Uncharacteristically, I will try to be succinct, mostly because I should be applying to grad school right now. Since I am nothing but irresponsible, I’ll try to include a paragraph about each of the places.
As I’d sort of gathered from other tournament reports, the Zon venue doesn’t really encourage you to wander outside. Nonetheless, dad and I had the chance to take a brief look around since we foolishly chose to take the train back to Singapore (bus is the way to go). With a couple of hours in hand, the first step was to find somewhere to grab a bite, not too huge of a challenge since the Malay word for Restaurant is evidently “Ristoran.” However, they were all packed, hole-in-the-wall kinds of places not all that suited for all the luggage we had (although I would’ve been down, but with dad in tow, maybe not). The thing that I really noticed about the town was the coexistence of completely different ethnic groups in one place. We passed by what I think was a Hindi temple of some sort, the first I’d ever seen, largely in yellow and primary colors, covered in lots of carvings of people and elephants. A lot of woman had the bindi. But there were also folks who looked ethnically South-East Asian or Chinese, and then the obvious predominance of Muslim culture (the hotel room had a qibla/an arrow pointing to mecca). It seemed that we walked through three or four different neighborhoods in a matter of blocks, one more Indian, one with every sign replicated in Chinese characters, a fully-modern downtown shopping mall…it also lacked a lot of the slickness of Singapore, with more trash strewn around, and a cute old train station that looked like it could’ve been there for a few decades.
So, what about Singapore? The first, overwhelming immediate detail has to be the lushness. I suppose it‘s especially striking coming from China, where any verdure is limited to a few parks. But every avenue is lined with trees, there are wide open spaces everywhere, and really, for somewhere the size of Manhattan with a population of 4 million, the city doesn‘t feel crowded at all. Beyond that, I have no idea how you could come here and not be super-impressed. I thought about coming here a couple of summers ago when I went to Hong Kong instead. However, at the time I had information from a few people that it maybe wasn‘t as interesting as HK, that it was a city of malls and not that much more. Well, I have to say that I would’ve had a much harder choice on my hands if I had been to both of them previously. I am astonished by Singapore’s juxtaposition of different styles. The most futuristic skyscrapers you can imagine stand next to a cricket pitch. Our hotel is in Chinatown, reconstructed in traditional style to be only two or three stories high as the houses used to be, even though most of it is has now predictably gentrified. The supreme court building looks like a flying saucer. Swaths of the island are covered in dense forest. For all the fact that Singapore’s population mostly lives in high-rises, there’s not quite the same overwhelming verticality that one experiences in Hong Kong. In fact, it feels somewhat more livable. And the food - oh, man. I haven’t had a bad meal once since getting here. Pretty much everything is available, but with an obvious focus on Chinese, Malay, Thai, and then Singaporean cuisine itself…today we had a great lunch at the invitation of Michael Tang, organizer of the Causeway Scrabble explotravaganza with the most typical Singaporean dishes: Chicken rice and fish-head stew, and then a dessert whose name escapes me with shaved ice, corn and red bean. I love the Asian style of cooking fish. Nothing in the states has ever excited me that much, salmon seems sort of predictable, fish and chips is pretty tasty, but Southern China and Singapore really know where it’s at. Also, fellow Western folk, I beg you: Eat the fish head. It is easily the best part. Being squeamish is silly because it’s all relative anyway. Except for stinky tofu, which just smells awful and you are allowed to avoid.
Oh, and there are birds outside all the time! and they chirp!
Shoot, if I could just write like this I would have already written my statement of purpose…sigh. Back to work I guess.
12.12.09
Return from the dead
There was a well-publicized story lately about a writer who decided to spend a week in Heathrow Airport and then chronicle the experience, resulting in a pretty, astronomically-priced volume detailing the quirks of flying. Today, I’m carrying out an abbreviated redux of the same experiment. It’s 7:30 AM, and I’m camped out in Starbucks/星巴克, due to a law of physics involving foreigners and inevitability. Fortunately, their muffins are much tastier than they are in the States, I am well-practiced at ordering a 卡布其诺(cappucino) and the music is good jazz. Flighttime? Unclear. I get to standby onto the 3:30 flight to Singapore, and if that doesn’t pan out take the 11:30 redeye, identical to the flight I was originally booked onto, except a day later.
What happened, might you ask? I’ve done plenty of stupid things while traveling before. I’ve even attempted to put a list together every so often, just so that I can classify a situation with regards to my already sordid past. Previous idiocies include showing up for my plane home from Hong Kong at the complete wrong time because I somehow didn’t even bother looking up when I was supposed to leave, leaving for the airport about an hour and ten minutes before flight time when we went to Sichuan this summer, almost not making it to Vietnam because I realized my passport had expired shortly after buying my ticket, and then showing up to check-in all of 50 minutes before boarding…the list goes on and on. All of those incidents are from the last two and a half years. However, I have far and away topped any of those with my latest exploit: When I showed up to check in, I didn’t have my passport. I rifled through my bag for about a half-hour, but it was clear that it just wasn’t there. As a result, I had to go back to my dorm, startling a few people in the process, go through all of the stuff I’m leaving in Beijing while I go traveling, all without tracking it down. It came down to doing an exhaustive search - moving all of the beds, the desks, looking through the trash…and there it was, in the trashcan.
