorted echo.

Yea, that's really all for today, blog-lecture ends early this time. As for homework for this week, I should work on projects, do travel research, and as always, do something new in Singapore.

Worship the Sun by day, indulge in the fun by night

That test I mentioned last in my previous post turned out to be just as nightmarish as rumored to be, but I didn't feel too bad because everyone said it was horrible and historically the average on the test is about 15%. It was a multiple-choice test where more than one of the choices could have been right, or even none of them at all. So you had to indicate all the right choices to get ANY credit for each question... no partial credit awarded for getting just one out of two of the choices correct. It was very strange and I'm not sure if it was an effective testing method, just seemed sadistic. The prof who uses this method is actually my research prof, and he seems to think that this method would award those who both read the class notes AND attend lecture, because usually his questions would be structured to include information from both the print notes and his lecture talks. He even said at the beginning of the test, "Those of you who I see now but not in my lectures, good luck, you need it..."

After the test was unexpectedly a lot of fun to be had though. As celebration for finishing midterms I went with a friend to hit the clubs... yes, I know, I said a few times over the semester I would not be interested in going to any clubs, but this seemed like an appropriate time to make an exception. I was actually feeling very guilty about going, not because of other work to do or that I gave into peer pressure but because I told my other exchange student group that I wouldn't go with them on a nighttime bike-ride on the East Coast beach, because the ride wouldn't be over until at least 2AM and I had to get up early the next day to go on a class field trip for my solar power course. I went clubbing instead... because we started at 8PM and I figured I'd be done by, oh, midnight at the latest. As my friend joked to me, "I can give you a ride back, Cindarella". I'm so naive...

So as you can imagine, 8PM is considered very early for a club, even I knew that, but I met a lot of cool people and, well... I ended up not coming back to campus until past 6AM... yeah... It was admittedly a ton of fun, I'm glad I did it at least once, and it will be hard for me to refuse to go back. Actually... I went back the next day haha but just for a short trip to a hotel-bar, not hopping from club to club for hours and hours over the entire night like I did on Friday. So as for what happened exactly during all that time? Well, use imagination here, when I'm drunk it gets hazy. And wild :)

The people I hung out with were pretty much all native Singaporeans. A lot of bankers, lawyers, businessmen/women, etc... definitely not many engineers. They all like to be the "cool" types, and I like to have witty conversations with people so it worked out better than I thought, but a lot of the time I was just a listener/onlooker, and only sometimes talking/dancing.

So again, very sorry to the bike-riders, I ended up staying wayyy past my bedtime anyway. I didn't even sleep before the field trip, why bother? The field trip itself was interesting too, we went to Singapore's largest solar power station at the Marina Bay barrage, a giant facility that controls the sea-level near the mouth of the Singapore River. It actually wasn't a very impressive solar panel field in terms of area, but the technician there who toured us around definitely knew what he was talking about so that was cool. It was also a hot day out, so as it was for the solar panel lab I did back on campus I felt uncomfortably hot throughout the tour. But when I got home I immediately took a shower and a looong nap. Only to get up for another trip to the Fullerton hotel-bar with the same people I met the night before. Now I'm trying to catch up on work, which as you can see I am still avoiding by writing my blog instead.

Did learn however that a fellow Rice engineering student who came to NUS on exchange in the past did manage to actually fail one of his courses (I think he got a D, which is passing at NUS, but it has to be a C- or above for Rice). That is quite scary, I must admit. Now I feel a little worried about my own courses, so hopefully motivation will strike me and I can get back to work.

Root for me, as I've always been there for you!

The one item in Singapore that is more expensive than in the US: tennis balls

How hard can it be to manufacture green fuzzy balls? Apparently in Singapore, it's quite difficult. A standard can of three tennis balls here costs US$4, about twice as much as in the States. And it's even more expensive if you buy it just from any supermarket, the cheapest can only be found in the Indian hawker shops, where I know they are making a huge profit, because I noticed on the price tags they just crossed out the Indian rupee "RP" and substituted in a $-sign. Unless they altered the price also, that would be a huge profit.

I was actually shocked to read in the Chinese newspaper today (yes, I sometimes spend my hours, usually in the research lab, reading what little I can understand in Singapore's free Chinese paper "Wo Bao", which actually has the more difficult words translated into English in a little "Helper" vocabulary box at the end of each article, but that still doesn't get me through the whole thing), that Singapore was #10 on the list of most expensive cities in the world! What?! Zurich, New York, Tokyo, and all the usuals I know were on the top ten as expected, but then they also said that Singapore was just one ahead of Hong Kong, at #11. I couldn't believe that any non-Japanese city in Asia would make it even near the top ten list. Singapore even beats London by a long shot, which I believe they said was in the 30s or 40s... granted that is mostly due to the major weakness of the pound sterling these days, but still. After further translation, I found out that the rankings were based on a survey done by companies that calculate the amount of spending allowance they should give an employee that they want to send to any of those cities for a business trip. Aha, that makes much more sense. If you really wanted to blow through a load of cash, like going to the nicest hotels and eating at fine restaurants, you could certainly do that in Singapore, but only just as easily as you could find a hawker stand across the street from that fancy buisness dinner that serves the usual $5 or less complete meal. Whew, for a moment there I thought I was seriously underestimating the value of Singapore dollars over my entire trip here...

