One month over...

Hey guys. Now I'm actually since one month in Singapore. Its a bit strange - on the one hand I feel like I just came here a week ago and one the other hand I experienced so much up to now that it could have filled several months. Anyway I think it's time to draw a little balance for now.

Living:
As you all now I am living in an undergraduate hall directly on campus. At first I felt a bit unsure whether I like the idea of a twin sharing room or not. But now I can say I feel totally alright. My roommate Jonathan, a Singaporean, is very nice. At the beginning he seemed a bit shy and quiet to me, but I think it is just a matter of getting to know each other. We get along very well and there were now quarrels up to now - I don't think there will ever be some. Additionally he is every weekend at his parents' so I have free run of the house regularly. ;-)

Studying:
It is already the forth week of the classes so I can tell you a bit about them as well. I took 4 courses in total: "Computer vision" and "Principles of information theory and coding" which are both undergraduate courses and "Advanced digital signal processing" and "Statistical signal processing" which are graduate (master) courses. One big difference between the graduate and the undergraduate courses is that undergraduate courses take place in the morning or afternoon and each distributed over the whole week. In contrast to that the graduate courses are held in one block per week from 6.30pm to 9.30pm (Yeah it's really quite late). The level of the courses is probably slightly lower than in Darmstadt - except for SSP where the professor sometimes flips the slides in an insane speed... In general I think that I chose the right courses - they are not too hard and not too easy as well, quite interesting and I won't have to overwork. As an exchange student you need enough time for extra-curricular activities...

Leisure time:
As you can see from the previous postings in my blog I enjoy my leisure time here very well. For the weekends it's really easy and cheap to make a short trip to Malaysia (I really like it there) or Indonesia (I haven't been there yet). Apart from that there are many clubs you can join here at NTU. Eg. mountaineering, wake boarding, archery, diving and many more. I didn't really join a club up to now but I probably should do it. Another popular activity is to go to Staff club (the only pub on campus) and meet some exchange students - there are alway some of them at the bar. Last but not least I spent some time to explore Singapore on day and at night. For the former there are many parks, gardens and other attractions and for the latter there are many clubs in the centre. I think I will dedicate another posting to the Singaporean nightlife.

Weather:
By now I am bit accustomed to the climate here. But the weather changed a bit during the last week. At the beginning it was very hot and sunny every day. But now its mostly quite rainy and cool (that means about 25-28°C). Last weekend the rain was a bit annoying but I hope that it will get a bit better soon. I don't mind some showers as long as it doesn't rain all day.

Food:
Since I have fully recovered from my food poisoning I am able to enjoy the whole variety of food again. On the first glance the meals seem all very similar - rice, noodles and chicken - as I already told. But if you have a closer look you can get a very diversified diet. I especially like Indian food - I is very tasty (and spicy!) and you can have Naam (kind of flat bread) instead of rice. Yesterday I was even invited by some Indian fellow students for real home made Indian food. The spiciness was at the upper limit but it was very delicious!
But one thing I really dislike here is the breakfast. The only think you can get is toast and (very fluid) egg. So I bought some packages of milk and some corn flakes - that's what I consider as a proper breakfast.

All in all I like it here very much. It doesn't get boring and I cope which the local circumstances better and better. I begin to fear that the 10 months will spin away!

A weekend in Kuala Lumpur (Pt. 2)

All of us slept like babies that night, but unfortunately not long enough. Well it didn't help - we had to get up early to visit the Batu Caves. We met with the two Russian girls we got to know the day before (That's actually a story in itself, but in the end there isn't much to say about it.) and took the public bus to the caves. The caves were rather impressive - you can see it on the pictures so I don't have to write a lengthy description. Since the Batu Caves are a kind of holy site for the Hindus there are many little shrines and temples in them. It was especially interesting to watch the Hindu people in their colourful clothes going for their worship. We met a very friendly guy who explained us the meaning of some of the statues and other things. Some rituals of them appeared quite strange to us - e.g. smashing coconuts on the floor... Another attraction (or plague?) were all the monkies. They jumped around everywhere and they really knew how to get some food from the unsuspecting tourists.


I watched the following scene: A women was descending the stairs carrying a bag of cornflakes in her hand. Then a very smart (or bold) monkey came from behind, grabbed the bag and jumped on some fence. He opened the bag very skillfully and eat like holding the bag in the one hand and picking the cornflakes with the other.

