Afterburner

1. is what you can hear in the early morning when F16 fighter jets are flying low over the campus.
2. is what you can feel after massive chili intake in Sumatra.
   

[I'm sorry, I think this joke only works if you speak German.]

Singaporean Chinese Orchestra and China Town

On Sunday we finally had a bit of a cultural program. We (the usual bunch of exchange students) met with two Singaporean friends of mine (Dorothy and Winston), who wanted to show us some interesting parts of Singapore. At first we went to the Botanical Gardens to see the Singaporean Chinese Orchestra, the only professional Chinese orchestra in Singapore. We planned to walk a bit around in the gardens before the concert - unfortunately that day there was one of the worst thunderstorms I ever experienced in Singapore. It calmed down when we arrived in the Botanical Gardens but it kept raining moderately - not the perfect weather to visit a park... Anyway we once again braved the unpredictable elements in Singapore and went on to the stage.
Finally when the concert started it stopped raining and we could enjoy the open air atmosphere. The orchestra was really great! It was actually the second time I saw it and I was equally impressed this time. First of all, the instruments they play - traditional Chinese instruments - are completely different from the Western ones. The only familiar instruments I could spot were the celli and the contra basses - or did you ever here of instruments like Yangqin (揚琴, yángqín), Yueqin (月琴, yuèqín), Pipa (琵琶, pípa) or Sheng (笙, shēng)? Therefore the sound of the orchestra is really different from a Western symphonic orchestra, especially for the Chinese pieces with a pentatonic scale. The program was very diverse, ranging from traditional Chinese pieces to famous Western pieces like Brahms' Hungarian Dances... All of us agreed that it was really awesome.

After the concert we all went to China Town to have a splendid dinner there. We took seat at a big table (we were actually 11 people) and everybody got some food from the different food stalls. So we had a great diversity of food and everybody could try all the different things. Especially great was the sting ray and the dessert (glutinous rice-flour-made balls). Finally we enjoyed a private guided tour through China Town. Dorothy actually grew up in a 3-storey house in this quarter. So she could tell us some stories about living in those old houses as well.

This was the perfect ending for a great an very entertaining weekend in Singapore. The only drawback is that I will have to work a bit harder for my assignments during the week now. There was not much time left to do that in the weekend...

Weekend activities

The last weekend was a rather eventful one. So I will summarize the activities just in one, well, two postings.

On Friday I was (together with some friends at NTU) invited to a French crêpes party. Fabien, the guy who invited us, lives in a nice condo in Simei (East of Singapore). We actually know him from our Bintan trip. As an appropriate gift for a French guy we brought him some bottles of wine... :-) The crêpes were really great! He made some salty and some sweet ones. The best one was crêpes with molten chocolate! Since he is working for a French construction company most of his friends - his work mates - were French. So I could practice my French skills a bit... well there is unfortunately not much left. Apparently most of his guest had to work the next day (Saturday!) so the party was over at about 1am. But this was of course way to early for us exchange students. So we had a nice after party at 7-11 and on the roof of the graduate hall. But I think I shouldn't go into details here...

Despite getting to bed very late we got up at 8am on Saturday to go to Pulau Ubin. This is a small island in the East of Singapore, just like Sentosa in the South. But in fact those islands are very different. Unlike Sentosa Pulau Ubin is very original and natural. There is only a small village on the island - the rest is mainly forest which is preserved in its original state by the government. The only thing you can do on the island is actually cycling and eating sea food. So we had some different sea food for lunch first. Luckily it started to rain really heavily just when we sat down in the restaurant - and stopped when we were about to leave. So we could get ourselves some bikes and explore the island. The island is not very big, so getting around by bike is easy. The forest and the nature were a welcome relief to the concrete of the city. You can get a rough impression how Singapore looked like in the 50s before it rose to a big metropolis.
But you really had to watch out for mosquitos and Singaporean cyclists. We donated a lot of blood to the mosquito population in the forest and the lack of cycling skills of some locals is sometimes really dangerous. Alexandre was in fact hit by a girl who couldn't get her bike under control when riding down a slope. Luckily nobody was injured, though Alexandre's rear wheel was heavily bent and we had to detach the break so that it could turn again... at least the guy of the bike shop did not complain.
Anyway we passed a nice day on the island and were really tired when we finally came back to the campus. Sorry I don't have the pictures yet - I hope that I can supply them soon.

