Saturday, July 3rd: Nothing At All

After such a late night on Friday, I did literally nothing on Saturday. I think I got a little bit of work done, and uploaded several pictures to Facebook, but that was about it. It was not a very productive day at all. But hey, you have to pace yourself - Friday was jam-packed with all kinds of great things, it only made sense to take it easy on Saturday! So that's exactly what I did.

Friday, July 2nd: Haw Par Villa, Karaoke, A Late Night

Friday was an excellent (and very long, packed) day! It started fairly early for me - I had gone to bed really early Thursday night, and I woke up at 9 Friday without any alarm. For one of the first times this trip, I felt well-rested and energized - I usually feel like I get too much or not enough sleep.

I went down to the canteen for breakfast, and realized I hadn't really taken any pictures of our daily haunts! So here are some pictures of the stall where I get bubble tea almost every morning, and of the canteen in general.

Knowing that we were about to have a day full of awesome karaoke-ing and whatnot, and that we didn't have too many free days left, and that it was a beautiful morning and I felt really good, hadn't showered yet, and didn't mind getting sweaty, I decided to go out on my own excursion!

Being on my own, I noticed much more than I usually do when out with groups. So I took pictures of the courtyard at PGP and the path we walk to the bus stop most days, to give you a better idea of our daily routines.

^^ Courtyard behind the dorms

^^ Path we walk to the bus stop.

^^ The bus stop we generally use is in front of 7/11, and we call it "The 7/11 Stop," even though it has a different name on the route map.

The 7/11 bus stop is on a road called "Pasir Panjang Road," which means "Long Sand Road" in Malay. Our Singaporean guide, Hui Qian, lives on this road, and we ride the bus down it most days of the week to get to the MRT (metro) station. And yet, I noticed so many new things when I was a) walking instead of in a bus and b) on my own. Click here to get to the picture album of my morning. The first 28 or so pictures are of the buildings and fields along Pasir Panjang Road. Go take a look, then come back for the rest of the blog!

My ultimate goal was this crazy park called Haw Par Villa. A big group of people had paid a visit earlier in the trip, but for one reason or another, I hadn't gone with them. Everyone said it was a must-see, so I put it on my bucket list and decided this Friday was the time to do it!

So let me explain a little bit about the park, because it's pretty interesting. It was built by the Tiger Balm tycoon - Tiger Balm is a famous all-purpose cream (I think sort of like Vick's Vapo Rub?) that can supposedly heal virtually every kind of ailment. Anyway, the man who owned Tiger Balm built an amusement park full of statues depicting stories from Buddhist myths and canons for his brother. Especially infamous are the depictions of the 10 circles of hell.

This park probably presents a side of Buddhism that most people are not familiar with - it's not all peace and yoga and nirvana. The park also markets itself as a center of Chinese culture, so some of the myths come more from Chinese traditional stories.

The park is free, and anyone can wander in and wander around at their leisure. For me, the best thing to do there seemed to be to take pictures, so I took far too many (now you can go back to the album and look at the pictures for the park). It was actually really nice to walk around outside and get sweaty and gross in the sun - it can be very stress-relieving.

I got back to the dorm around noon, showered, and then headed back out for karaoke! Almost all of the SEAS kids went, and it was a grand old time! Getting there was a big fat mess, because it was pouring down rain and all of us got thoroughly soaked, even with umbrellas.

The karaoke itself was a lot of fun. We had three rooms for all of us, so we split up and then could move between rooms at our leisure. It was very silly and very funny and very cheap, and well worth the time and the rain we endured to get there.

Later Friday night, a group of us went out to a club on Tanjong Pagar Road (our favorite MRT stop because of the way the intercom voice pronounces it). It was a lot of fun, but we stayed until the club closed and didn't get back to our dorms until around 4. And thus ended a very, very long day for me!

Back From Malaysia, Moving Forward

We're back from our second 4-day excursion to Malaysia. This time, we actually went to a big city - the capital city, Kuala Lumpur - and had free time to run around. It was an awesome trip, infinitely better than the last one! I'll blog about it when I get to it chronologically - for now, I'll pick back up from where I left off...

DETOUR: Back to Malaysia!

For better or for worse, we're headed back to Malaysia! I've posted a high volume of posts recently, and I'm guessing most of you are probably behind. So, while I fall even farther behind, use this time to catch up!

We're going to Malacca and then Kuala Lumpur this time, and I would expect a better trip if I didn't know better. We're going with the same crazy tour guide and I don't foresee us having much freedom to do things we want to do...

