Keeping busy in Singapore.

"if you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." -- frank a. clark

taken in the gardens of the singapore zoo -- singapore

Things in Singapore have been pretty busy lately. Working hard on projects for school while applying for internships in Singapore and Chicago for the summer. But I thought I would take a quick study break and put up a few of my favorite photos from the family's visit. Too many favorites to choose from....

at the grand palace -- bangkok, thailand

orchid gardens -- singapore

botanic gardents -- singapore

sakae sushi for all you can eat sushi - singapore

Its already March...

Hard to believe that its already March. This past month was rather busy. Working on our design projects, exploring Singapore, and the family came out to visit.

Some of the highlights or more memorable events...

Went to Thaipusam in Little India a few wknds back. The Hindu festival is celebrated on the full moon of Jan/Feb and can pretty much be summed up in one word -- piercings. While interesting to view other cultures this festival was rather difficult to watch. The glazed eyes and self mutalation was a bit hard to stomach. Here are a few pictures I took:


Rest of my time here has just been spent in class/studying, with friends and traveling/exploring Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore with my family for 2 weeks. (will post more about this soon...)

Really loving Singapore, but I will admit after seeing the fam I am starting to miss everyone from home and all the comforts.

I'll leave you with a few more photos from the past few weeks.

some of the girls at the festival in Little India

out on Yan's boat on Valentine's Day for John's bday

sunset on Sentosa Island (Singapore) for Mihai's bday

A few of my favourite pictures so far....

Val and I on the world's greatest indoor roller coaster at Cosmo's world -- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

our dance party in the plaza -- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

one of my first nights out in Singapore at China One with some great locals - Singapore, Singapore

Val and I in our authentic bare feet and garbs at the Grand Palace -- Bangkok, Thailand

Chinese New Year -- Singapore Style!

Saturday afternoon a group of us IDers went to our professors house for to celebrate and learn more about Chinese New Year. Prof Teh showed us his house -- which included many collectibles and famous designer furniture.

Saturday night I went to my host families' house for dinner to celebrate day 6 of the 15 day celebration for Chinese New Year Singapore style. Here are a few photos from the dinner....

blurry shot of my host, Ling, on the left and her mother on the right.

Here we are partaking in yusheng. Yusheng is a CNY celebration unique to Singapore. The ingredients include: raw salmon (or other fish), daikon (white radish), carrot, red pepper, ginger, daun limau nipis (lime tree leaves), Chinese parsley, chopped peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, Chinese shrimp crackers (or fried dried shrimp), and a five spice powder all topped off with a plum sauce dressing. Actually tasted really good. Here the trick is to toss it as high as you can. Higher the toss, greater your fortune. Things got much messier at our celebration in the design studio!

Ling's other exchange student and I

The dinner was a nice opportunity to get to know Ling as well her other exchange student, Yvonne. Ling's family is originally from southern China so most of the dinner included seafood. The week before while snorkeling in Ko Samui Thailand I held a sea cucumber -- to the left is a picture i stole from google -- and found myself eating it Saturday night.

Ling's mother told us a bit about the arguous process of preparing sea cucumber and that it is rather expensive here in Singapore. After that I figured I had to at least try some. And its not bad, takes like fish.

One of my goals while in Singapore is to be adventureous with the food as well. Thursday in my design studio we also celebrated CNY, someone brought these little individual packets each containing two duck tongues. Yep, thats right I tried duck toungue. Worth a try but I can't say you'll find me eating it anytime soon....

Gong xi fa cai!

3 days in Paradise

THAILAND PART TWO - Koh Samui


The other three days of our time in Thailand were spent on an island in Southern Thailand, Koh Samui -- also known as paradise. We took the overnight train down and arrived in Koh Samui Sunday afternoon. A long journey but well worth it. Unlike Bangkok three days here were not enough, I could have spent weeks here. The island was beautiful.

Unfortunately we were greeted with rain and cloudy skies, but that gave us time to finalize our plans for our time there. And by the next morning the sun was shining and sky a bright gorgeous blue. We signed up for a tour for the day, in which we were picked up at 7a and dropped back off at the hostel around 530pm.

The tour was well worth every baht. Throughout the course of the day we:

- went snorkeling
- went canoeing
- had a delicious curry lunch on the island
- swam and laid out
- hiked the Ang thong National Marine Park

Such a perfect day. Our tour guide, Monster, was hilarious too. Such a big personality. While listening to my iPod on the hr boat ride out to the snorkeling area he came over to listen to my iPod -- wanted to hear some hip hop. He was listening to Trading Places by Usher, for a second I was back in the junior studio in Champaign.

