Day
32
I
was only in the office for about an hour today, but only because there was
important green auditing to be done! In the morning a colleague and I went to
the second NUS campus to check that all the recycling bins were in place and
that people were using them. For some reason, one set of bins had been moved,
which meant that we had a mini recycling bin treasure hunt to find where it had
got to J Although it was great news that the
bins had things in them, I was quite concerned (and confused!) by the amount of
plastic bottles in the paper bin, the number of cans in the plastic bin and the
amount of paper in the cans bin. The bins are right next to each other!! So,
part of the recycling problem is actually a reading problem...
I
met a friend for an Indian lunch (which I ate with chop sticks of course), and
in the afternoon I was introduced to another sort of auditing: an NUS tradition
called ‘Rag and Flag’ is when every department and hall of residence designs
huge ‘floats’ (big pieces of decor) and then there’s a competition which
involves these floats, dancing, music, and so on. Anyway, 20% of the judging
criteria is based on how environmentally sustainable the teams have been in the
design of their float, and our job was to assess this. To be honest, I was too
much in awe of how creative and skilful the students had been in designing
their floats to be concerned with sustainability. These things looked
incredible!! I just felt like a mean inspector when questioning them: soo then,
may I please ask you where you sourced this cardboard from, and what do you
plan to do with these can lids when the competition is over? Haha –
sustainability is a must in life, but so is beauty and creativity.
After
work I went straight to the Asian Civilisations Museum with another colleague.
It was so interesting, but far too ambitious to try to cover India, Indonesia,
China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia (as well as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam,
Taoism and Confucianism) in just a few hours. I’ll have to go to the countries
themselves instead J We
went for a delicious Mexican meal by the riverside (to balance out the Asian
aspects of the evening) and with all our chit chat, we lost track of time
completely.
However,
as we were in the Clarke Quay area, hearing the clock strike midnight meant that
the night was only beginning. I met a few of my friends on the bridge where everyone
pre-drinks and then we went out (to a club on the ground rather than on the 57th
floor for once). It’s all about having versatile outfits which can be worn for
work, museums, restaurants and clubs! The night was long, and a lot of fun...
Day
33
I’m
not too sure how much sleep I had but it wasn’t very much. In the morning I met
with SAVE and we had fun planning some games for incoming freshers who are
interested in environmental issues. We also tested out a campus nature trail
and found a super long highlighter green snake, which was luckily no longer
alive.
In
the afternoon I met my Singaporean-Londoner friend (I feel like at the end of
the trip I should reveal who is who – this may seem shocking, but these people
have actual names and much more interesting personalities than ‘bunny hopper’
or ‘home friend’). We went to an extremely remote and relatively wild part of
the country – yes, these places do exist in Singapore! It’s a mangrove area called
Sungei Buloh which is located in the very north-west of Singapore and is filled
with extensive lakes and mangrove vegetation. We were extremely entertained by
the mud-skippers, which I’d never ever seen before. Either it was the lack of
sleep or the wild vibes of the mangroves, but these creatures appeared hilarious
to us, with their chaotic ways of sliding through the mud and their crazy eye
rolling.
Apparently
this place also has wild crocodiles but we didn’t see any (although I stopped
at every branch sticking out of the water and managed to convince myself that
it was one). I also convinced myself that the little roots/twigs sticking out
of the mud looked like mini giraffes and that it was as if we were on a
helicopter looking down at them. It was completely plausible at the time, I
promise! J
Anyway,
I’m very grateful to my friend; firstly for taking me to this place and
secondly for putting up with my continuous conversations about mini twig
giraffes. We had a super soba noodle dinner and then I decided to be sensible
and have a much needed Saturday night in.
Day
34
Today
was a wild and wonderful day in every sense of the words. I spent the whole day
at the zoo with a girl from work and her friends and after a few hours break, I
met another friend and we hit the night safari. So, I was chilling with the
beasts from 9am until midnight.
The
Singapore Zoo is amazing, mostly because there are so few cages and because all
of the paths are lined with palm trees and other tropical vegetation which
really makes you feel like you’re in the middle of the jungle. I saw many
exciting creatures like a tree kangaroo, a Malaysian tapir, a proboscis monkey
(along with millions of other monkey species) and was very entertained by
Pedro, the performing seal. I was also greatly amused by the fact that everyone
was gathered around the ducks taking endless photos – apparently ducks are
considered very exotic creatures here.