Speaking of the research lab, I guess I'll put up some pictures of the lab I work in:
Yes, I know... everyone here puts up pictures of beaches and club parties, etc and here I put up a picture of me in clean-room garb next to an O2 plasma-etch machine and in the lab cubicle where I spend my Dilbert hours in Singapore. Sue me, I'm a geek at heart. But hey, it's another side of Asia I haven't seen before, so I'm making good use of time here.

I'm actually secretly very anxious right now about my research back home... Dr. Lou emailed me saying that the group we worked with back at ETH is now interested in publishing a paper on some of the work we did while we were there. I'm jittery just thinking about it. Man if I could manage to get some science article authorship cred as an undergrad, that's a sweet deal if I'm looking at grad schools later. Please, please, please... let me see some "R. Pei" at least once in Science or Nature magazine... ok maybe not that high up but somewhere nice. Yuekai Sun has an article with his name on it from our lab... makes me wish sometimes that I chose to do research in simulation rather than actual experiment work. You can publish stuff a lot faster when you do just simulations, because heck they might not even work in reality... and probably don't, no offense Yuekai :)

Anyway, at least I can come back to Rice in the summer and tell my profs that I at least learned some new tricks while on my escape vacation... err, I mean, "study abroad"... in Asia. Today I just spent more than 3 hours out on the 7th floor rooftop of the Engineering Workshop in one of Singapore's hottest afternoons, with no clouds out for even a scrap of merciful shade, 38 frickin degrees (Celcius, ~98 degrees Faranheit), and no wind... for a solar panel lab. I was so glad I brought an umbrella with me, to give some shade while I worked. And the labbie kept saying, wow, you guys are so lucky there are no clouds out to mess up the experiment... and I'm thinking, dude, just throw me off the roof now and end my misery. We spent those 3 hours of torture measuring the solar panel I-V characteristics, at different tilt angles as well, and learned a thing or two about what it feels like to be on the verge of heat-stroke. I hope Dr. Massoud will appreciate the work I've done to prepare myself for working some more on his beloved "Rice Eco-Technology Challenge" pet-project. Solar power to the market, here we come... not.

OK time to stop blabbing for real now, as much as I like hearing myself talk, or I guess... watching myself write. Test in two days, need to start being serious. I'll leave on this question to ponder... What is home?

I'm Ryan Pei and I approve this message.

I'm just Mr. Brightside...

Lately been revisiting the Killers again for music, got some nice techno remixes of "Mr. Brightside" stuck in my head. I was actually forced a few days ago to sing my own rendition of the US national anthem for an international student meeting. I refused for as long as I could, as I'm a horrible singer, but they insisted forever so I finally sung just two lines for them, the last two. The US anthem is quite badass, I must say. All the other anthems sound like pansy-songs... even Germany's now that they seem to have be wary of using violent/hateful anthems, for good reason admittedly.

So unfortunately the workload is really starting to crush me now. The main problem is that I have no idea how much effort I should put into my classes to pass them. I've heard that the fail-rate is quite high around here, about 10% of the students in engineering classes are repeating the course, which doesn't account for those who just failed and left. And the last day to set classes to audit for exchange students is TODAY, so as I'm writing this I'm still wondering if I should be cautious and just audit one of my courses.

The course in major question is Power Electronics, which I mentioned before has a terrible lab. Actually the second one was a lot better, but we also had the midterm this week... that was the scariest test of my life quite honestly. It's been a while since I've had to take so many in-class tests, and this one was in an extra-secure atmosphere, to the point where I could hardly concentrate on the test without feeling someone watching my every move... The professor and 3 other test proctors were there making sure none of us were cheating. The prof even went up to this girl sitting behind me and wrote on her test that he had suspected her of possible cheating, because she just had a piece of paper or something on the floor nearby, when the prof said he didn't want to see any other papers but the test out. The girl protested that it was nothing, but the prof insisted that he had to be fair to everyone... so that sucked for her. The test itself was brutal, alas I didn't study as much as I should have, but who does? Hopefully not too many others do, or the curve is going to kick my ass.

