Cycle Tour

The owner of the betel box hostel often takes guests on tours, food walks and pub crawls. Last sunday, he decided to embark on a cycle tour. The guy's name is Tony Tan. A native Singaporean, he worked in the IT industry for about 7 years, before going to University College London to do an MBA. After his MBA, he decided to take a complete break from the corporate routine and set-up a backpacker hostel instead. Thats how betel-box came into being.

The name "Betel-box" stems from the betel chewing custom prevalent among the Malays. The Malays are among the native people of Singapore. Just like the Indians and Chinese (and sometimes the Japanese), they have a habit of chewing Betel Nuts. All guests are offered betel as a mark of respect and welcome. Thus, a betel box stands for hospitality, sincerity and simplicity.

We started off at the hostel and made our way to the east-coast beach. Tony explained how the map of Singapore actually changed physically, after the Govt. implemented massive land-reclamation projects. About 100 out of the 700 Sq Km area in Singapore is actually reclaimed land.




The beach stretches on for a couple of kilometers. The whole stretch is landscaped beautifully. The locals just love the outdoors.



There are dedicated roads for cycling, jogging and roller-blading.





You can set-up tents for free. There are barbecue pits all over for the place. Barbeque parties and camping by the beach is a popular form of recreation. There are restrooms too, so you can freshen-up and directly head to work the morning after.



Therz a lake with equipment-on-hire for water-sports. Skiing costs about 40$ for 2 hrs.

From the beach we went on to visit an NGO that is trying to keep keep Singapore's rivers clean and conserve water. Tony explained the water problems here (Singapore imports her water from Malaysia), and how the Govt. is trying to achieve self-sufficiency in water by 2060 by engineering massive recycling projects that will result in altering the map Singapore.

The "river monster" is supposed to be a dragon who feds on garbage. The more garbage you dump, the fatter the river monster grows. If you don't stop dumping garbage soon, the monster will eventually grow so big, that you will lose your beloved river:



We cycled on to the city centre, heard and saw a lot about the city history and culture. Relieving the tour will bloat this post too much. Suffice to say that we were high, awed, excited and tired in the end.



The tour lasted 7 hours; we covered about 50 Km. The group was small and interesting. Two cousins from England were touring. They made their living as "Adventure sport instructors". In fact, they both had university degrees in it! Another German girl was off to New Zealand on a work-holiday Visa. She planned to work in a farm for 6 months and use the money to come back and explore south-east asia. A Dutch lady bored of her corporate job in San Francisco decided to quit and travel for a year. Another Canadian girl was traveling to Australia, in the middle of her undergrad!

Speaking of which, one gets to meet many interesting characters in a place like this. Most of them are heavy-duty travelers, on the move for more than 3 months at a time. Most of them are from affluent countries like Australia and western Europe. Other than travelers, i met an Irish student interning at ST aerospace, a marine construction worker (hez a pro diver, does construction work under water), and the like.

The place has its share of weirdos too. There is a Nigerian guy, staying in the hostel for more than a month. Very friendly and harmless, he plans to go to thailand with a stranger he met here. He says he is into "IT stuff". When i asked him what exactly he meant, he replied " You know, com-pu-'ers and stuff". I asked him again, what domains/platforms/kind of clients he works with, and again he replied with a "jus com-pu-'ers and stuff, u kno...like aaye-tee stuff".

The Nigerian is a relatively benign guy. There was this old geezer from the US; quite an obnoxious fellow. He talks very loudly, even in the dorm area, which is much against the decorum. An ex-officer of the US Govt; he lives in Indonesia with wife # 5. Yeah, he's been married 5 times. (This piece of information, just like all other details of his personal life, i know for a fact because he forced me to listen). He was like "If you want to know anything about women, i'm the guy. I meet many young guys like you. They buy me lunch to listen to my advise". I continued staring at him with a stupid smile on my face. He probably wanted me to get him some lunch?

ARL overview

I joined the lab officially last Monday. The whole lab took off for a 2-day retreat on tuesday and wednesday. i.e, my work started with a holiday :)

The lab had booked a resort/beach club called the Changi beach club. The retreat itself was a mix of fun-n-games and discussion/review sessions. I got introduced to all the people, projects and the work culture.

Most of the projects here involve the underwater word: developing next-generation AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles), marine biology, dolphin based SONARs, echolocation and signal processing algorithms for underwater imaging, underwater networking and communication systems, they do it all...

