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Check out pics from Kuala Lumpur now and soon my ski trip! |
So I guess I should wrap this journal up with a whole lotta updates.
* Classes ended. I passed them all and learned a lot. W00t.
* I went to this lunch with the head of the SIS at SMU, a prof of mine, a visiting CMU prof who helped design the IS curriculum in Singapore, and some other folk. I got a lot of really useful advice and, as I always do talking to real people, a bit of a smack to my idealist ways.
* I went to Sentosa, Singapore's island resort. It's on "reclaimed" land, and features nice man-made beaches, man-made perfectly shaped islands, and of course, tourist attractions built to be tourist attractions. It was weird.
* I went to Kuala Lumpur (pics to follow). I showed magic tricks on the train to children who spoke no English. Even though they showed me every card they drew, they managed to be quite entertained longer than I would have managed. Carrie saw through my attempted modesty at the joy this gave me. We did a lot of shopping in KL, sat around a fountain, and generally had a good time.
* I went out with a bunch of folks from my theatre class. It was awesome. They made me a card and a bunch of shaped pipe cleaners. It was one of the few times I felt quite at home in Singapore.
* I packed. Well, to be fair, Carrie packed. She fit more stuff than ever should have fit in my suitcases. It was depressing.
* I had no trouble with my flights on the Asia side, despite some number of tears escaping my eyes at the Singapore airport. On the long flight (Tai Pei to LA), I watched Wallace & Grommit (sp?), The 40-Year Old Virgin, Transporter II, and an episode of Family Guy, Everybody Loves Raymond, CSI, and some other things I don't remember. I also played Mancala against the computer living in the plane.
* Sidebar: despite what the right-wing radio talk show host on the radio right now might say, you cannot agree with someone 1000%.
* Transport problems: I spilled chocolate on my new white-ish pants. In LA, I thought I lost a bag and my passport (I didn't), I got felt up by a security guard (though he was quite nice about it). I found out that people in Singapore are, overall, WAY nicer than people in LA. Why are people in America so fat and mean to strangers? (I know, gross generalizations).
* I came home and slept for almost an entire day and a half. I got a horrible migraine. My head still hurts a bit.
* I finally finished my last Tom Robbins book (Another Roadside Attraction). That puts my pleasure reading total abroad up to (I think) 5 novels and 2 comic books.
* I am currently in a state of philisophical uproar. Why are pulled through such painful experiences? I strive for ignorance as much as I am glad for my knoweldge and experience. I feel lost in my hometown, though at home with my family.
Pictures will follow as soon as my laptop decides to connect to the Internet! |
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Knock.
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Nov. 24th, 2005 @ 01:08 am
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Sorry about the sparse posting. Between final papers, final studying, and generally living up my waning hours in Asia's beautiful south east, time has not been prevalant. Highlights past, present, and future.
* More presentations. This term has not been a stellar academic success grade-wise, but all my classes are pass/fail and I learned a lot, so I'm not complaining.
* Teaching courses is hard. But intriguing.
* Job hunt has stalemated. No word on anything.
* Exchange student farewell dinner occurred at a little place called Jerry's Bar and Grill on Orchard Rd. I came I waited I received my complimentary SMU 2 CD holder, I ate, I left.
* A group of people from my theatre class went back to the cafe I wrote about on Arab street. Though we still did not partake in Sheesha, we did have some good food and drink and played a lot of games. After a few silly rounds of 10 fingers, we stepped up to the plate and played Loaded Questions. Oh, Adam Shlian and Lisa Beiter, how my freshman year shepherding into the cool kids club of NPP affects me still now. It was quite fun, though for the first time in my experience with the game, someone kept score. So competetive.
* My friend Thomas had an international dinner and gathering. Carrie (Singapore and Malaysia), Karen (Philipines), Thomas (Germany), a travelling couple Thomas had met in Borneo (Britain), and myself (USofA) enjoyed a delicious 3 course meal of primarily German food with some Philipino dishes thrown in. We were going to watch a movie, but due to Thomas' lack of DVD player, the DVD's he requested I bring found difficulty playing themselves. So we sat around, I did some card tricks (which became easier to figure out as Carrie kept the cocktails flowing), we generally compared lives and shared laughs. Oh, and Carrie filled out a survey.
* I've done a lot of work this week, but not nearly enough.
* Carrie has shown an interest in games. So as I await my Chinese chess lesson from her brother, I have taught her how to play Ghost, the game me and Dan Tasse accidentally played at Cedar Point where players alternate changing one letter of a word (each change creating a new valid English word) until we arrive back at the original word, and Gin Rummy (don't worry mom, I won...but barely :). She taught me some time ago how to play a game called (I think) 5-10-15-20 with fingers and guessing and, more recently, a really crazy challenging card game with a name that is prominently Chinese.