Which leads me to the dilemma of whether or not I'm going to audit this class or not... I don't know yet what grade I got on this exam, so I have to guess whether it's worth it or not. I think I'm going to stick to it, because I keep telling myself that only a pansy would drop it now. I came here to Singapore to see what it was like to be in one the best universities in Asia; how will I get a taste of the real thing if I wuss out of a normal-to-light courseload for a typical NUS engineering student? If it turns out the midterm went very badly, then I'll just go into "AZN lockdown" for reading period before finals, and hopefully do much better on the big mamu, which accounts for 60% of the grade. And if I fail... well that's just the price I pei, destiny is calling me, open up my eeeageeer eyes... 'cause I'm Mr. Brightside : )

Why are Asians so studious and hardworking? I feel like I should know this, but somehow I think I was left in the dust when it came to inheriting the "study-like-mad" gene from my Asian side. I think it's because Asians have such strong families centered typically around a tradition of encouraging the success of their future generations in a professional world, which in their belief begins with success in the academic world. I also read in some history book that Asians, particularly Chinese, were known for having civil service exams since the ancient days. These exams were meant in a way to select the Emperor's future department of administrative officals, and were taken very seriously in that time. That has led to today's perception of Asian culture, which I think the hilarious parody site "Onion News" summarizes quite well with one of their headlines "National Asian-American Society Prepares a Well-Organized and Somewhat Nerdy Report on Stereotypes Facing Asians in America".

And what drives them isn't just getting a good grade for their resume, they believe it's just honorable to get good personal rankings. My research-supervising undergrad, who is graduating this year, told me when I asked why he still studies so hard when he already has a job after graduation, "I want to go out with a bang." Wow, that's dedication. I remember my senior year of high-school I pretty much lost all interest in school, since I got into the college I wanted and that was the end of the story for me. But it's not like Gabriel (that's his name) is a complete nerd either, he even drove me down to Holland Village on a Friday night after we've been working late in the lab (I find this is a common curse shared universally among ELECS...) and there we'll have a beer and laugh about politics, women, etc. like I would normally do with a lazy-ass back home (with whom coversations are usually not that interesting, either). That reminds me actually, I came back to PGP last Friday evening after hanging out with Gabe when a certain... somebody... *coughcoughChua coughBi coughQuan cough* asked me when I got out of Gabe's car into the foyer, "Ryan, are you straight la??"... What?! Give me a break, woman... LAAA. In America a man just having a beer with another man is the ultimate symbol of heterosexual brotherhood, all that could have been done further to perpetuate the idea is if we were also watching football. And no, not cootsie-footsie foot football, but real. American. football. Actually we did have ice cream after the beers, but HEY it was HOT OUT... this is Singapore, duh...

Anyway, so yes, I'm shocked by how much the students here take their good grades to heart. They even have this hardcore ranking system, somewhat like the Latin honors in the US, except taken to a higher level, where you have First Class, Second Upper Class, Second Lower Class, Third Class, Passing, and of course... the Fail-Whales. First Class I believe is A- and above, which means if I converted my GPA from Rice directly to NUS I'd be in First Class... but something tells me that I really, really wouldn't belong there... First Class here absolutely means first-f**king class, no joke. Not this fluffy-wuffy, hyper-inflated GPA I have from Rice.

Man I'm already having resent about having to go back in less than 2 months... even with the hardcore schoolwork weighing me down. I had major resent too when I was in my final weeks of Switzerland, so I am beginning to think that I just don't like Houston... Having to go back to Houston, even if you're going through beautiful California first for a few weeks on the way, is a horrible punishment. When I was in Houston last semester I spent my bitter days in ELEC classes and in our spartan off-campus apartment wishing I was skiing in the Alps or riding the Bahn across the Swiss countryside... now I think I'll be going back wishing I was in People's Park in Chinatown having sugarcane juice, Siam coconuts, steamed fish-head, baklah pork jerkey, xiaolongbao or in Holland Village having my favorite sambol fish, chili crab, pratha, kaya... *tear*.

And on top of that, I've realized that since I arrived in Singapore, I have not yet been ill or stricken with allergies, which is an absolute miracle in my view considering that I am in Asia, which I usually associate with a fair certainty of getting food-poisoning at least once, and also it's technically spring-time, which is the worst season for pollen, and Singapore is covered in flowering plants. For stomach sickness, I think the fact that Singapore is so clean that has really spared me the experience of having to live on the toilet for half a day. This has allowed me to be especially experimental in trying new foods while I'm here, although today I did stumble on one nasty meat dish for lunch, some Indian curry that had liver and kidneys in it. Usually I like liver, but I don't know what they did to this one... it was just bad. Oh well, that's just one experiment gone ary, the rest are usually pleasant surprises. And as for the pollen, I think it has something to do with either the humidity taking the pollen out of the air, or just that flowers in Singapore are simply much better at targeting their own kind rather than accidentally fertilizing my eyeballs or my sinuses, which are usually very annoyed whenever those flowers make this unfortunate mistake. But yes, usually March is the worst month of the year for me back in the US (either CA or TX), I get so stuffed up that I can't even go outside to play tennis or anything because I'll just suffocate in the process.

Ok I think that'll be enough for this week... time to be a cool kid again and stop blogging... and start working ha... Or maybe go see a movie. Anyone want to see Watchman with me? Subhash highly recommends it, and I don't require much of anyone who wants to see it too, just don't be one of those people who talks during the movie or laughs like a madman at really bad jokes, or I will be most upset and demand a refund from you. Or at least an explanation for what-the-f**k-is-so-damn-funny-you-dick

Cheers!