It's time to say goodbye...

... to a lot of my friends here in Singapore. No, I'm not going back to Germany yet, but many other exchange students are staying for one semester only. So it is really a time to say goodbye now.

Yesterday we were for the last evening - for some of my best friends here - in the New Asia Bar. This bar is situated on the topmost floor of the Suissôtel "The Stamfort" right in the middle of the City. It is actually the 82nd floor and the view is really great. (The pictures are actually from another time we have been there together. I don't have the pictures from yesterday yet). It was the perfect spot to sit and talk about all the great trips and other activities we did together. After enjoying the Bar we went in to a close by restaurant for a final dinner together. It was Sezuchan Cuisine - very spicy and very good.

After having spent a really great time together it was a bit sad to have to say goodbye to all of them. Having experienced two trips to Malaysia and to trips to Indonesia together (at least with some of them) we were quite close friends now. I will miss the daily lunch and dinner appointments, the pool sessions and the crazy parties. I really hope that we can keep in touch and meet some time in Europe again!

For the rest of the exchange students, who are still here, a big party in Clarke Quay is planned today. I finished finally my last exam today (it should be quite okay) I am really in the mood for partying now! In December I will say goodbye to Singapore as well - but just temporarily of course. I will be travelling first to Bali and then to Thailand. (I hope that those guys will find a solution for the conflict soon... I have already booked my flight to Bangkok.) I'll be back in Singapore in the beginning of January then - you have to use the opportunity and see all the interesting countries around here!

"Bit"-wise studying

Aaarrrghhh this subject drives me mad! Only one exam left but some questions of the old exam papers are totally insane. Its definitely NOT fun to divide 15th order polynomials by 11th order polynomials in a Galois Field of 2.

If you get a bit distracted or lack a bit of concentration then you will end up toggling one bit and render a whole page worthless. I was trying to get through the papers bit by bit but I'm getting quite a bit annoyed now. Well, I bit trough the stuff upto now and hope that I will have done my bit of bit manipulation by Friday and will pass the exam - at least a bit - successfully.

If I used the word "bit" a bit too often here, it's maybe due to the fact that I should get a bit of sleep now...

Study hard...

... or study hardly.

As I already mentioned the exam period has finally arrived. In the beginning it was really quite hard to motivate myself for studying. It is always warm weather and the pool is close, all the other exchange students who will leave soon are doing a lot of activities,... - I was really studying rather hardly than hard in the beginning.

But now I'm already half through. I finished two exams last week and it went actually quite well. I have two more exams next week, on Monday and on Friday, and then I'm finished with the first semester here. I guess they will both be quite hard - so studying hard is now the way it goes...

Hence I will concentrate on the light at the end of the tunnel the next days - big party on Friday and traveling throughout the December!

Sumatra, Indonesia

I suppose I still owe you a report about my latest Indonesia trip to Sumatra. Since the exam period is starting now I uploaded a lot of pictures, but will be less detailed in my descriptions. I know you like pictures better than text anyway... ;-)

Yeah, I guess you recognized it - that's the new Airbus A380. We saw it when we were taxiing to the runway.

Welcome to Indonesia: You can see a REAL Indonesian toilet :-D
...pimped busses (bemos) in Padang...
...and of course yummy Padang food served in small bowls.

This was a real jungle trip. We walked about 1h (one way) on some (sometimes very) small trails through the jungle to see the Rafflesia, the biggest flower of the world.

After that we got a nice refreshment under a water fall!

On the next day we could see more of the amazing nature around Bukittinggi: Crazy shaped hills formed by erosion, many volcanoes, canyons, giant bats (more than one meter wingspan) and a huge crater lake (including a bath, of course). The roof shape of the houses is by the way special for West Sumatra (Minangkabau) and shall resemble the horns of a Buffalo.

In conclusion (West) Sumatra is really an amazing place (as you can hopefully see from the pictures). There is a huge variety of different landscapes - sometimes you find yourself just marveling at it with an open mouth... Despite the fact that the rainy season had already started we had awesome weather - sunny with some scattered clouds and no rain at all! Another great thing is that it is not very touristy place. You will find some tourist at some popular spots, but apart from that you are either alone or among locals. If you hate places where you can see more tourists than locals - Sumatra is THE place to go!

Computer Vison

I already reported earlier of my Computer Vision assignment. The task is to detect a certain lift button in a live captured video stream. If the description was a bit to abstract for you, you may want to watch this video.
Well it is a bit small, but i think you can recognize the red rectangle which marks the specific button in the big window. In the small window you can see a canny edge detection with a subsequent hough transform - for those who are interested...

I'm still not 100% satisfied with the performance, but to get the last 10% you always have to spend 90% of the total effort - and I don't have enough time left to do this. Anyway I think it is able to do more than the programs of most of my fellow students. Despite the fact that I had to spend quite a lot of time to get it working like this it was very interesting to write this program. It was definitely one of the more interesting assignments here - if not even the most interesting...

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...