* I purchased Skype Out minutes. Finally. So instead of wasting money on overpriced international minutes while sweating at pay phones, I can now call the states for $0.017 pounds per minute while sitting in the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment. Yay! Now with 2.5 weeks to go and no time to call, I can call conveniently!
* I have been getting lots of emails from people I haven't talked to most of if not all semester. YAY!!! So exciting.
Thank you and good night.Current Music: The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps |
Whoever thought anyone would make that the title of an LJ post?
Well, it's true. I decided to take advantage of the first of my entire week of currently blank slots in my calendar due to it being the "study week" here before exams. Much like the recess week, the study week is an excuse to do a lot of work: I have 1 paper to complete, 1 whole project to finish, review sessions to attend, and 3 exams to, well, study for -- but nonetheless things have calmed down a bit. But I had been low on sleep and had a 6 hour project meeting last night, so I slept in.
I just awoke and was, for the first time in a long time, jarred to find myself in Singapore. I had a few dreams I remember (all involving food) but the last took place in Ohio. I can't say it was actually a place I had been to, or even actually Ohio, but the merchandise led me to believe I had returned to the state in which I was brought into this world.
I was driving along when I passed a huge sort of fair / bazaar type thing. The whole tented area itself was much to large for Singapore to waste land on, though the corporate sponsorship and marketing extravaganza feel to it all was much reminiscent of my current island home. I stopped and walked around for a bit. There was one shop that had incredibly oversized t-shirts. I remember thinking they were large even for Americans. They were hanging on the wall and taking up at least 2/3 of the entire tent wall and had American flags or slogans about Ohio on them. As I walked around, I thought only of things I could buy for my friends in Singapore.
I walked around a bit more and saw all kinds of little novelties and such. One store had musical instruments of all sorts: guitars, synths, etc. I started to see all kinds of hand drums and thought of my excitement to play them, then turned the corner and saw four or five teenagers rocking some of the drums. All together and all better than me. I listened for a while.
Finally I made my way over to the candy and ice cream sellers. I looked and looked and thought and thought and ended up ordering one scoop of ice cream. The flavor I don't remember but it didn't describe the flavor of the ice cream anyway -- it was something like James Dean Slept Here. The guy at the register told me they were running a special and 5 scoops were only $5 (my one scoop cost $1.15), but I told him no. The deal was ridiculous. I reached into my wallet and was horrified to see that I only had Sing money. I looked all through it in every pocket, remembering I had just bought something else. At long last I found exactly one dollar, a dime, and a nickel (though they were a bit warped, I really have some trouble remembering even now what American money looks like), and paid the man.
Quick sidebar: you may not associate ice cream with Ohio or Pennsylvania, but there's a reason. Singapore and the US present a tradeoff: sushi for ice cream. In the states, good sushi is not too commonplace and quite pricey, but delicious ice cream is everywhere and pretty cheap (unless you want to treat yourself to Coldstone). Here, I can get pretty decent sushi on every other block for next to nothing. But good ice cream is hard to find and quite costly.
Just as I was about to indulge, I awoke. My first thought was about how odd it was that I dreamt about Ohio. Not my family or friends, but the state itself. |
Sorry to have kept you all on the edge of your seats with a lack of updates from the Far East, but times have been quite busy. Here's the past week+ in review (week++ for you++):
* I had my first dressed-to-the-nines presentation and learned that for all subsequent such presentations, I should really take a taxi. It was for my Architecture class and we presented the IT architecture for a subsytem of the Beijing Olympics IT. The weekend before, one of my 3 project mates was out of town so she couldn't do much work. She returned and emailed us some stuff but couldn't make any meetings due to hay fever. She eventually could not come to present, so our already hastily thrown together and unrehearsed presentation became a bit worse. In the end it went ok, I talked too long, we answered some questions.
* Our production went up this week (on Friday). If you think Load-In and strike are bad, imagine putting up and taking down the entire set (including sound equipment, spot lights, etc.) every single night of tech week. Yeah, it sucked. But the show went incredibly well: no injuries, no major flubb-ups, and overall everyone who came tended to enjoy themselves. We got an 85% from both of our invited graders, which somehow in Singapore is an A+. We have an after action review (wrap-up) meeting this week, but this class is mostly over.
* I had my first real job interview. It was 10am Friday morning in Seattle and subsequently 2am Friday night in Singapore. I didn't expect the lady to call (they didn't know I was in Singapore), but she did. I was sitting by the Singapore river on the bay by the Esplanade. A few mins into the conversation, a street-cleaning truck began cleaning some streets as loudly as possible. I could barely hear due to the poor connection in the first place. As she began talking I realized that I had never done any interview training as I had never had a real interview. The first question left my speechless (I know, me?) and after flubbering around for a bit, I finally asked her to skip it and ask again at the end. She agreed with icy coldness. The rest of the questions I answered quickly and pretty well, though I had to use the same example twice. Overall, it was a disaster, and there's no way they're calling me back. Which leaves my actual prospective application count at 0.