Most of the funding for the lab comes from defense agencies like the DSTA (Defence Science and Technology Agency). Other funding areas include oil exploration, climate change research and environmental monitoring apps, etc. They have around 17-18 Million $ of total funding over the next 2-3 years; out of which about 12 Million $ comes from defense. The lab is very unique in that it runs purely on project money. There doesn't exist any kind of Govt. support or any assured funding.

Everyone works on multiple projects depending on their backgrounds and interests. Everyone gets to choose the projects they want to contribute to. Currently, there are about 12 major projects running. Most projects are inter-disciplinary in nature, requiring people with expertise in diverse areas signal processing, marine biology, networking and communication, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence, even dolphin trainers and scuba divers!... So given that the lab has only 22-23 full time staff, the only way to execute 12 such projects concurrently is by not having dedicated project teams.

The lab has no timings, you can come and go as you please. If you are on the staff, you get 24*7 access to the lab. (Other than the staff, there are many visiting scientists, students, interns, etc..). The atmosphere is very friendly and informal. Everyone is on first name terms; there is no need to use Sir/Maa'm. Nobody checks on you on a daily basis.

But much as you get freedom, so also do you need to be extremely professional. You absolutely HAVE to deliver your stuff when it is due. Once you take on a certain chunk of any project, it is trusted that you will come up with your part in the next milestone. Other people will depend on you to do so. If you fail, not only does the project fail, but even the lab's reputation takes a hit. The lab is reputed to be among the best in the world, so you absolutely HAVE to live up to it.

I now have a nice big bench to work and cubicle for myself. They tell me i can buy a computer for myself; any model i fancy! So i ordered an Apple MacBook; the latest one with the single aluminum casing. Yayyy :) Back in b'bay, i thought i'll never get to work on a Mac ('coz i'd never buy it myself !) As they say, never say never :)

In other news, i cleared the medical exams and got my E-Pass confirmed yesterday :)

The other day I attended a free piano/cello/violin performance at the NUS school of music. Just for music, they have this huge glass and steel structure with concert halls, orchestra halls, lecture theaters, practise halls, recording studios, and a dedicated music library. Students from across the word come here to study and pursue degrees in music. They have shows almost daily, and most of them are free...

The Univ has lots to offer, i am yet to explore all of it. More on it next time.

First Impressions

I’m staying at the “Betel Box Backpackers’ Hostel”, located at an ethnic district called “Joo Chiat”. They offer a nice and clean dorm with common bathrooms and a separate area to hangout, eat, play pool, surf the web, watch DVDs, read, and chat with other backpackers. Breakfast is free and the place has air-con. It seems to be an old-time favorite in the backpacker circuit. The crowd primarily consists of youngsters touring the globe for few months; mostly from Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, etc. Joo Chiat seems to more alive by the night than by the day, what with its endless eating joints, pubs and nightclubs. Yesterday we celebrated Halloween with a cross dressing theme. I was feeling very tired and fatigued so I dropped to bed and woke up at midnight. By then the party was moving out to the streets: the onlookers went bonkers when they saw all those people costumes. The group then went on a pub-crawl to the city. Since I wasn’t feeling too energetic, I chose to go for a walk in the neighborhood with a friend I met at the hostel. Its safe to go anywhere at anytime here, one doesn’t have to worry about crime. All streets and public areas are watched by cameras, and people are generally law-abiding. All public buildings have free Wi-Fi too!

Most people here are ethnic Chinese (about 70%). The rest of the population is Malay, Tamil, and a whole lot of tourists and immigrant workers across the globe. Everything here looks shiny and new, as if the whole of Singapore was built yesterday.

I went to NUS on Friday. It is in the other end of the city. The bus took more than an hour to get there even with almost free roads. The bus itself is very comfortable: it pretty much resembles the newer version of Mumbai BEST buses plus the aircon, periodic announcements about the next bus stop, buttons to press to indicate that you wanna get off at the next stop, smart card readers, TV/FM docks, a better seating plan; and minus the conductor.

The NUS campus itself is a thing of beauty. All buildings sport very unique modernistic architecture, with varying styles. The main campus is on a hill. The hill structure is left unchanged: the buildings adapt and blend into the hills. It has a sport complex with facilities for 31 disciplines. Shuttle services run across the campus. The campus is built around a hilltop called “Kent Ridge”. Kent Ridge is where my lab, the Acoustic Research Lab (ARL) is located. That means I need to do some climbing everyday to get there. The campus is surrounded by the “science parks”. The science parks are basically clusters of research labs. The government funds these labs and encourages an international collaborative environment by inviting a lot of foreigners to work here. The work spans climate research, next generation networks, high performance computing, new age materials, ambient computing, along with a separate “Biopolis” dedicated for stem cell research, Bio-engineering, and so on.

