On monday, jo (left) and i travelled accross the city to gia's (centre) place for chinese new year's lunch. Her boyfriend edmund is on the left. While there we were treated to endless plates of cookies and treats and lunch -- by the time we left, jo and i could barely walk! Her parents were super nice to have us, and her mom told us a bit about customs at the new year, including: firecrackers on new years eve, which used to be so loud that you couldnt hear people in the same room as you after dinner! (firecrackers have been banned here for about 30 years), when visiting guests, you exchange tangerines for prosperity, on the 8th day of chinese new years, people meet and eat dried fish to toast and celebrate everyone's birthdays and chinese new year lasts 15 days. When we left, her parents even gave us little red envelopes with money in them -- which are given to single people during the new year celebrations (so i guess it literally paid to be single!!)
Yesterday (monday) tanya, anna and i spent the day in arab town and little india-- nice change of pace and as a bonus some areas were a lot more calm than usual owing to the public holiday. We were out for TEN hours, but it was a lot of fun and we got to add to our list of sketchy eating experiences!! speaking of those, given that i dont want to return to canada completely irrecognizable (as in 30 shades darker and 30 pounds heavier) today i made a tuna sandwhich for lunch.. while this in itself is less than exciting, my comment on the experience is that you dont know how much you appreciate the 'dolphin free' symbol on the side of the label until its gone....
ah, where to begin? its chinese new years this weekend = quiet times here at pgp as most students have either went home for the holiday or have taken a holiday (in the case of exchange students)... for the number of us left its a chance to chill out in the city and - gasp- do some pre-emptive school work!! (you'd be impressed to know i read 50 pages today)
this week i finally met my law 'buddy' who is singaporean... we went out for dinner at nearby the school and i learned many interesting things about my temporary home -- first, all males must serve 2 years in the army after junior college and then are 'on call' for the next 13 years! they live in barracks and everything and even have 3-4 months of training and living out in the bush! intense! i also found out that you can get gum but only from pharmacies, and they require id! (still not sure why tho)... additionally i learnt that singapore is hoping to move to a cashless society-- this is the reason why any time i try to pay for something (like my school fees, my visa etc) no one will accept my cash or credit cards-- yep thats right, when anna and i got our student visas this week, we had to pay by first putting money on our bus cards! lol
tanya and i booked our reading week trip to vietnam this week as well - we'll be travelling from hanoi down to saigon over the course of 12 days... getting my visa for vietnam was quite an ordeal--- its in the middle of this obscure and wealthy neighbourhood- we seriously looked for it for 2 hours and found it only by spotting a small flag in the distance... it is seriously getting hotter here too- i have to estimate that it is at least in the high thirties, so wandering outside for hours = not as fun as it sounds! (however, please dont interpret this as a desire to see snow... i'd be quite happy to only see it once or twice more in my life time, to be honest!)
on the bright side, i was able to sample a local delight-- which i am pictured with above -- pork floss bun! yep, its a bun that is covered with these floss-fine pieces of pork... unfortunately i found it as bad as it sounds and the memory of it still makes me a little queasy, but at least i tried it!
i also had my first 'swimming lesson' with claire this week --- believe it or not, by the end of this term i might actually float - disproving the myth that black people sink... i will document it as it happens (hahaha) -- i am finding it really difficult to do the front crawl with my face underwater but with claires encouraging comments like 'swim accross the pool now, mofo' i'm sure its gonna happen any day now....
last night i went to chinatown to witness the light up for the new year without rain -- new pictures are now posted on flickr -- it was a lot of fun and really busy -- apparently the whole city will shut down tomorrow (sunday) and monday (and as a bonus the school will still be closed on tuesday- hooray!) ... in an interesting turn of events a chinese girl on our floor invited jo and i to her house for lunch tomorrow to celebrate the new year! amazing! we're going to celebrate chinese new year the chinese way -- really nice of her to invite -- i'll make sure to post about it!
inspired by abe's questions about what i've actually done in Singapore, i took the opportunity to sample a bit of the island this weekend.
friday claire (a girl from mcgill) and i went to the orchestra... we decided to take a cab which normally is not a problem at all - - except it turns out that when you need one, they are not available, in fact, it turns out that when you need them, they may not even bother to stop!! even my hike up the skirt trick didnt work... it doesnt help that nearly everything is illegal here- which makes even legal things feel illegal, if you know what i mean... for instance, walking on a side of a street that didnt have a sidewalk (which turned out to be forbidden, as we learned from the sign about 20 metres into that adventure).... we ended up walking to the hospital and waiting in this ridiculously long line (above) and missed the first half of what was a really great show!! at least in the end, our attempt to be 'cultured' prevailed
yesterday i met up with elva (who we met on our tour of Kakadu in darwin) and we walked around singapore --- i've uploaded some of our pictures on flickr --- most notable was sentosa island-- singapore's man made retreat-- we took the cable car there and delighted in its cheesy trails (see the dragon bones pics), gravelly beaches, and senic views of ships and ship yards (yep, you can swim while watching singapore's shipping industry in action) -- we went to chinatown too, but had limited fun sampling the many 'delights' because it began to rain, and quite frankly, i think the marvel of sentosa had zapped our remaining energy!
