teas, rag day, and singapore's independence

friday 7 august

so i learned, that after two weeks of being in singapore, i still look on the wrong side of the road when crossing the street. please, world, just pick one side of the road to drive on.

friday was the international relations office tea for the foreign exchange students. apparently, there are about 830 international students here this year alone. the entire iro staff speaks surprisingly good english. at the tea, i met the east coast correspondent who happens to be in love with william & mary.

at the iro tea, i met a classmate from elementary school that i haven't seen since the 6th grade. how crazy is that?

afterwards, i went out with some friends and a few singaporeans to this indian restaurant where they have this odd concept... there is no price on the food that you eat. instead, you leave however much money you feel like leaving. weird. the food was alright, but my favorite was the chai tea. mmmm.

saturday 8 august

saturday was nus rag day. pretty much, rag day is like the glorified singaporean version of american high school homecomings. clubs, organizations, and societies compete with each other in float building contests and dance numbers. the caliber of these presentations however, is absolutely amazing. just look at these floats!

in addition to the amazing artistry, all the floats involved shooting out confetti, interesting surprises like steam machines, and moving carousels... it was pretty cool! they're all made from different materials like egg cartons, cardboard, paper plates, and what must be bottles upon bottles of paint.

the dances along with the floats made the presentations look like a show you would see at disney world.

another thing that's really cool about nus is that the chancellor of the school is the president of singapore. so during the rag day celebrations, the president of singapore rolled in with his entourage and hung out on the athletic fields watching student presentations. it was pretty cool. and i thought william & mary was awesome for having sandra day o'connor.

(oops... the bad picture quality is because i forgot to set my camera back to high quality pictures after almost running out of memory space...)

sunday 9 august

happy birthday singapore!

today, singapore turned 44!
in honor of national day, downtown near city hall there were supposed to be lots of excitement involving music, parades, and fireworks galore!--- for singaporean citizens of course.

(the flag is backwards by the way... because we were lowly tourists and non-singaporean citizens who did not have the luxury of being seated in stadium stands)

the bay area was extremely crowded with people milling around everywhere.

red is the national color here, so tons of people were decked out in their come together singapore shirts.

for all of the hype leading into national day though, i was severely disappointed. let me just say that i'm glad to be an american where independence day is so much more exciting.

on paper, the events for national day sounded really cool! a parade, an airshow, parachuters, fireworks, free concerts at the esplanade.... but in reality...

we saw maybe 3 aircrafts for a total of 30 seconds. the airshow as promised was exactly two helicopters and three f-16s that flew past and never came back.

the thing that we saw most were these random boats with light up balloons that kept going up and down the bay...
when singapore says "a burst of fireworks at 810" they really mean... a burst. as in one.
in all fairness, the second burst of fireworks (which lasted all of 5 minutes) was actually much better. it would have been really great if it had lasted for oh.. i don't know... maybe even 10 minutes.

as for the parade, us tourists couldn't even see the parade. to see the parade you need tickets. to get tickets you need to be singaporean citizens. to be a citizen... well.. you had to have lived there for longer than 2 weeks. highly disappointed singapore...

so to everyone planning to go to singapore, keep this helpful tip as a reminder... national day events = seven hours of wasted time in the heat... sigh.

the most exciting thing that probably happened to me today was eating bbq stingray at lau pa sat festival market --- tasty!

but hey --- check out these clips from one of the free cultural events at the esplanade today:

the esplanade, more lovingly known as the durian. singapore's obsession with this fruit must have led them to build their culture center to look like it as well...

scratch that--- i was going to put up videos, but apparently the internet connection can't handle that... so here's a picture instead! (again, blurry... it doesn't look that way on the computer though :S )

[p.s. william & mary was named the 4th best public school in the nation by forbes magazine! the only schools that beat out good ole' w&m are the military academies. click here: http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/06/best-public-colleges-opinions-colleges-09-top.html]