Off the plane, weekend in the city, university bureaucracy, molecular dynamics

Singapore Airlines

 (Not-so) wonderful ~25 hour transit from Phoenix to Singapore, stopping over in San Fransisco and Seoul. Met a nice woman on the plane headed to a educational development program in India. I got into Changi Airport around 02:00.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of rushing into the disembarkation queue- everything from the movie theatre to the swimming pool was on inside and I couldn't get back in. So I slept on a bench instead. Close enough.

 Around 06:00, I got a cab to NTU. It was a beautiful, foggy dawn. I wish I had taken some photos. When I tried to tip the cabbie, he shook his head: "no, you keep, here very expensive lah." ("lah" appears to be a ubiquitous exclamation, this particular guy pretty much said it after every sentence).

Arrival

Met a fellow American, an exchange student from Wyoming studying finance named Stephen. At first I thought he was a local, he informs me that mistake is common- he's constantly being bombarded with Mandarin, of which he speaks not a word. We took a brief walk around campus waiting for the dormitory office to open.

Accommodations are certainly fine, but definitely a blast from the dorm life past. Two to a room, communal bathroom (here "toilet", which come to think of it makes much more sense. Very few of the rooms in questions have baths, whereas all of them contain toilets).

Room! The panel to the left of the door is the pay-to-play AC unit. I haven't given into temptation yet.

 

 

Dorm courtyard

First real meal in Singapore! Dumpling soup with noodles, bok choy, crispy anchovies of some kind, pork dumplings, and an egg, ca. $2.30 at today's exchange rate. (!)

Office/cantina for HoR 11

View from NTU. Maybe you can make out the shipping cranes in the background?

Touching base back at the room, my window is that first one on the ground floor.

 Molecular Dynamics

I spoke today with Dr. Lanyuan Lu, the NTU professor with whom I'll be conducting some molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. I won't bore you with details, but the prospects look good. First order of business, however, is to get a matriculation card to grant me access to the labs, then actually learn how to use the MD software, GROMACS!

Building with two of my classes, plus Dr. Lu's office.

I thought this was a bit odd, imagine an Apothecarium in the middle of a US Biotech building. This clinic is right inside the door, just opposite the sign for SBS.

A picturesque but otherwise extraneous example of a GROMACS MD simulation: this one appears to be a coarse-grained model of relaxation of a membrane protein into a heterogeneous bilayer.

 Weekend in the City

Day one I set out alone, tourist transit pass in hand, to see as much of the city as I could. The next day Stephen introduced me to some more friends (two American women and an Australian man), and we went back over some of the spots I had seen.

Near Raffles Place, looking towards the capitol.

Marina Bay sands, with the famous vanishing pool atop.

Gardens by the bay, still somehow fascinated by the heavy machinery at the docks.

Marina Bay Gardens proper, those spires apparently have hanging gardens in them, best leave that for another day

MBG

More MBG

Even more

And more

Got to work on my photo habits, there was a lot of cooler stuff I didn't photo later that day.

Unfortunately, the only picture I took in Chinatown. To see this right next to crowded chopsticks stalls was a trip.

A perfect spot to drink a $10.00 .5L glass of Heineken. I felt a little better when it started raining and I was high and dry.

Mosque (Masjid-e Sultan) on Arab Street. Lots of fabric shops in the alleys behind it, let me know if you want a pretty headscarf.

I was walking through Little India and thought 'wow, it smells like a petting zoo... better keep that to myself''. Turns out there's a harvest festival on, and these cows were hanging out in an alley before some kind of ritual function.

 Fin

I'll definitely have to improve my photo hygiene, pictures of the recent acquaintances forthcoming. My wishy-washiness on the ethics of photographic representation is a little burdensome, so please absolve me of guilt by leaving a comment indicating stuff you'd like to see! I'd only be following orders.