alright! here it is my first real entry to this blog-- its taken much trial and tribulation but i have finally set up some primitave links, shrunk enough photos and mustered the will power to get this thing rolling!
i took the above picture from my room here at prince george's park residence (or PGP as we call it-- creative, i know).. there are 3000 rooms here- crazy, eh? we have a grocery, several canteens (aka cafeterias) a gym, ball courts etc... its like a retirement community for the young! the only bad part: it is on one coast of the island - this means you always have to take a bus or cab into the city (bit of a drag)... other interesting campus info: its the hugest campus i've been on in my life- there are shuttles that run 4 different routes all day and evening every 5 minutes are so-- crazay! (the bonus is that i can leave for school less than 10 minutes before class!)by now most of you know that i skipped out of singapore 3 days after i arrived to head to darwin, australia -- it was last minute, but worked out great because i only ended up missing one class and was able to go for a week -- the bad part was missing meeting people and orientation stuff, so when i came back i felt disoriented all over again, but i'm starting to feel more settled... the link to my pics has some of my selections from that trip.... darwin itself was a pretty sleepy place, and we couldnt swim on the beaches because it was box jelly fish season (=injury/death) so we walked around a lot, sat by the water, toured some of the city's 'sites' -- including sitting in on a supreme court of the northen territory sentencing (ians idea!) -- it was geeky but cool-- they all wore those ridiculous wigs-- it was all we could do to keep from laughing!! -- even chicks wear them!!! why is our profession so insane???
towards the end of our stay we went on a tour to kakadu national park- about 200km from darwin -- 9 of us went, 8 of us crammed in the back of this small 4wd... uncomfortable to say the least -- but we had a great group of peeps- a number of them were ppl who had real jobs and then decided to up and go for a year of travelling, which i thought was pretty cool... we saw some pretty neat things despite the uncomfortable accomodations (read: room with 18 bunks and possible bed bugs).. we went on a crocodile boat tour- where they lure crocs out by dangling meat in the air (ridic), we saw some rock art, climed some big ass rock mounds, swam in some gorg water falls (which we realized later potentially had freshwater crocs- sorry mom!) ... someone on a different tour (but at a waterfall with us) was actually bitten by a snake - the guides were like dont worry its not poisonous-- but we found out later that what they meant was that the bite wouldnt kill the guy-- it was poisonous! he went to the hospital! (insert ian shaking his head incredously that we didnt sign any waivers-- what a man of the law)
other highlights: intense raining (took almost a week for my shoes to dry!) and eating kangaroo (surprisingly good- think steak but less fatty), insane bites on our legs (see pictures)
as for singapore!!! i havent done too much here yet -- been out along the esplanade, ate crabs on the cost, went to the symphony last night (actually quite enjoyable)... wednesday is ladies night here and that means free cover and free (real) drinks all night long--- fantastic!! (usually clubs are pretty expensive here about 25 sing or 18 cnd for cover including one drink) -- so think bargain! ... today i'm heading to the colonial area of town and then to the cable cars for some scenic singapore with a girl i met in australia who just happened to come here next! i promise to post some pictures of this place --- as soon as i take them!
other news: i finally got my first cell phone (an abs necessity here! -- its totally exciting and i got a very chiq little bag for it in the market where i bought it -- its second hand and quite hobo like, but i bargained for it and i like it)
this place is also a consumer's dream: money is falling out of my hands like water-- many of you who know me know that this is not unusal, but at least i'm getting (a little) more for my dollar here!
ok, that's it!! the end of post one! i'd love to hear from all of you about whats up-- and thanks for reading!!!
On monday, jo (left) and i travelled accross the city to gia's (centre) place for chinese new year's lunch. Her boyfriend edmund is on the left. While there we were treated to endless plates of cookies and treats and lunch -- by the time we left, jo and i could barely walk! Her parents were super nice to have us, and her mom told us a bit about customs at the new year, including: firecrackers on new years eve, which used to be so loud that you couldnt hear people in the same room as you after dinner! (firecrackers have been banned here for about 30 years), when visiting guests, you exchange tangerines for prosperity, on the 8th day of chinese new years, people meet and eat dried fish to toast and celebrate everyone's birthdays and chinese new year lasts 15 days. When we left, her parents even gave us little red envelopes with money in them -- which are given to single people during the new year celebrations (so i guess it literally paid to be single!!)