There was quite a number of people on the tour, maybe 25 to 35 in all. Europeans seem to rule Ko Sumai. Which means lots of smoking, tattoos and speedos.

Val and I with Monster

For the end of the tour we were given the option of riding ATVS or taking an elephant ride. Obviously we chose the elephants! It felt just like we were in Jurassic Park, the scenery around us was beautiful.

As for the food....our first night on Koh Samui we found one of the best restaurants on the island, Ninja Crepes. Just a 5 minutes walk down the road from our hostel we enjoyed meal after meal here. Located in Chaweng, the part of the island we stayed at, Ninja's was the only restaurant that night after night actually had people waiting for a table. Best food on the island for such great prices and even great service. Below are Val and I for our last dinner in Ko Samui, everyone joined in the pic -- one of my favorite from the trip.

Here are just a few more pictures from our time down south. The islands were sooo beautiful. You can check out my album on picasa....

On our way from the ferry to the train station we met two people in the shuttle -- Terry and Chris. Really enjoyed talking them and getting to hear their stories. Terry was a mother of three, originally from Australia but has lived all over the world (singapore, india,...and currently thailand). She is a healer on the island and shared some great insights to life. Chris was much tougher, from Germany covered in tattoos. He taught himself Thai -- so impressive -- and is now living and working on Koh Samui as well. Fortunate to have met him, felt much safer having someone that could speak Thai and of course his tough exterior didn't hurt.

Our time here really came to an end far to quickly. Before we knew it we were back on the train (this time the sleeper cart -- UPGRADE!) on our way back to Bangkok to buy a few more dresses and catch our flight home to Singapore.

So the overall synopsis was that Thailand was amazing. I could write page after page of everything that I experienced. It was an action packed week with one adventure followed by the next. There were a few questionable situations but by the grace of God our safety was never truly compromised. Very fortunate to have made it out without a scratch but rather a GREAT tan and many, many stories -- I did have 200+ bug bites from Bangkok but am happy to walk away having that be the worst of it.

Now its back to adventures in Singapore for a while!

Cheers!

Six days spent in Thailand

PART ONE -- Bangkok

So Thailand was quite the experience. Not what I was expecting by any means. Parts of the city were beautiful while others highly polluted and very poor. Safe to say I experienced my first dose of real culture shock since leaving Chicago this past week.

We only spent about three days in Bangkok, but made sure to pack each day full of varying activities. Our first day (Friday) we all took a ferry and went to see the Grand Palace. Breathtaking. Quite a contrast to the rest of the city we had walked prior, people sleeping on the streets begging for money while the wealthier passed with masks to protect themselves from the pollution. The detailing on the buildings was remarkable. The pictures barely do it justice.

Here is a picture of all 10 of us (plus the newbie from our hostile) posing at the Grand Palace.

After the palace we made our way to the Reclining Buddha -- stretching out over 150 feet. From their we trekked through Bangkok to our hostel, which was just off Koh San Road. The road is always packed full of tourist and vendors. You can buy just about anything here - tattoos to pad thai to dresses and you can even get dreads. All the food here was so good. Throughout our time here we had just about everything, all freshly made to order.

After shopping a bit we went to dinner followed by the night market. The night market, along Patpong. Patpong is notorious for nightlife and great shopping. Here we put our bargaining skills to the test. I got a nice pair of D&G Sunglasses for pretty cheap (just 200 baht) and a beautiful Panerai watch (bargained down from 4,500 baht to just 1,000!).

this picture doesnt do justice to the night market -- didnt feel too good about whipping out my huge camera as we roamed.

Other highlights of our time in Bangkok was the Chatuchak Weekend Market (clearly did lots of shopping in Bangkok). But this market is a whole new ballgame. Its absurdely huge. Over 15,000 vendors, covering 35 acres! Prices were fixed here so we didn't come away with too much, just a cute skirt and some jean shorts. Made me miss home a bit tho -- one of the stalls was playing MATT NATHANSON, the other TAYLOR SWIFT! Never thought I'd hear that in the stalls of Bangkok.

From here we spent our last day on Koh San. Did some shopping, had some great eats, and after the group slip up to explore different parts of Thailand Val and I went and got a thai massage. Felt so good, and got just over $3 US!!

Val and I post massage

Weekend Review

Welcome to Kuala Lumpur!

What a great weekend. We all got back from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia late Sunday night. Couldn't have gone any better for not knowing anyone on the trip.

