Here in Singapore they celebrate the traditional Chinese mid-autumn festival, also known as the Moon Festival. You can read more about the festival here and here - pretty interesting reads, I must say, and not something I learned about in social studies, that's for sure. While it's not as important as the spring festival or the new year festival, it's definitely a reason to get your party on.
At NTU last week the Chinese club organized a big event in Yunnan Garden, right across from the Chinese Heritage Centre. The garden that I usually walk through in the mornings and evenings, to and from my apartment, was transformed by lights, candles, music, and the dancing of lions/dragons (depending on which Chinese person you ask). It was quite fun.
My friend Christina and I waited in line and watched the dancing, then wandered around with our lanterns until the candles burned out, then watched the calligrapher at work, tasted tea served in a traditional ceremonial way, and finally were treated to the traditional orchestra doing a rendition of... you guessed it - Taylor Swift! This is what we call fusion. Check it out below.
Nanyang Technological University is where I'm studying here in Singapore. There are around 30,000 students here, 10,000 of which are in graduate programs. The largest number of graduate students are here to work in engineering, computers, biology or other related disciplines, but the College of Humanities and Social Sciences is growing pretty quickly.
As a PhD student I'm part of the Linguistics and Multilingual Studies department that is quickly making a name for itself in the realm of multilingual research, and is developing an archive of language data on undocumented and endangered languages. It's a really great department to be in, and this video will give you a view into my daily routine and the cubicle that I've been assigned in the graduate office.
Here's a plug for a really cool video I was told about. Have you ever wondered what it's like to grow up in a different culture? To move from one place to another every few years? This new documentary is a really great look at all the issues surrounding Third Culture Kids who grow up 'between worlds'. Check out the trailer below!
Last week I visited the Singapore Botanic Gardens with my friend (and fellow PhD student) Wang Hao Shu. He also happens to be a novelist in China, which is why I include the link on his name - if you read Chinese, check out his books! A word to the name illiterate: in China you say the family name first and then the given name.
Hao Shu really loves the orchids housed in the Botanic Gardens, and he had recommended we go and check them out. My friend Margie, on hearing that I was in Singapore, asked me about the orchids as well, so for her sake I thought I'd go and take some video. I also took some pictures which you can see more of below the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpSUamHDJzo
The orchid garden is nestled in one of the many corners of the botanic gardens. We walked by the swan lake where people feed the birds, fish, and giant turtles. We kept walking past the large lawn and trees shading picnic-ers and families. Then through the ginger garden with many varieties of ginger plants and flowers, and finally on to the orchid garden, where we found to our surprise that for this particular weekend we got in for free as students! Sweetness!
Needless to say, there was more to see than can be shared in a short video, but find me on facebook and you can see some more amazing photos of our trip.
I found a place to stay! Thanks for all your prayers - I found a small room in a flat only 10 minutes walk from class, which is pretty remarkable. All my classmates are telling me I'm blessed because I'm paying almost half of what most people pay for a room this size. Add this to the movie tickets I won during the first week and the fact that I was interviewed for Chinese national TV recently (CCTV - more about that later), and they're certain I was born under a lucky star.
You can view a tour of my room and the walk to NTU in the video above. A couple notes - no, the Buddhist shrine is not mine (it belongs to the people whose room I'm renting). Mr and Mrs Wong own the flat and live there with their mother, and two other PhD students (chemistry, I believe) share the other free room. It's cozy, but I actually don't see them much, since I spend most of my time reading books (or checking facebook if I'm procrastinating) in my cubicle in the huge room reserved for graduate students on the third floor of the HSS building. I'll be giving a tour of that pretty soon, so stay tuned!
While I was staying with Ming-San and Rose and their family, I had the opportunity to try Durian, which is the favorite fruit of Malaysians and Indonesians. It smells a bit like rot, but if you can think of it as old fruit rather than old other things, you are well on your way to enjoying its flavor.
We got four different kinds: King, Pork Fat, Butter and Malaysia 100-year-old Tree, and I got to taste each of them. Durian is rather a unique flavor in general - a bit like really thick, heavy, rich pecan ice-cream. But the texture is a bit more like mango, and depending on the size of the individual fruit the seeds can be rather large. The seeds are brown (and bitter-tasting, I'm told), but surrounded by a yellow-white pulp (again, the color varies depending on the individual fruit).
The King and Butter kinds were very creamy and mild, slightly sweet, while the Pork Fat had slightly more of a bite to it. The Malaysia 100-year-old Tree was the most flavorful - you could almost taste coffee or bits and pieces of other fruits/flavors. It was pretty interesting. I might have to try it again at some point. The flavor was pretty rich though - 4 seeds (1 from each) were all I could handle.
I've been here for a week (as of Saturday, 1am) and am slowly getting more used to some of Singapore's unique characteristics. Life moves at a pretty rapid pace here, but interestingly efficiency does not necessarily mean ease of access and getting things done rapidly. Some things are very efficient - transportation for one (most of the time) and eating for another. Other things take more time, which might simply be due to the volume of people and the necessity the government feels of keeping track of all those people (including me).
I matriculated on Monday, Aug 30th, which basically means I showed up in person with all my paperwork, paid my registration fees and am now officially a student of Nanyang Technological University. This is all very important, because the only way I can get my 4-year student visa is if I have matriculated. The other thing I need in order to get the visa (student's pass, officially) is a medical exam done by the university. It's all rather time-consuming, and my classes started this past Tuesday.
Another part of the puzzle is finding housing, since I am currently traveling an hour or more (rush hour traffic) on public transport to get to NTU. I was told that as a first-year research student coming from overseas, I would have priority in on-campus housing in the graduate hall, but apparently they are full, so I have been looking for housing off-campus. The slight wrinkle (I have learned) is that in order to rent a room or a flat, the landlord has to submit your information to the local housing authority. Guess what is required for them to approve your stay? Yup - the student's pass with your FIN (Foreigner Identification Number).
I met another American student (from Georgia) this past week, who is in his second year of PhD, but in Sociology, studying social network media, specifically MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online systems, ie. online computer games). His cubicle is diagonal from mine (see the picture) and he was able to commiserate with me on dealing with the bureaucracy - some of the issue, however, seems to be that I was accepted 4 weeks ago and arrived shortly thereafter. If I had been accepted last May I would probably have housing on campus, etc, etc.. and most of these things would have been taken care of in the two months or so allotted to getting them done - which is actually pretty efficient for a bureaucratic system.
Interestingly, while they gave me appointments for all these things (medical checkup, student pass finalization, etc..) it seems to be just as effective to show up early any day and queue up. The only thing this doesn't really work for is the student pass, but by going directly to the immigration headquarters and explaining my situation (and by God's grace and the prayers of his people), I was able to get my appointment date moved up from September 22nd to the 8th. This bodes somewhat better for my apartment-hunting endeavors.
As a final note, you can check out this video I made of public transport to NTU: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0Wt52lwkA
