New Friends

As much as everyone knows I love all my friends and family back home in "the States", it isn't really possible for me to see them on a regular basis; this has prompted me to meet and make some new friends here. I'm not sure if many people can relate to getting off an airplane in a city that is about 9000 miles from almost every person you've ever met in your life. At first it kinda made me feel a little bit panicky - like, if I don't get out there and stop every person on the street, I will be stuck at home every weekend playing solitaire and watching Southpark by myself. This has been far from the case as now I find it hard to tell people No when I get offers to go out on weeknights or bum around all day on the beach.

As of yesterday I have been in Singapore exactly one month and in that time I have managed to meet the most widely diverse group of people in the world. Here are a few stories about how I met some of the people that I hang out with around here:

My roommates: so I live in sort of a packed apartment. There are three bedrooms with two people in each room. I have lived here for one month and have had a total of seven roommates (two moved out and two moved in to take their place). Julian Tan, a medical school student from Brunei, lived with me in my bedroom for the first three weeks. Really cool guy whom I was able to introduce some Bob Marley songs to and who educated me on where the heck Brunei is. He goes to school in Malaysia and I hope to catch up with him again when I travel up there in Sept. After Julian moved out a 19 year old Vietnamese kid named Duy (pronounced Zwee) moved in. He spends a majority of his time playing games on his computer and chatting with friends. We get to spend a lot of good quality time together - both on our computers and with the occasional conversation about each other's culture; he's a pretty funny guy. My non-bedroom-sharing roommates have been Mosh, a Bangladeshi doctor who was never around; William and Billy, two funny Chinese dudes, some Indonesian kid that I've only seen once, and a Korean who at first wanted to be called Nick, then Daniel, now he's back to Nick (although his real name is Hyemin). I could write five blog posts about adventures and discussions with Nick - we're going to become good friends here I think.

The Koreans with their various modelling poses (Nick is the guy on the left)

Me, Julian, and his girlfriend
Duy, William, Billy, and I getting ready to go watch the National Day fireworks

NUS people: within the first ten minutes after the Graduate orientation I approached one of the only other Western-looking people in the auditorium, a girl from Germany named Teresa. I had been in Singapore for a week and had yet to meet a non-Asian (don't get me wrong, I came here to meet Asians and immerse in their culture but the culture shock was taking its toll a bit by then and it was nice to converse with someone who I could relate to). After chatting with her for a few minutes and deciding to go get a cup of coffee we were approached by an Indian-looking guy who asked us in a British accent, "Are you alright?" (meaning "how are you?")- this in turn caused a bit of cultural confusion which we laughed about and caught a drink together. Taz, the British guy, Teresa, and I have hung out quite a few times since then and have been each other’s Asian support group basically. Other Europeans from NUS I've gotten to know include Jerone from Switzerland, Floris from the Netherlands, Aurilie from Belgium, Gerda from Lithuania, Teresa's boyfriend Marco from Germany, Rob from England, and Fitria from Indonesia.

Rob and Gerda enjoying an evening at the St. James Power Station

Jerone, Teresa, and her boyfriend, Marco

NUS Dept of Building: in my program of study at NUS I have met quite a few fellow engineering and building science "nerds" whom have made my transition back into academics pretty smooth. I have cubicle within the School of Design facility and my closest cube-mates Qiaoyan (pronounced Chow-yin) and Yun (both from China) are the coolest – they help me with things like finding the printer room and posing for a mock academic photo to send to the College of Engineering in Nebraska. Jovan, a PhD student from Serbia, has been my main mentor in terms of getting up to speed in the program and adjusting; he is a good source of advice as he has been here for three years and has been almost the only Westerner in the program during that time. Others that I have met include Lala from Indonesia, Guichen from Beijing, Mingxu from China, and Jafaar who is probably the only Singaporean I’ve really gotten to know very well.