* In a total of about 15 hours, I had a sum total of about 7 hours of fascinating conversation. The first 4 or 5 were on the aforementioned riverfront and began around midnight. I ended up discussing Islam and general feelings about religion to the executive producer of our show and enjoyed a few other musings on love and life with the rest of the group that was there. At one point, I became entirely awe struck looking up at the stars. For more info, see bullet below. Then, during my networking meeting, I mentioned having read the Gita (one of my group mates was talking to me about the Ramayana I had just performed in). This somehow, as it always does, spiralled into an equally riveting conversation about religion, politics, and (this is getting weird) blogging. Yep, I am blogging about a conversation I had about blogging.
* Can you believe that on a clear night, you can look up into the sky and see a portion of the universe? You can look back in time and out into infinite space? With our meager human eyes, one little person (a speck on the Earth's surface), can look plainly out into the vastness of space. It's really quite incredible.
Ok, enough for now. Quite a busy week ahead. Mon: director's proposal meeting, CMU course scheduling, project meetings. Tues: class class meeting. Wed: Presentation number 1 and HARRY POTTER! Thurs: presentation number 2. Fri: Exchange student farewell bbq. Sat: Thanksgiving dinner!!!! |
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Here is a list of the Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise I have seen over the past 2 or 3 days:
1. An entire cart set up in a mall with figurines, table place mats, etc.
2. A vending machine little plastic bubble with Nightmare little plastic coffin boxes themselves filled with little plastic character figurines.
3. An obscenely expensive pre-solved and framed puzzle of the movie poster.
These were all in different places. With the release of Corpse Bride, I learned that very few of the Singaporeans I know had ever seen Nightmare. Crazytalk.
Nov. 3rd, 2005 @ 09:42 am
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| » Picturies! |
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Happy Halloween for those of you on the East Coast to whom that sentiment still applies. This year I came as an ang moh.
( Now, some pics! )
Nov. 1st, 2005 @ 12:53 am
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| » 2 down, 1 to go. |
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I seriously can't believe that I only have a month (plus change) left on this crazy-ol' continent. I just looked at my calendar, and I have a final presentation or 2 a week, finals, then a week off, and I am on a plane to Cleveland. Weird.
Anyway, I went with mom and grandpa to bangkok this weekend. It was the fanciest weekend of my life, despite all of the shorts and t-shirts I wore. We were picked up at the airport by Mr. Sanguin (I am not sure how to spell it), a former business collegue and current friend of my grandpa's. His driver brought us to the Intercontinental Hotel and the five stars oozed from every shiny surface. We dropped off our bags and checked in, went around to shake hands with some of the hotel bigwigs (I guess Mr. Sanguin is pretty well-known there), and went for an afternoon tea. I have never had afternoon tea, but it did make me realize why the Brits depend on it so much. Little mini bagel and egg salad sandwhiches, delicious truffles, little cake-lets, all arranged on a pyramid with delicious tea (and raw sugar) to boot. During tea, our gracious host also gave us all a gift of some kind of money holder made of sting ray skin (sorry kaitlin). Even I was a bit put off by something made of skin, but I needed a new wallet (my cmu one was all full of holes) and this one happened to be in my hand, so I moved into it.
No time wasted, we finished tea, freshened up, and were on the road to dinner. We went to this incredible restaraunt where the tables were quite low (though are feet dangled below them, it's hard to explain). We were served thai food in 6 little dishes on pedestals -- some chicken curry, coconut lime soup, sweet and sour fish, etc. We ate while a girl on stage played something like a steel guitar. But different. After dinner, while we deserted (this is different than dined i guess) on fruit, we saw a traditional thai dance show on stage. Very interesting. They bend their hands in ways that mine were not made to bend.
After dinner, Mr. Sanguin took me to a tailor (by my request). I picked out some fabrics, they measured all over the place, and I was told to come back the next day for a fitting. To give you a glimpse of the future, I had a suit tailor-made (i picked fabric and styles and it was made to my measurements) in 3 days for quite a modest price. The suit, 3 shirts, and 3 ties together cost just a bit more than my marryin' and buryin' suit (suit only) I had bought last summer in the U.S. (which was pre-made and tailored). We headed back to the hotel, and after perusing through the pillow menu (they had about 10 pillows to choose from), I went to sleep.