The people at the lab are very friendly and welcoming. There about 3 or 4 Indians. The rest are from S’pore, China, Hong Kong, Britain, and Romania, I think. After lunching with Profs Chitre and Venugopal (they are senior ppl in the lab), they introduced me to the HR staff. I was then asked to go to the Univ hospital for my medical exam. My appointment will be confirmed only after I clear the medicals. If I fail it, I’ll need to get on the next plane home. Pray that doesn’t happen.

The ARL itself has a very different environment compared to TIFR. The lab is operating out of a pre-fab building. The whole space is crowded with electrical equipment, workstations connected to hardware, mechanical drills and workshop areas and even a torn-down submarine. People here have backgrounds in electronics, communication, radio physics, marine biology, control theory, mechanical design, ocean engineering, acoustics…

The Univ is dotted with about 7 or 8 canteen complexes. Each complex has separate food stalls serving Muslim, Chinese, Indian, Western/Continental, Veggie, Baked stuff, beverages and so on. The food choices literally number hundreds; it is very easy to grow fat here. The service is very prompt and cheerful. It is difficult to better the service quality. There are also dedicated student lounges, study lounges with comfortable sofas and workstations, activity clubs for everything from philosophy to canoeing…

Till next time…

Passage to Singapore

1 day prior to boarding the flight, I fell sick. At night I had stomach cramps, with a gassy-kind of feeling. The previous day, I had invited some friends over to home for a dosa-party. After having such a wonderful time it seemed aweful to feel sick. Throught the day, I had a sleepy-head and a general feeling of fatigue. The doc prescribed some dygine and other medication for a gassy stomach. But the fatigued feeling was strange: I had never felt this way before.

However, we managed to finish packing by midnight. I was feeling much better on the morning of the flight, but mom and dad were apprehensive about me flying. They wanted to postpone my departure to at least Monday morning, fearing I had contracted Jaundice. But since I insisted, they agreed to take the chance, and off I went.

Drive to the Mumbai Intnl airport was smooth with very easy traffic. The lady at the immigration counter seemed to be a bit on the slow side: she was clearing me off with the wrong papers. I showed her my appointment letter from NUS instead of the Employment pass approval letter from the ministry of manpower. I realized this and volunteered to the proper letter. She even asked me if I’ve got a “CDC”. A “CDC” is a license required of Seamen!

S’pore airlines was repeatedly paging for “Mr. Quay Fletcher”. It went “This is a paging request for Mr. Quay Fletcher. Please report to our ground staff at Terminal 6”. A couple of announcements later, they managed to corrupt it to “This is a paging request for Mr. Great Pleasure. Please report to our ground staff at Terminal 6”.

The in-flight entertainment was jerky. They had a good number of interesting movies I had been meaning to watch, but each one that I tried got stuck in the middle. I managed to catch a few glimpses of Mama Mia, but decided to listen to some music instead. The food on board was average, bearing much resemblance to Indian Airlines except for the drinks. They were serving a couple of fruit juices along with Chardonnay and beer. A gujju-looking fellow was repeatedly asking for Chardonnay refills. He managed to get three before being told off by the staff. He was also repeatedly gesticulating to his family seated on the adjacent columns by pointing his fingers towards his mouth in a to-and-fro motion (presumably for food), immediately after take-off.

Upon arrival at Changi airport, I took my time to explore: its often voted as the world’s best airport. They had free internet terminals, huge shopping areas, a butterfly garden, noise-free areas to sleep, visitor information booths, “skytrains” connecting the three terminals, lots of restaurants… The whole place was a gigantic and glittering glass and steel structure, made lively and beautiful by pieces of gardens and art.

The story so far

They took my interview sometime in Feb – 08. I was interviewed by the head of the ARL, Prof. Mandar Chitre. It consisted mainly of a prolonged discussion of my work at TIFR, previous projects in 2nd and 3rd year: basically we discussed sensor networks, communication theory, embedded programming, some topics in DSP like rate-less codes (which they are working on, but of which I have absolutely no idea of!), and oh yes, I was asked about my previous work on genetic algorithms…

The formal appointment letter came about 3 weeks after I submitted my all my mark sheets. You need an Employment Pass to work in Singapore. NUS applied for an E-Pass on my behalf, and I got the in-principle-approval less than 3 weeks after formally accepting the offer. The whole process was actually very smooth: all I had to do was submit them my mark-sheets. But the waiting was kind of killing me, what with the recession and all. So far, so good!