The last places we visited on our trip were the National Mosque and the Lake Gardens. It was quite impressive to have such a green and calm place in the mid of a city. Unfortunately we couldn't enjoy them that much because we were very hungry and there was no place to eat in the gardens. Finally we made our ways back to Puduraya bus terminal to catch the bus back to Johor Bahru and Singapore. This time we got really the deluxe version of a coach. There were only three seats in a row, you could adjust the seat in two ways and every seat had two arm rests! So we could catch a few ZZZs on the ride.

To sum it up it was a gorgeous trip again and Kuala Lumpur is worth a visit. I'm really starting to like Malaysia... :-)

A weekend in Kuala Lumpur (Pt. 1)

As we want to see as much as possible of the surroundings we made a short trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last weekend. This time we were a group of 5 guys since the girls had other things to do. We started Friday evening at the campus to get a direct bus to Kuala Lumpur from the Singapore city centre. Unfortunately there were some other people with the same idea and all the seats in the buses were already occupied... But we didn't lose heart and went for plan B. So we took an express bus to Johor Bahru and - yippee - we got a bus to KL for 35 RM. We tried to get some sleep in the bus and finally arrived in KL at 4.30am.

The first thing we did - after walking a bit unoriented through the city - was having breakfast. Since we didn't recognize anything familiar in the menu we were lucky that the stuff we ordered was eatable. After that we headed for the Petronas Towers. We came just in the right time to marvel at them in the break of dawn. Then we had to queue for the tickets to enter the bridge - interestingly the tickets are free, but you have to queue for about 2 hours. Around 9am we got the much sought-after tickets and could enjoy the slightly foggy view over Kuala Lumpur.



The next thing we had to do was to look for a place to sleep. There are some rather cheap accommodations near Bintang (a KL nightlife centre) so it was not a big problem to find a nice hostel (26 RM / night incl. breakfast!). Now we could start our sightseeing tour through KL: Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve (a kind of jungle in the mid of the city centre) - China Town (incl. shopping of faked T-shirts) - some Chinese an Hindu temples - the old railway station in KL. Then we made our way back to Bintang to our hostel.But before that someone had the very bad idea to try Durian. The Durian is a very famous fruit in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. It stinks as hell but it is said to taste wonderful... Well... For me I think I can say that it was the ugliest food I ever tried in my life. It took me hours to get the taste out of my mouth and the memory isn't extinguished yet. We ended the evening in a nice Shisha bar near our hostel. When we came back to our hostel we noticed that it is situated right above a kind of techno club. The music down there was so loud that the floor and the beds vibrated form the bass. Under normal circumstances it would have impossible to sleep in that buzz - but we were so tired that we fell into a near coma after few minutes.

Food in Singapore

As announcing in my previous post I owe you a story about the food in Singapore. Upto now I mostly liked the food here. You can get meals from a whole variety of countries in S'pore, e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Malay and Indonesian cuisine. The only thing that stands out is that most of the meals contain either rice or chicken - frequently both... But unfortunately I ran out of luck concerning my choice of food last weekend. :-(
I suspict the oysters I got from a food stall at Marina Bay on Saturday - in any case I suffered a rather bad food poisoning Sunday evening. You can imagine youselves what is implied in such a sickness. As it didn't get any better after a few hours - in contrary it got worse and worse - I even had to see a doctor late at night. Fortunatley here a some very good 24 hour clinics in S'pore which can help you at any time. But it cost me around 150S$ in total for the consultation and the cabs. Anyway I was very grateful that the medication helped very quickly.
Since there were no classes on Monday I could spend the whole day in bed (I wouldn't have been able to do anything else). Since then I am recovering slowly. Today I feel already quite okay, however there are still some rumbles in my belly.
So don't worry about me - I survived it and I'm sure that I'll soon be fit as a fiddle again. :-)

National Day Parade 2008

On Saturday we have been to the celebrations of the Singaporean National Day. The National Day here is really a big celebration. Despite of being such a young nation the Singaporeans are really very patriotic! (Or probably because of...?) Anyway. Walking through the city you could find everywhere some signs promoting the National Day or Singaporean flags hanging out of the windows - even weeks before the actual date. So we decided to experience some of the Singaporean Spirit and joined the celebrations around Marina Bay (just near the centre).

The nearer we came to the epicentre the more people were wearing red and white clothes (the national colours). As usual everything was well organized. I think every tenth guy was either a policeman or a soldier. On Marina Bay itself gathered nearly all the people who haven't got tickets for the main event. (There are only 27,000 tickets for 4.5 million inhabitants). You can imagine that the area was rather crowded. To assimlate well some of us had the flag of Singapore painted on their cheeks. Before the most interesting events started we just walked a bit along the bay and enjoyed the performing groups and the food stalls. (I'll come to that in my next blog post). After that we had a look for a good spot to see the action.