For further bonus points, I slept over at 嘉雯/Toni’s apartment, since her and 会智/Isabelle were leaving for Kunming extremely early, 4 or 5 am. Unfortunately, we all overslept, waking up in a panic at 6:10 or so with a 7:30 flight to catch. In spite of being aggressive, Beijing taxi drivers often have an orientation to risk befitting a teacher’s union and will not budge an inch over the speed limit. Fortunately, we found an exception who seemed to take great pleasure in the opportunity of becoming a speed demon, thereby getting us to the airport in 25 minutes.
I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with my blog for the last few months. In fact, I haven’t even posted anything in about three months, in spite of actually having a working computer, albeit no convenient way around the great firewall. So I should explain what’s going on in my life right now, though I’m not going to go into depth about the ACC experience yet as I’m required to by the Light Fellowship standards. That will go in a separate entry.
I’ve wrapped up my first semester at ACC. Right now, I should already be in Singapore, maybe even at my hotel in Malaysia. When I do eventually make it there, it will be as the beginning to the following preposterous itinerary. From the 8th to the 10th of December, I’m playing a Scrabble tournament in Johor, Malaysia, the last of three continuous week of different tournaments, being held as a side-feature to the World Youth Scrabble Championship. My dad is meeting up with me somewhere in the middle. From then, I’ll spend about 3 days in Singapore, then spend the next 10-12 days finding my way to Saigon by way of Northern Malaysia and Thailand. Then, on the 26th and 27th, I’ll be playing an ultimate tournament in Saigon. I even brought my cleats in my newly purchased $20 travel backpack. After that, fly to Hong Kong to meet up with a friend, then spend the next two weeks traveling in Guilin, and then back in Guangdong. And then, after all that, move into my new ACC-provided apartment, a definite step up from dorm life.
What happened, might you ask? I’ve done plenty of stupid things while traveling before. I’ve even attempted to put a list together every so often, just so that I can classify a situation with regards to my already sordid past. Previous idiocies include showing up for my plane home from Hong Kong at the complete wrong time because I somehow didn’t even bother looking up when I was supposed to leave, leaving for the airport about an hour and ten minutes before flight time when we went to Sichuan this summer, almost not making it to Vietnam because I realized my passport had expired shortly after buying my ticket, and then showing up to check-in all of 50 minutes before boarding…the list goes on and on. All of those incidents are from the last two and a half years. However, I have far and away topped any of those with my latest exploit: When I showed up to check in, I didn’t have my passport. I rifled through my bag for about a half-hour, but it was clear that it just wasn’t there. As a result, I had to go back to my dorm, startling a few people in the process, go through all of the stuff I’m leaving in Beijing while I go traveling, all without tracking it down. It came down to doing an exhaustive search - moving all of the beds, the desks, looking through the trash…and there it was, in the trashcan.
For further bonus points, I slept over at 嘉雯/Toni’s apartment, since her and 会智/Isabelle were leaving for Kunming extremely early, 4 or 5 am. Unfortunately, we all overslept, waking up in a panic at 6:10 or so with a 7:30 flight to catch. In spite of being aggressive, Beijing taxi drivers often have an orientation to risk befitting a teacher’s union and will not budge an inch over the speed limit. Fortunately, we found an exception who seemed to take great pleasure in the opportunity of becoming a speed demon, thereby getting us to the airport in 25 minutes.
I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with my blog for the last few months. In fact, I haven’t even posted anything in about three months, in spite of actually having a working computer, albeit no convenient way around the great firewall. So I should explain what’s going on in my life right now, though I’m not going to go into depth about the ACC experience yet as I’m required to by the Light Fellowship standards. That will go in a separate entry.
I’ve wrapped up my first semester at ACC. Right now, I should already be in Singapore, maybe even at my hotel in Malaysia. When I do eventually make it there, it will be as the beginning to the following preposterous itinerary. From the 8th to the 10th of December, I’m playing a Scrabble tournament in Johor, Malaysia, the last of three continuous week of different tournaments, being held as a side-feature to the World Youth Scrabble Championship. My dad is meeting up with me somewhere in the middle. From then, I’ll spend about 3 days in Singapore, then spend the next 10-12 days finding my way to Saigon by way of Northern Malaysia and Thailand. Then, on the 26th and 27th, I’ll be playing an ultimate tournament in Saigon. I even brought my cleats in my newly purchased $20 travel backpack. After that, fly to Hong Kong to meet up with a friend, then spend the next two weeks traveling in Guilin, and then back in Guangdong. And then, after all that, move into my new ACC-provided apartment, a definite step up from dorm life.
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