Number Seven Singapore Flyer

17 November 2012

Kaye and I started Mandarin classes at the West Coast Community Centre on Monday nights. Kaye had taken some classes in Portland before we came, had sat in on the last couple lessons of the previous course, and has been helping me out. We are mainly learning speaking and to read Pinyin. We aren't studying the characters. If nothing else, I will be better at pronouncing names of my Chinese students. There seems to be quite a broad mix in the class, but I am unsure of the ethnicity of most of them. Some appear to be Indian or Pakistani; there are a father and son who I think are Malay. At least one student speaks a different Chinese dialect, probably Hokkien. There's an Australian fellow who works at Universal Studios on Sentosa Island playing a bad guy in the Waterworld show. The first sentence I learned in class will be handy with my dean when I get back: lăo-băn, wŏ xū-yào jiā xīn.*

Kitty-corner from where we live is the newest part of campus, University Town, aka UTown. It has a residential college where students can live and take classes, a grad student residence hall, a sports and activity center (under construction), food court, restaurants (including a Korean cafeteria we like) and a research tower. The tower is called CREATE: Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise. It hosts various government-sponsored research centers. The only one I've visited so far is the Future Cities Laboratory, which is run by ETH Zurich with participation of EPFL and local universities. UTown is also going to be the site of the Yale-NUS College, which will have a liberal-arts focus. They will be admitting their first class next fall, and will have their own building in 2015 (I think). One of the issues that has come up is freedom of expression for students and faculty, since the laws on speech and assembly here are different than in the US. The rules are still a bit in flux. I've read that there will be "open discussion" in the classroom, but some restrictions outside. For example, students will not be able to form branches of current Singapore political parties.

We went to see another dance performance at the Cultural Center. This one was "Shut Up and Dance" by Dance Blast, which is a hip-hop group. The event was structured as a mock awards ceremony (with one trophy that got presented over and over). A lot of energy, and a couple guest groups (from Singapore Management University and Ngee Ann Polytechnic, as I recall). While some numbers had lead dancers, once again, I would have liked to see more solo passages by the best ones.

One aspect of the Mid-Autumn Festival I didn't mention in the last Flyer was pomelos. A pomelo is a large green or green-yellow fruit (sometimes the size of a bowling ball) that is related to the grapefruit, and tastes like a sweeter version of it. The pith part of the rind is much thicker than most citrus, however. It is associated with the festival because it ripens in the fall, and its name in Chinese sounds similar to the phrase "prayer for a son". The rinds are sometimes scooped out and carved to serve as a lantern, or worn on the head by children. Stands selling pomelos spring up all around Chinatown.

Singapore has been hosting a Formula 1 Grand Prix race for the past five years (and recently negotiated a five-year extension). It takes around Marina Bay, mostly using regular streets. (The pit area is specially built.) The course preparations were already underway in some areas when we first arrived in August. There have to be heavy-duty fences put up along the course, to protect the crowds from loose bits and keep errant cars on the track. As the races take place mostly at night, there also has to be lighting set up around the whole circuit. The event lasts three days, and Kaye and I went on the middle day. We didn't see the main race, but we did see the qualifying for it. We also saw the race of the F1 "junior" circuit -- same kind of cars, but with drivers who are trying to work their way up to Grad Prix racing. Plus there was a qualifying session for the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia. We had passes that let us wander around the west side of the circuit, letting us watch different events from different vantage points. There were also various entertainment stages and wandering performers, to fill the gaps between racing, and an art installation that had the images of the different planets on giant balloons that were lit form inside.

Not far from NUS is Fusionopolis, a pair of ultra-modern buildings that host businesses and research labs related to "Infocommunication Technology, Media and Physical Sciences & Engineering". Tenants include various technology companies, nationally sponsored research labs (such as A*STAR = Agency for Science, Technology and Research), and the Asian Food Channel. In the basement is the one north metro station (named for being one degree north of the equator) and some shops and restaurants. We had fun shapping at Munch Munch, a small store featuring traditional cookies and snacks, such as taro chips, squid crackers and salted plums to use in lime drinks. Not far away is Biopolis, a cluster of buildings aimed at the biomedical domain. We were in the neighborhood to visit our friend Marianne who runs an A*STAR research center for the University of Illinois. We had hoped to observe a flock of parrots on their daily transit from their foraging area to their roosting site, but they managed to slip by us.

*Boss, I need a raise.