Singapore is a FINE city

This is what Singapore's commercial area at night looks like.
This is my living room at the Visitor's Lodge.
The kitchen
The bedroom
Wow greenery.
and last but not least..... DRINKABLE WATER!!!


Now that I've settled down in Singapore I can go into more detail about what we have done so far. Since we are staying on campus we are beginning to have more structured lecture schedules. We met up yesterday morning at the conference room where we had our orientation with the NUS University Scholars Programme staff where we were offered a banquet style brunch (which was good). We also received a goody bag with cool pens, highlighters and a notebook. Hehe. After lecture we headed over to Singapore's Chinatown. Let me just say that I have never seen a cleaner Chinatown. It did not look like any other Chinatown I had ever seen before. I've seen 2 lizards so far. I'm starting to think that they're kind of cute, that is until they get too close to me. We visited the Chinatown Heritage Museum which was very very interesting. They had rooms showing how people would have lived in the past. Little rooms with uncomfortable looking beds and bamboo fans. There were also dingy and dirty looking kitchens that had recordings of conversations and the sound of woks. There was also a small factory looking room where people used to work sewing clothes and we could hear the sound of the sewing machine. It was all very cool but at the same time kind of creepy. I don't have any photos of the place because I don't think we were allowed to take photos inside. Some of us had dinner at Thai express and afterwards headed over to see the two buildings that were built to look like Durians. There we could see a really nice night view of the water, city and also the Merlion, which is basically a lion with water squirting out of its mouth.

We met earlier this morning for lecture again and made short presentations about what we have all seen so far and our feelings towards the culture, people, pace of life etc etc. We then visited the Chinese Heritage Centre. Again, we weren't allowed photos but it was guided tour and we learned a lot about overseas Chinese and got a glimpse of what it meant to be Chinese overseas. It was quite interesting. Tonight we'll be going to the red light district, in other words the prostitution district, to celebrate Graham's birthday. Haha. I'll let you in about it tomorrow.