The first part was a breathtaking show of the Black Knights, the elite aerobatics team of the Singaporean Armed Forces. They performed really amazing manoeuvres, e.g. very close encounters in the air or painting a heart in the sky. It lasted probably not even 10 minutes but it was really impressive to watch that.
After that there were some performances on the main stage, which we only could see from distance. But we had the perfect spot to see the illuminated bird-shaped balloons and the fireworks. I have to mention that there are only two days per year where fireworks are allowed in S'pore, on the National Day and on Chinese New Year. The fireworks were rather short but they really shot up many rockets on the same time. Standing rather close to the lauching platform the effects sometimes filled the whole sky in front of us. The illuminated Singaporean skyline as the background set up a great stage for the fireworks. So all of us enjoyed the National Day - it was a very special experience.

Fighting with bureaucracy

Today is a lucky day! Finally all my courses that I want to take in the first semester were approved by the "Office of Academic Services". It took me nearly the whole week to come to that point. And I think that it went rather smooth for me compared to my fellow students... Now I can concentrate myself on partying er studying. ;-)
Additionally i got today my student pass for Singapore. It probably makes it easy to cross the border, but it cost us 110S$. Strangely the Swiss and then Canadians had to pay only 50S$. Probably they don't trust the EU here...

Paradise Island (Tioman Island)

Now I want to tell you something about another Island. Last weekend we visited with a group of eight exchange students Tioman Island in Malaysia, which is totally incomparable to Sentosa. But lets start at the beginning...

We met Friday in the early morning (7.15h) to get by Bus, MRT and Taxi to the border near Johor Bahru. There is the so called causeway which is a kind of dam that links Singapore and Malaysia. The border controlls are really strict and it took as about an hour to get out of Singapore. Having crossed the border we took a cab to Mersing which is on the east coast of Malaysia. Bargaining about the price was not that easy but in the end we had to pay 55S$ per cab for a 2h ride which is a reasonable price. Road traffic in Malaysia is a bit adventurous - overtaking in bends or animals on the streets seems to be quite common. But nevertheless we reached Mersing without any problems and booked the ferry to Tioman and the accommodation in a local travel agency.

The ferry ride took us about 1.5 hours. You can take the word "ride" literally - although the weather was really nice the trip was rather bumpy. Before taking the ferry we bought something to eat in Mersing (chicken and rice as usual). It was kind of hard to eat this in the ferry without spilling it all over you shirt or getting sea sick. The ferry arrived at the village Kampung Genting. For the last few kilometers we had to change into small water taxis to get to Bersatu Nipah.

The island itself looked really fabulous. There are nice small beaches at the shore and virgin forest on the mountains behind it. But when we came to our chalets it got even better - crystal clear water, few little houses on a very long beach, a small lagoon formed by a river and all the people had a broad smile and were very relaxed. I nearly had to rub my eyes and pinch myself to realize that I am not dreaming. The chalets were rather simple and small - but for us they were just perfect. The first impression of the place really excellent.

We passed two superb days on the island. On the first day went swimming in the sea and lay on the beach. We harvested fresh coconuts, cut them and drank the fresh coconut milk with straws. In the night we hat our dinner on the beach - the meals were excellent as well. Later we sat around a fire at the beach, drank beer and talked to the locals. All of them were so relaxed - they smiled and laughed at all times and their favorite word was: "Allrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!" :-)

On the second day we went snorkeling in the morning. There was a tiny island nearby with a coral reef around it - so we could see many colourful fish. Reportedly there is also a shark around that island, but we couldn't spot him this time. (It is of course a friendly shark which doesn't bite any tourist.) Around noon we did a short jungle trip. We paddled with a boat up the river and then followed a small creek uphill. We climbed from rock to rock and watched out for spider's webs - they told us that they can be really poisonous. I think that we never made it more than 1000 metres from the starting point, but the whole trip took us nearly 3 hours - you are really slow in the jungle. The rest of the day we kept most of the time on the beach and enjoyed ourselves...

The next day we had to leave already. We stayed till noon in Nipah and then we had to take all the different means of transportation back to Singapore. This time we took the public bus in Malaysia - a very interesting experience as well. At about 10pm we arrived on campus - tired but very happy about the outstanding weekend. We definitely want to do this once again!