Singaporean Metal Scene

Yes, you read it right. There is actually a metal scene in this disciplined, neat and clean country. Okay I have to admit, that it is not very big and it operates somehow under the surface. But nevertheless there are some nice metal concerts here - you just have to find out where and when...

At the NTU I found some metal soul mates among the exchange students here and we always tried to find out if there is something like a metal club/disco. But we never managed to find something like that. Finally one of them came up with a death metal concert in a club near Clarke Quay (the night life centre of Singapore). Although death metal is not our favourite genre, we (Sigrid from Sweden, Andrea from Germany and me) went there anyway - and we didn't regret it. After we found the location the first thing that caught your eye were the Asian metalers. In whole Singapore I hadn't seen that many guys with long black hair (the Japanese lead singer had bleached hair!) and black clothes. :-) The club was rather small and the crowed wasn't very big - but the people really rocked (head banging, crowd surfing,...). There were 6 different bands playing (4 Singaporean band and 2 from Japan) and they were definitely not bad. Although most of them played real death metal - strong distortion and growling vocals - all of us liked the music and the show. Unlike most of the European death metal bands they didn't take themselves "dead" serious. Their performances were sometimes really funny and a bit self-ironic, which contributed to the nice atmosphere in the club. Unlike some other live performances I've been to, this really felt like a concert.

The best part of the evening was just chatting with all the metal guys and band members. After the concert almost all the bands and groupies went to a pub and had some more beer. So we joined them of course and we had the chance to talk to all the guys. Everybody was - in contrast to the somewhat dark and evil appearance - really very kind and open and we had a lot of fun. Now we are initiated to the Singaporean metal scene and we always get to know when something is going on...

The next concert followed soon (last Saturday). This time only me and Sigrid had time - so we went there together. The title of the concert was "Mosh Party" - so there was a bit of moshing going on. The concert itself was very different from the first one. The location was a kind of youth club, so the average age seemed to be something like seventeen - you even couldn't get a beer there. The bands were not as professional as in the other concert, but some of the were pretty good anyway. Despite the incredible heat in the room we enjoyed ourselves. Let's see what the next concert will bring...

Assignments

I think some (all?) of you got the impression that I don't study but only party and travel here. Hence I will dedicate this posting to the work that I have to do for my courses.

The system here is a bit different compared to Germany. Whereas in Germany there is mostly only one exam at the end of the semester, there are some continual assessments at NTU. Those can be presentations, quizzes or assignments. For my courses there are actually only assignments to do. An assignment is something like an evaluated tutorial. It is simply a sheet with some problems that I have to solve by myself and then hand it in to my lecturer. For my courses there are two or three assignments per semester which account for 20 - 30% of the overall mark. So you should put some effort in the solving of those problems. The good thing is that you normally have enough time to solve all the problems and you can discuss with you fellow students.

In the last 2 weeks I had to hand in three assignments for my courses. So I actually had a bit of work to do. But since I'm smart I started early enough and didn't get into big trouble finishing them in time. ;-) For the last 3 and half weeks of the semester (yeah it's really almost over) there will be probably 4 more assignments to do. I hope the lecturers will release the problem sheets soon so that the work doesn't cumulate at the end of the term.

The Computer Vision assignment is actually quite interesting. The goal is to detect a lift button with a certain number on a lift panel in real time. That means that you have a picture of a lift panel and you capture a video of this panel with a web cam. Than you have to mark the corresponding button of the panel in the live video of the web cam on the screen. To achieve this we have to write a C-program which uses some computer vision algorithms that are able to do this detection. The problem is quite simple because you now in advance how the lift panel looks like - but even like that it is quite challenging to compensate all the degrees of freedom of the camera movement (distance, yaw, pitch, roll, ...). Up to now I cannot take all of them into account, but apart from that it works quite well...

Formula One in Singapore - for free!

It is now more than a week ago but I definitely have to tell you about the Formula One race in Singapore. As you probably all now it was the first Formula One race in Singapore and the first night race ever. I think all the preparations took more than one year - the buildup of the "Marina Bay Circuit" itself took several month. Like in Monte Carlo the race took place in the middle of the city. You could see the parts of the circuit (security fences, light installations, ...) actually more than a month before the race weekend. The technical and logistic effort was really immense.