Day 2 began with a delicious breakfast buffet (luckily I didn't have to pay) and then a sight-seeing adventure. We saw a palace built by King Rama V entirely out of teakwood. The current king (Rama IX) had ordered the formerly unused palace to be restored and opened as a museum. We went on a walking tour, then saw all other kinds of unneccessarily expensive royal things. Then we headed to this touristy temple place and saw a giant reclining buddha, covered in gold with mother of pearl inscriptions on it's feet. Somehow, covering a gigantic Buddha statue in gold seems odd to me, but I guess my limited knowledge of Buddhism came from the pages I managed to read of The Teachings of Buddha which sat atop the Holy Bible in the nightstand drawer of our hotel room.
We headed to lunch at a white table-cloth kind of Thai restaraunt and delicious food led us full and sleepy to the tailor for my fitting. All went well and we were back in the hotel for a nap. We then met up with Mr. Sanguin for a Chinese dinner. Among other things, we had a Chinese delicacy which consists of eating crispy pig skin with hoison sauce and a bready piece of bready stuff. The skin of course was served on the back of its owner, while the swine smiled right at me. We didn't eat the meat. We also had lots of other really fancy food. Stuffed, Mr. Sanguin, his driver of the day, my mom, and I headed back to the tailor to pick up the suit. The coat was a bit tight, so they kept it. We then went to Patpong to shop. And bargain. I was very selfish and bought only for me (I was going to shop for gifts, but we ran out of time). I bought a pair of pumas ($22), two polo shirts ($3 each), a reversible leather belt cut to fit (i dont even remember, less than $20), the new white stripes album ($2.50), and a pair of birkenstock sandals ($8). None of these things were real of course, but they look good to me.
Hotel sleep but no breakfast. I wrestled with some airlines and international calling cards. Then we went out to a Chinese buffet style lunch, where they served, among other things, bird's nest. If you have never eaten bird's nest, it is a delicacy due to the number of some small country's natives who risk their lives to scale vertical rock faces to steal the food from the birds who made it. I didn't try any. They also had duck tounges. I think the most scandalous thing I tried was shark fin. I wouldn't normally have eaten it because Carrie says it's cruel (they throw the shark back I guess), but Mr. Sanguin had ordered (at a buffet restaraunt) a special kind and they only made five bowls.
Mom and I headed out for one more shopping trip, but lack of knowledge led us to a lame mall. I almost bought a pink mighty mouse camisole with sequins for Will, but due to lack of time and diminishing funds (I had to pay for my own shopping), just bought a pair of dress shoes to go with my suit. Now I can look nice for all those interviews I don't have.
Flight home, unpacking, sleep, more unpacking, and episode of X-men, a bowl of cereal and here we are.
Oct. 31st, 2005 @ 02:10 pm
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| » Here's something SnS doesn't usually have... |
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crazy important people coming.
The following are attending my class project production:
President (of SMU) Hunter and Mrs Hunter
Dean (of SIS) Steve Miller and Mrs Miller
Dean (of business i think) Roberto Mariano and Mrs Mariano
Prof Isabelle Malique
VIPs from Sennheiser
VIPs from the Indonesian Embassy
The President of the Actors' of Singapore Association (ASA) Mr Jeremiah Choy (who will also judge)
(possibly) Prof Irving Johnson who is an expert puppeteer in Thai shadow puppetry (nang talung).
Hey, that's frightening.
Oct. 31st, 2005 @ 02:00 pm
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| » The bad news is: there's no bad news! |
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I guess that's pretty paradoxical. Kind of like when Tom Robbins wrote this:
"There are two kinds of people in this world; those who think there are two kinds of people and those who are smart enough to know better."
Anyway, we finally had auditions for my theatre class. If you think SnS is unprofessional, you wouldn't imagine. Even DMC might have literally killed some one. I arrived early with audition forms (no one had asked me to make them, but I assumed no one else had). I was the only one who sat in on all the auditions, and I didn't technically have to be there (i am on the writing staff, they had just asked us to come). During the first audition, someone walked in and out of the room a total of three times. During the 2nd audition, one of the auditioners phone rang and he answered it.
Oh well, the important part is we cast the show (more or less) and I think the cast is ok. I didn't get my pick on ALL the roles, but on most of them and I think everyone cast will be capable. Now onto what will surely be the most painful part of this process...
I turned in a group project Friday night at 11:53 pm that was due by midnight. That means that I am back down to 4 projects for 4 classes and I have the end in sight. I am now working on the last project for all my classes but one (which still really has 2 more left, but we are working on the biggie). The attendence at the actor's workshop has been declining (even when you make people pay they dont come), but they continue charming. We move into scenes next week.
I didn't get to teach a workshop again, but I won't complain because the first one went well and it's existence is really more than I can ask for.
I watched the first and last episodes of Clone High with Carrie (if you couldn't guess from my last post). I had never seen them. We also watched Makeover Makeover Makeover and Election Blue-Galoo. It made me miss Nina like whoa. I love you all you guys!
And for the sns crowd, good luck this week!
Oct. 23rd, 2005 @ 01:13 am
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