KL was an awesome city. Not quite as clean/nice as Singapore but a very cool place. We took the night bus from Singapore to KL and arrived at about 530 or 6am. We then hung out/slept a bit more at the pool of our condo for the wknd until we could go grab breakfast and see the Petronas Towers. It was a great view of KL.

After the towers we cabbed it over to the Batu Caves. The caves were beautiful. So many stairs to climb but another great view of Malaysia. We also got to see a ton of monkeys running wild around the caves. You couldn't get all that close since they've been known to bite and steal cameras... Pretty cool place though. Definitely interesting to see the shines.

Then we went and hit up Chinatown, also known as Petaling Street. The streets were just FILLED with stalls selling fake designer purses, bags, clothing, watches, etc. I just got a sweeet fake Chanel watch bargained down to 20 RM, $6 US! Probably won't last long but great timing since my watch broke on the way up to Malaysia.

Most of the group then went clubbing but me and two other girls just roamed the main road of KL (which our condo was right off of). Went into a few bars and had a killer dance party at one of the plazas thanks to some guys playing Rihanna and Britney Spears. Such a funny place.

As for Sunday we just hung out by the pool and then went on the world greatest indoor roller coaster at Time Square mall while the rest of the group slept. We we're all expecting it to be pretty lame since its indoors but were pleasantly surprised! We were only able to make it on the ride 3 or 4 times since we had to run and meet up w the group to bus it back to Singapore. Butttt the ride was a blast -- fast and even spun a few times. HIGHLY recommend it if you ever find yourself in KL! (Just a note, the guy at immigration told me he threw up after...so i wouldn't underestimate it! :)

Batu Caves

WKND Trip - Kuala Lumpur

In just a few hours I will be on a bus headed for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

I will be heading there with a group of other exchange students -- who I have yet to meet. I heard about the trip through a facebook message from the guy organizing it. And since going to Borneo did not work out this seemed like a great alternative. One of the perks was that our housing accomodations have already been paid for by the guy organizing the trip - Leong.

This trip will be a definite adventure. I'll be going with 15 strangers to a country I have never been to.

I'm really looking forward to exploring KL, doing some shopping, and hopefully making it to the Petronas Twin Towers and Batu Caves. And maybe even a roller coaster ride or two at Time Square, the biggest shopping centre in SE Asia.

Time to go finish packing! Back late Sunday night.

my first week

So things are finally starting to get a bit easier. I've now been to just about all of my classes and am very excited for the semester. My professors all seem very knowledgeable and have many different skills. I believe all of the industrial design professors are architects as well.

As of now I am taking three design courses and hopefully one sociology course about Asia. For ID i'm taking:

3rd year -- Culture + Identity (studio), 8hrs
3rd year -- Case Study, 4 hrs
2nd year -- Design in Urban Settings, 4hrs

While things here are rather unorganized, things seem to be coming together. For example, Monday (the first day of class) I tried to figure out when and where my classes met. I eventually found my way to the Architecture (and ID) office and while trying to figure it out a professor started asking me about myself and where i was from. Turned out that he used to be the head of the ID dept and told me the classes that i must take - two of which he teaches. Thank goodness.

And today I thought my one class met again but it turned out we had today off. I decided to stick around when a professor came over and started asking me about myself. Turned out he is one of the professors for first year (the fundamental courses). He gave me a copy of his newly published book and offered to work with me outside of class. His name is Christian Boucharenc, originally born in France but now has lived in Asia for the past 16 years. Should be a positive experience.

Everyone here is so friendly and helpful. Really looking forward to the rest of my time here.

view of my dorm complex PGPR


famous esplanade theater


taken while walking the financial district of Singapore -- day and night shots

halfway there

so i'm almost there. i flew out of chicago last night and into london early this morning (chicago time). i'm about half way through my eight hour layover and so ready to get to singapore. just one more - 13 hour - flight and i'm there!

i can't wait to see what God has in store for me this semester. i feel very fortunate to be meeting a student volunteer (my welcome buddy) at the airport tomorrow, which will be friday night in singapore. nice to have at least one contact/friend right off the bat.

not sure what i'm looking forward to the most. singapore should be a very nice change from the snow and cold chicago winter to hot summer weather all day everyday. but i'd say i'm mostly looking forward to the unknown and adventures that lie ahead. i've tried to keep myself from making varying expectations. all i know is whether or not i love singapore is a decision i make. i have been forwarned to the highs and lows but ultimately i believe my happiness is a choice.

so here is to a great semester ahead. cheers from london!

Heathrow Airport