I
was a bit saddened by the polar bear whose partner had died not long ago and
now he was left alone in this crazy tropic climate. There was also a bit of a
scary moment when a huge blue bird crashed straight into my face. This bird was
twice the size of my head!! But apart from that moment of panic, our zoo trip
was most enjoyable.
The
night safari was different to anything I’ve ever experienced before. It was
actually quite frightening at times (even more so than the big blue bird!) At
first we took a tram ride through the safari and then took the walking tour in
which we could get scarily close to some of the nocturnal beasts. There were so
many animals which I never knew existed, and they all seemed to be staring
right at me, about to pounce. Even when we saw the red flying squirrel, which
may have been quite cute and cuddly during the day, we were ready to run. But
the most disconcerting thing was perhaps the sounds of the rainforest by night:
the chirping crickets, the rustling leaves, the howling wolves, the grunting
boars... And when I heard the hyenas laughing, I’m sure that I momentarily
stopped breathing.
The
night safari was an amazing experience, but I would not want to get stuck in a
real jungle by night...
Day
35
I
took my point about walking to work to the extreme today; I walked the full
way. This sounds dramatic, but it actually only takes 20 minutes!! However, as
there’s a free campus shuttle bus, this seems insane to most people at NUS.
Unfortunately I chose a bad day to do this because I got caught in a huge
thunderstorm and turned up to work completely dripping wet (but still first J). I spent the next three hours
drying off.
Over
lunch we got into a long discussion about horoscopes and Chinese zodiacs, which
was really interesting. It turns out that everything is much more complex than
I previously thought! One of my lovely colleagues read out each of our horoscopes
and then we considered which of the attributes were accurate. I was really
enjoying it until my horoscope said that Aquariuses are contradictory people
(what does that even mean!?) As my afternoon research went on, I got occasionally
distracted with horoscope checking – it’s really addictive!
In
the evening I went for a relaxing walk in the local Kent Ridge Park and then
went to Vivo City, the shopping centre by the harbour front, for a little night
time browse.
Day
36
Happy
Birthday to my wonderful Dad J
Just
as I began to settle down to some work today, my colleague said ‘let’s go then’...
Apparently we were meant to attend something somewhere (I remember reading the
email but I guess it hadn’t quite registered, oops!) It turned out to be a
rather exciting event – it was a competition for students to design phone apps
for the NUS staff and students. So we walked around and each team pitched their
apps to us, and then we had the privilege to vote for the best one. Now, I’m
not an app expert in any way, shape or form, but even I was convinced that some
of their apps could come in handy. Our job was of course to investigate which
apps could contribute to campus sustainability J Even though most of them had little (or nothing) to do
with sustainability, I was extremely impressed by how professional and well
executed the apps were (and it’s always fun to get out of the office to spread
the green message.)
In
the evening, my friend who had criticised last week’s dim sum took me to a
place where I could try the real deal. I have to say that after this version,
my dim sum standards have been raised infinitely... A special mention goes out
to that chilli crab dim sum; just heavenly! We then moved swiftly into the Long
Bar in the Raffles Hotel, which is where the notorious Singapore Sling
originated. Here we were taken on a real colonial journey into 19th
century Singapore... The funniest and most unexpected aspect of this bar is
that they provide every table with huge boxes of peanuts in shells, and
everyone knows to throw the shells on the
floor. So, the bar is carpeted in a magnificent layer of peanut shells
which crunch and crackle with every step. Why not? J It was a really wonderful night,
which was described by my friend as an ‘epic peanut adventure’ - I couldn’t
have put it better myself!
Day
37
The
day had finally come for the NUS Rag Day – the day when all the departments and
halls of residence display their beautiful floats and perform their routines for
to the world to see. I was lucky enough to catch some of the performances and
was completely blown away. The students’ talent shone through in every possible
way – the decor, the costumes, the choreography, the dances and the music were
just astonishing! The stage was alight with colour, and it was very difficult
to return to work...
Could
it really be time for another ladies night already? Yes J this week we did it even more
properly than usual, because we started off in one club (which had truly brilliant
decor including fluffy toy animal backsides sticking out of the walls), moved
swiftly on to another and ended up at a third one called Pangaea – geography really
is everywhere! We’d managed to work our magic and get on the guest list for
this last one, which meant come in and help yourselves to yet more free drinks.
They really treat their ladies well here! If anyone is wondering how ladies
nights affect the quality of Thursday’s work, this week’s was totally
acceptable because the next day was Hari Raya, which meant no work and lots of
sleep!
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