But hopefully I'll be proven wrong, and the trip will be amazing. At least we're going to big cities as opposed to small towns this time!

We'll be back on Sunday, hopefully I can catch back up then. So long for now!

Thursday, July 1st: Rabbit, Rabbit!

Thursday, the first of July (where did June go!?), was a very slow day. After class, I stayed in my room all afternoon and night working on an essay for our Thailand history professor. It wasn't all bad - I needed to get it done, and I needed to have a day of rest.

Some time this week (I think Monday the 27th or Sunday the 26th) was the exact midway point of the trip, and that combined with the exhausting and not-so-awesome week we had just had made a lot of us feel a lot of weird emotions: pressed for time to do all the things we still want to do, stressed about having to manage these fun times with all of our work and the scheduled activities, upset about the dwindling number of weekends and free days left to us. I think these feelings were all natural "middle-of-the-trip" feelings, and they've thankfully all faded by now. I think we're all running the home stretch with a second wind at this point, and rushing headlong toward the end, which is rather exciting (when you ignore the unfortunate fact that we actually are going to have to leave at some point).

One fun thing that did happen was a surprise birthday celebration for our UNC professor at the end of class. As I mentioned in my last post, we all decorated cakes Wednesday night, and our graduate assistant brought them to school at the end of the class period. We sang happy birthday and had a gay old time, and our teacher was surprised and very appreciative.

Pro Cake Decorators!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Leve!

Wednesday the 23rd: To SAM, the Singapore Art Museum!

On Wednesday after class, our ex-teacher of Singaporean history, Dr. Quek, took a group of us to the Business Canteen, just a short walk away from our usual canteen (the Arts & Sciences Canteen). She touted the Indian food, so that's what I got, and it was absolutely one of the best meals I've had in Singapore.

^^ I wish I knew what everything was...chicken, rice, cabbage/carrots, naan, chick peas, and a mango/yoghurt milkshake. Yum!!!!

Eating in the Business Canteen.

After lunch, Dr. Quek walked us to the book store on campus to buy a book for class. On the way, we saw some awesome views of the port.

After that, a group of us had planned to go to the Singapore Art Museum downtown after class. We caught a bus around 3 and rode all the way into town. It was one of the first times we'd ridden a bus into town without a chaperone - meaning one of the first times we'd actually paid attention to what was whizzing by us. Thus, I took a lot of pictures of the buildings and fields we passed. Unfortunately, I don't know what most of the things are. But note all the cranes - I can understand why Singaporeans jokingly say that the national bird of Singapore is the crane (haha)!

The Singapore Art Museum was pretty straightforward as far as art museums go, but I really enjoyed it. Entrance was free for students, which is always a plus, and most of the art was aesthetically pleasing to me (which is always my favorite part about an art museum). We also spent a lot of time playing in the kids' areas, drawing pictures and being silly. It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the day, and a lot of fun!

^^ One of my favorite paintings. I am partial to self-portraits.

^^ Drawing pictures in the kids' area!

^^ They had a station where you could lean over a mirror and trace your face. So funny!

After the museum, we just went back to PGP for dinner and a chill night of cake-decorating for our professor's birthday (pictures in the next post).

One more thing I'd like to talk about as regards the museum is the information plaques accompanying the paintings. The plaques were interesting in that they gave very matter-of-fact interpretations of the art. "This piece was produced by this artist in this year. Short bio of the artist. Short explanation of what the painting means." It removed any sort of subjectivity, as though art were a thing one could discuss in "right" or "wrong," "black" or "white" terms. We also saw a group of students on a tour.

All of this made me think about the presentation the museum was giving, and the way it might affect young Singaporeans' views on art. Like many things in Singapore, the museum plaques were very cut and dry. I'll talk about this more in a future post, but Singapore school systems are set up around rigorous standardized exams. This museum was an interesting extension of that - standardized art. My homestay family said that Singaporeans are not taught to think, but taught to spit back information and pass tests. This method of teaching, like the plaques, tries to make messy, complicated, ambiguous things very cut and dry.

This is all so interesting to me, especially because our UNC-professor-taught class here is exactly the opposite. There is a low focus on explicit facts and much more focus on thought and ways of understanding/ thinking about the world around us. If there could be a motto for the class, it would probably be, "Nothing is cut and dry - everything is infinitely complex and variegated."

This mindset seems completely incompatible with the Singaporean one to me. I thought it was interesting that all of these musings arose for me at the museum. Hopefully you've enjoyed reading about them!