Seeing this I really wanted to take part and see the race. Unfortunately all the cheap tickets, the so called walkabout passes, were already sold out. For tickets on the grand stands you had to pay at least 150 Euro. That's actually quite cheap compared to European Formula One prices but for a student it's anyway a lot of money. So I was a bit undecided what to do... until a friend came up with a great offer. He heard from another friend that there is a possibility for working as a volunteer. So I did not hesitate and signed up for being a volunteer at the Formula One race! Before the race itself I had not really an idea of what I will have to do there, but the prospect of seeing the race for free was enough...

Finally it turned out that we were working for the St. John's Ambulance (something similar to the Red Cross) selling "Formula One Survival Kits". These kits consisted of a rain coat and a pair of earplugs. The profit of the sales went in to the charity fund of the organization. So we had a booth right next to the entrance and we had to sell those kits from about 1pm to 8pm. The job was really okay, however it was a bit tiring - especially during the peak hour. Sometimes the booth was surrounded by people and we could hardly keep up with selling the stuff. You had to talk all the time ("Excuse me - do you want ear plugs?", "Two dollars please.", "Thank you very much.", "Do you want to donate for charity?",...) so that you soon got a dry mouth, but fortunately the drinks, as well as a lunch and a dinner, were for free. When the race finally started and no more people were coming in we could leave the booth and watch the race.

It was my first Formula One race and it was really cool. The brightly illuminated race track in front of the Singaporean skyline made up a extraordinary atmosphere. Since the streets in Singapore are not very spacious you could get really close to the cars. In some turns there were a mere 10m and the security fence between yourself and the cars. In real life the cars are actually much smaller than they appear on the TV screen - but the sound is deafening. Fortunately the supply of earplugs was sufficient... The drawback is that you don't really know whats going on without a TV screen - but there were everywhere some people with small portable TV sets. The best action was in turn 7 right after the long straight - we could see some nice fights and some overtaking maneuvers.

In conclusion it was a great day at the Formula One circuit and all that for free! A lot of friends in Singapore were envious when I told them about my day there... :-)

Java, Indonesia: The temples

As promised, here is the first part of the more detailed travel report. After arriving in Surabaya, Java we wanted to get somehow to Yogyakarta where the two famous temples Borobudur and Prambanan (both UNESCO world heritage) are. The problem is that public transport in Indonesia is not as comfortable and reliable as in Singapore. So we had to skip the initial plan (taking a train) and took a minibus. After bargaining, eating and exchanging money it was at least 6pm when we left Surabaya. The traffic was quite dense and we advanced much slower than we expected, so we had to change our plans once more. This time we skipped the night in Yogyakarta and we got directly to Borobudur. We arrived there at around 2am and it was completely dark and deserted there. So we lay down on the sidewalk and tried to get at least 1 or 2 hours of sleep...

The advantage of arriving so early was that we were the first to enter the temple area at that day. We decided to book a guide who could explain us some things about the temple - and he was really great. He told us a lot about the history of the temple and the meaning of the different parts in Buddhism. The temple was built in the 9th century (so it's more than thousand years old) as a shrine for Buddha and a pilgrimage site. It consits of 6 square platforms (representing the earthly life with desire), 3 round platforms (representing the 3 stages of heaven) and a big central stupa on top (representing the nirvana). The base of the monument is about 120x120m and it is about 35m high. On each level there a numerous carving mostly telling stories of the life of Buddha. The whole building is very impressive and it is stunning how well preserved most of the carvings are. But I think you can see the dimesions of the building yourself on the pictures.

After Borobudur we went to the other temple, Prambanan. So we took a bemo to get there. A bemo is something like a cab but in the size of a minibus. It was perfect for us because we could just fit into it with eigth persons. That's why it shouldn't be the last bemo ride of our trip...

The temple Prambanan is equally impressive as Borobudur. Prambanan was built in the 9th century as well but it is a Hindu temple. The shape is very different from Borobudur and there are numerous small temples which haven't been reconstructed yet. Actually the whole temple was a giant jigsaw puzzle when it was rediscovered. Most of the buildings were collapsed and all the stone blocks had to be put together in the right order again... Unfortunately the monument suffered severe damage in the earthquake of 2006 - that's why the direct surroundings of the large temples are still closed off. Each of the three buildings is a shrine dedicated to one of the three Hindu gods: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Keeper, and Shiva the Destroyer. I have to admit that I don't remember many of the details the guide told us. It was very hot in the high noon sun and we all could feel the lack of sleep.

We stayed there for around an hour, then we had to hurry a bit to get to Yogyakarta. The rest of the day was consumed by finding a money changer, finding a place to eat and getting to the airport. But finally we managed and we could catch our plane to Denpassar, Bali.