A Presentation

Today I had the first one of my four presentations. It was about cross-cultural communication, a topic of which I had no idea whatsoever before the last night.

I was doing the project in a group of three Indians. And they had been preparing a lot. They already had a fluent presentation on the previous day when I was still trying to figure out my slides. Eventually I had a whopping 20 minutes before the presentation to think of what I was going to say.

It didn't go that well. I forgot what I was supposed to say, I used too much time on wrong slides and finally ran overtime, which spelt a penalty. The Indians did really well of course.

Anyway, after the presentation I wanted to tell our teacher that I'm going to miss the last tutorial because I'll be in Cambodia. Here's the conversation:
— Hey, unfortunately I won't be able to come to the next tutorial because I'll be travling in Cambodia.
— What kind of a trip is it?
— Umm.. just a holiday.
— But it's not a vacation time here in NTU. Do you realize, if you do that, you have then missed TWO tutorials on this course?
— Yes, I do realize that.

I probably would have said something witty if I hadn't been so astonished. I mean, wow, missed an incredible two tutorials! That must be criminal.

Well, I guess the locals wouldn't even dream of leaving the country in the middle of a semester. For many it is too big a trade-off even to go out on a Saturday night instead of working on school projects.

Dress code at the gym

A local friend of mine suggested that I should try the gym at the National Institute of Education (NIE) instead of the NTU gym that I usually go to. Indeed, the NIE gym was just renowated, is much larger and has better equipment.

A panorama view overlooking the inner court of NIE

NIE gym

Another shot at NIE gym

I had been training there for about 45 minutes when a guy comes to me and asks something about my shoes. I was wearing sandals. He said they are not proper shoes and I should go change. He also commented on my sleeveless shirt, which turned out to be prohibited there according to rules.

— Why are there such rules? All other gyms allow this outfit.
— Because we have a dress code here at NIE and because of the hygiene.

So, you have a dress code just because you have a dress code. Marvelous. And the hygiene? I'm pretty sure my sandals and the dry sports shirt are much more hygienic than the other guys' dirty sneakers and sweaty cotton tees, thank you very much.

I shouldn't have thrown away my shoes and a shirt that got extremely shitty when trekking at the volcano in Lombok...

After all, this wasn't amazingly surprising to me anymore. Most people here seem to follow all rules no matter how absurd they are. I learnt on a course that it's called a high-context culture with a high power distance, meaning that (among other things) you are not to question anything set by your superiors.

Shopping paradise

Or more like a shopping hell?

There are probably hundreds of shopping centers in Singapore. I simply can't understand where all the customers to these huge malls come from.

Shopping at Jurong Point

This wing in JP "only" has 3 levels

I've been buying some IT and camera stuff, clothes and groceries. Some general guidelines:

• Computer hardware is not cheaper than in Finland and problems with warranties are likely
• Student licences for software, such as Adobe Creative Suite, are dirt cheap
• Photographic equipment is considerably cheaper, but at least Canon SLR bodies don't have international warranties (EF lenses do)
• There are four different types of clothing available:
• Original quality international brands
• Singaporean brands, made in Singapore
• HK and Taiwanese brands, made in HK and Taiwan
• Chinese, Indonesian or Thai fake copies of brand stuff (not common in Singapore)

Some experiences of shops and stores follow. IT and camera stuff and home electronics:

• Sim Lim square (near Bugis), an IT-hell. Lots of dishonest sellers. Proceed with extreme caution.
• Matrix IT store. They did not try to sell me anything by force, let me inspect all stuff carefully and had a good price. No extra charge for using credit card. Bought a Lenovo netbook here.
• Most camera stores on the 1st floor tried to cheat me with overpriced filters, credit card charges or adding the GST at the moment of paying. Disgusting. Did not want to buy anything.
  
• Funan digilife mall (near Cityhall), another IT-hell. More credible dealers than in Sim Lim sq.
• Song Brothers had friendly service and best price for a Canon DSLR. Bought it here.
• Alan Photo should be a credible dealer, but was out-of-stock of a basic EF 50/1.4 lens.
• Peninsula Plaza (near Cityhall), different kinds of stores.
• Cathay Photo on the 1st level had extremely good service and a competitive price. No extra charge for credit card purchase of a 50/1.4 lens. At home I noticed a flaw in the lens (even after checking it out in-store when buyng), and it was no trouble changing it to a new piece at CP. Would definitely shop here again.
• Courts, several locations (eg. Jurong Point mall), a general home electronics store. Prices and collection just don't seem very good to me.
• Harvey Norman, several locations (eg. Jurong Point mall), home AV and IT store. Better prices than at Courts.
• FairPrice xtra, several locations (eg. Jurong Point mall), a general store. Electronics are pretty cheap, bought a large fan with a stand for S$20.

Shopping for clothing in Finland is a pain in the ass, but I really love it Singapore. All kinds of nice looking and especially affordable shirts, jeans, shorts, shoes etc. are plentiful everywhere. Lots of discounts apply.