Me, Dang, Lala, and Guichen at the Grad Student welcome party - we showing the huge wad of cash that we ended up spending on our meal

The whole Building Research Group out for a few beers after Guichen's going away party

The staged academic photo that I made Jovan, Mingziu, and Qiaoyan take with me to send to Nebraska

SMU people: During my four hours waiting in line at the Immigration Office a few weeks ago I met Olga, a girl from Russia, who it turns out lives in a hostel right next to my apartment complex. After spending all that time sitting in line waiting to get our number called together it was only natural that I ended up going out for her birthday with a group of her friends from the Singapore Management University (SMU). Turns out there are about 100 foreign exchange students who live in that hostel and I now see them almost every time I leave my apartment. So far I have gotten to know Jacek from Austria (who studied at CU-Boulder for a few years), Peter from Switzerland, Carlos from Spain, and Antonia from Germany. There are like five million more SMU people but due to my bad name memory, I get to reintroduce myself every other day. They are a fun group but I have to ration my time with them as it seems the exchange student mentality might be a little too lively for a guy trying to finish a project like mine in one year.

Happy Birthday to the Corporation/City/Republic of Singapore

Singapore is a country that is the size of a city that runs like a corporation. Let me explain.

This last Sunday was Singapore National Day - commemorating the 44th year of Independence of the Republic of Singapore. On Aug 9, 1965, the Father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, with tears in his eyes, announced that Singapore would be an independent country due to being expelled from the Malaysian Federation. At the time Lee Kuan Yew considered this a blow to the Singaporean people as he felt that his country had the best chance for prosperity as part of Malaysia. In his speech he broke down emotionally and uttered, "For me, it is a moment of anguish. All my life, my whole adult life, I have believed in merger and unity of the two territories."

In 1965 Singapore was not much more than the colonial shanty town. The GDP/person was on par with most of the other third world countries of the region and now Singapore was on its own without many natural resources, water supplies, or security forces to protect it from it's neighbors. The challenge was at hand and as the first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew was up to the task.

He first set up a few main goals for the Singaporean people: establish Singapore's sovereignty in the world, set up an armed forces and security force to protect it's people, encourage education and social moral value, and infuse the economy with a mixture of capitalistic spirit and heavy government, corporation-like oversight. This formula combined with the rich diversity of the people and the controllable size of the country resulted in one of the most single greatest rags to riches stories of any nation in history; Singapore was able to increase its GDP by a factor of 260 in just 50 years!! (See Graph)

Now I say that Singapore operates like a corporation in that many of the national decisions and the overall atmosphere here seems to operate with regards to the bottom line. Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the nation's third and current prime minister and in his National Address to the public on Saturday he first and foremost mentioned that Singaporeans mustn't give up hope because the second quarter GDP numbers were not as bad as the predictions had shown. It sort of sounded like the type of presentation a CEO would give to the BOD - a lot more financial terminology than I expected. He went on to encourage the public to keep up the efforts in terms of security, harmony amongst cultures, etc. to maintain this trend - it's almost as if this financial number was the main benchmark and the aforementioned benefits were just a means to this end. A few of the strict rules here also remind me of working in a big corporation - "don't chew gum and throw it on the ground", "don't cause problems by publishing something that would upset the cultural balance.", "you can't look at anything you want on the Internet". These are all the types of things that Americans see everyday in their companies/jobs.

The result of this type of prosperity-focused culture are apparent in the way Singaporeans value their stuff: shopping, eating out, and working are basically a few of the main national past-times (...hmmm, remind anyone of the USA?). However, despite living in this fast-paced, capital-focused society, the people heavily concentrate on their families, respect for elders, and individual cultural traditions.

In conclusion - I have observed many interesting characteristics of the culture here, and whether you love them or hate them - Singapore is one of the most successful, safe, and culturally diverse yet tolerant cities in the world; pretty good for only 50 years of work!

Now that the 9th grade essay portion of my blog is over, here are some videos I took from the National Day Celebration. The first is a mock naval battle of the Singaporean Navy vs a "terrorist" on a jetski (I didn't have a very good view); the others are self explanatory....