Saturday, November 1, 2008

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…

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