• Far East Plaza (near Orchard), fashion and cell phones. This mall is especially favored by the young. Lots of Taiwanese clothing available, but take your time to find to best prices.
• "Sports mall" (near Ikea, Queenstown), sports and casual clothing. A huge collection of sports shoes and shirts. Prices are usually good. 2nd floor has casual clothing like Far East Plaza.
• Peninsula Shopping Center (near City Hall), a general mall, not very exquisite. Discount clothes on the basement level, but collection not very good.
• Jurong Point mall (at Boon Lay MRT), a large mall. Mostly brand name stores, altough some cheaper small ones also exist, especially in Marketplace on the 3rd floor.
• Converse store sometimes has nice discounts. Bought pair of shoes for S$40, usually they are S$80–S$120.
  
  
  
• Lee has some incredible discounts, but those clothes looked downright awful. Standard-priced ones are too expensive.
• Several stores (such as Spade) selling decent quality, okay-priced, nice looking young people's clothes
• Several stores (such as VIP fashion) selling "Hong Kong quality", nicely priced, trendy looking young people's clothes
• Discount stores selling mostly not-that-good-looking clothes (like those of Seppälä in Finland), of course at a cheap price
• Bugis market
• Fake stuff or Taiwanese & HK brands at best. It takes time, but some real nice discoveries can be made here. Bought a couple of pairs of jeans and a few shirts at almost-Thailand price. It took a whole day to find good quality though. Easier to buy than in Thailand as no haggling required, prices are fixed.
• IMM mall, "the Mega Mall" (near Jurong East MRT), a general mall. Fashion stores are mostly on the 1st floor, a few more on the 2nd as well. A disappointment, much worse than Jurong Point.

Groceries:

• 7-eleven, everywhere. Expensive, small, poor selection.
• FairPrice Xtra, usually in large malls. Almost anything can be found there. Pretty nicely priced.
• Sheng Siong grocery stores, often not very close to large malls. Very good variety of groceries and fresh meat and fish. Cheaper than FairPrice. Luckily there's one next to my door, so I buy all my food and drinks here.

For cheaper (read: fake) stuff, I'd advice you to go to Bangkok. Chatuchak market is the largest (it's absolutely huge) and the cheapest, Khao San rd generally ok-priced, and the Lumphini night market pretty nice as well.

Chinatown market in Kuala Lumpur has acceptable prices, too, but only if you haggle hard enough.

HUT vs NTU

A criteria for an exchange blog: there must be a comparison of your home university and the exchange university. So here it goes.

HUT	NTU
Education
– "Academic freedom" – Boring lectures – Pretty free choice of courses and subjects	– Strictly controlled – Good lectures unless given by someone with a ridiculously bad Chinese dialect – Vast amounts of group work – Nearly every course has a project work
Facilities
– Some new, some old buildings – Very fast internet connections – Computer systems not very good - Supermarkets and book stores on-campus	– All buildings pretty new – Internet connection damn slow – Computer systems not very good – Gym and other sports facilities provided for free – Supermarkets, a computer hw/sw store and book stores on-campus
Transportation
– Non-existent on-campus transportation – An expensive but fast (15 mins) bus to city center	– On-campus busses but not very useful – Free bus to train station – Cheap but slow (45 mins) train to city center
Food and drinking
– A few canteens with just a choice or two per day – Food quality generally good, served with bread and fresh salad – A bar serving expensive beer – Canteens' open hours very poor, close at 4pm, no dinner possible	– Lots of canteens with at least 50 different choices of meals per canteen every day – Food quality fluctuating, sometimes downright bad (especially meat quality), sometimes OK – No bread or salad – Canteens open until 8pm or 9pm, some of them open on Sundays – McDonalds, Subway, Canadian Pizza and other chains – A bar serving cheap beer
Housing
– Single rooms or even studios – Usually private bathroom – Very cheap for Finnish students – Good cooking facilities	– Mostly small shared two-person rooms – Shared bathrooms – Air-con only in newest flats – Very cheap – Poor, shared cooking facilities

Clearly both have their plusses and minuses, and it's impossible to say which one is better. If I was starting my studies now and had a free choice over these two, I would probably go for HUT because of the freedom. Looking at the style the locals are studying here, fine-tuning their meaningless projects and memorizing whole textbooks at 4am, it does not seem like the way university studies should be.

While in Finland it is considered OK to pass a course with grade 1, but here, the perfectionists, which consists of 95% of the people, must always get an A. In Finland, work experience and other extra-curricular activities are valued more than a straight of A's. And I like it that way.

After graduation is a whole different story then, Singapore feels a hundred times nicer place to live than Helsinki with all its unhappy people, badly planned traffic, horrendous tax rate and miserable (or ridiculously expensive) restaurants, to name a few.

Just another day

Having mangled my brand new Converse shoes and a Tiger tank top when trekking to Rinjani, I had to go restock my wardrobe. Arttu had been to a "sports mall" in Queenstown, just next to Ikea and Anchor point shopping center.

The mall was full of small sport-ish stores, selling Adidas, Nike, Everlast and other brands at reasonable prices. On the second floor, however, the stores offered mostly cheap no-name Chinese and Taiwanese clothing. I ended up buying a sport tank top for $15 and shorts for $10, among other things.

Ikea in Singapore has a Swedish cuisine diner just like in Europe. Grabbing 15 "Swedish" meatballs, boiled potatoes and lingonberry jelly for S$8 was probably the best lunch I have had here so far.

After shopping, I hooked up with Svante and Laura at Esplanade. It lead to the most typical night out with the Finns — driking beer on the bridge at Clarke Quay.

Malaysian taxi cartels

For this trip we actually did a little bit of research, however, as usual, some things just don't go the way they've been planned.

We took an MRT to Changi airport on Thursday afternoon. This was my first departure from this airport, so I hadn't realized until then that Changi is actually a huge and a very modern facility. I was going to get a GST (sales tax) refund for my camera so we got there a good time before the flight. For my surprise, the refund process was, in fact, really easy and straightforward and I got my refund right away in Sing dollars.

The AirAsia flight to Kota Kinabalu wasn't among the cheapest ones, but our schedule was just not flexible enough to save a few dollars by getting the plane from Johor Bahru instead. Having arrived in KK we experienced the Malaysian taxi cartels for the first, but not for the last time. They only had a non-negociable fixed price trip to town centre, so we had no choice but to pay what they asked (I think the night fare was RM30 when bought at the counter).

Red Palm Hostel on Jalan Gaya was looking quite unimpressive on the outside, but was really nice indeed from the inside. The lobby, the bathrooms and our room were nicely decorated, clean and overall fine, and the staff was truly helpful. The three-person private room was RM90 total (6 € per person), really a good deal.

We woke up quite early on Friday to make a tour to the KK archipelago. You could have picked anything between 1 and 4 islands to visit, but because of our limited time, we chose only two: Manukan and Sapi. The boat trip was RM28 per person plus a RM5 ferry terminal tax, and a RM10 conservation fee to enter the islands (you only pay this fee once regardless of how many islands you visit).

Islands offered all the typical stuff: white beaches, snorkling, scuba, banana rides and other water sports. There were a few restaurants and I think accommodation would have been available as well. I burnt considerably badly on the beach but I didn't realize until the evening when my chest and back started turning bright red.

Once again when leaving to the airport, the taxi was not using the meter and tried to charge us RM30 despite that we had been told the price being fixed RM20. We did not consent to pay more than RM20, which was then suddenly OK.

Out on the tiles

Think of going to Gran Canaria for a weekend.

Well, this is not Gran Canaria nor Tenerife, but Pulau Bintan on the Indoneasian side about 60 km south-east of Singapore.

There were about 30 students from NTU and maybe 10 from NUS, all of them accommodated in the same small beach resort. Several kinds of water sport activities were available, but besides that, there was nothing else than the resort bar at which people spent their time. Combined with reasonably priced Bintang beer (IDR38k a pint) it of course ended up in extensive drinking.

 

 

The transportation and accommodation were cheap enough so that staying for only two nights was sensible. The boat from Tenah Merah ferry terminal to Bintan was S$60 for a return trip, and an hour taxi drive from the terminal to the resort in Bintan was S$43 per car. There are different kinds of rooms and bungalows in Nostalgia Yasin resort, but as we booked ours quite late, only the more pricey rooms (S$40 per room per night) in the larger building were available. It was like a typical basic hotel room with a sea-view from the balcony, so good value for the money anyway.

I didn't want to sit in the beach bar drinking beer from 10am onwards -- like some of the finns did -- so I took a walk to Ocean Restaurant and Resort about a kilometer down the main road. Luckily there was still one 125cc scooter available for rent (S$5 per hour, no licence required) so I hired that one and drove some 15 km to the nearest village. The village was built around the outlet of a river and mostly seemed to be a local fishing port. There were no tourists in this poor village and people didn't speak much English, but they were happy to pose for photos anyway.

 

 

Then I drove about 30-40 km in the other direction, but there was nothing but a couple of quite empty tourist resorts and an extremely small village consisting of only 20 houses or so. I didn't dare to try any dirt road leading to the jungle...

Some of us took a boat to the nearby islands to do some water sports and to lie down on those beautiful white beaches -- the beach by the resort was not that good actually. The food, on the other hand, was really delicious, the all-time favorite being tasty and affordable chicken satay. They had excellent pizza as well but that was on the expensive side. It seemed like they were not really prepared for this many tourists appearing just suddenly there as sometimes it really took a long time to get the food or even placing an order. The staff was very friendly all the time despite the rush.

One especially great thing in Nostalgia Yasin is that you can put everything on your room bill and pay it on check-out. So there's a competition of course, that who can break the 1 million rupiah boundary during a weekend.. That is about 20 pints and 10 chicken satays.

For more photos see my gallery.