I realized that I didn’t belong to anywhere, anyone else or any imagined community

and that made me happy.

Two charts that I found interesting:

1. Increasing number and proportion of marriages to non-citizens (we collect data on this???)

Left chart for ENCIKS. Right chart for SPGs.

I will argue in jest that there are more non citizen grooms compared to non citizen brides because – brides are expensive but grooms bring MONEY.

Again, take no offense. I say the above in jest about a very crude generalization that is generally untrue.

2. Increasing number of overseas singaporeans

I can’t tell if 200,000 singaporeans is a lot or not..

Yeah I really don’t know if 200,000 out of the citizen population is a lot or not.

If I may point out, the Y axis can be scaled in such a way that makes the increase look a lot more gradual. How will the chart look like if we changed the Y axis scale to 10k instead of 50k per unit (as per the citizen marriage chart at the top). i dunno either – i’m yet to take a stats class

SMLJ UAE 73.8%???

Now planning a paper on the classroom as a tool for integrating asian immigrants into Canada, when I chanced upon this random tidbit.

Was surprised by Singapore’s ranking at first (ahead of Canada and Australia!), until I remembered that this was by percentage – its a lot easier to make a high percentage in a country with a smaller population.

But then again, this was in 2000. And the figure is still pretty high.

***

im not sure how they define “international migrant stock” though

河北省滄県の環境保護局長は「例えば、一握りの小豆を入れたら水は赤くなる。一緒に米を煮たら赤くなるでしょ。赤くても基準を満たしていないわけではない」と釈明した

The Hebei environmental agency explained: For example, if you put a handful of beans into the water, it becomes red. Cook it together with rice, and it becomes red right. Just because it is red does not mean that it does not meet the standard.

The awesome moment when I realised that I can read the shit above! (with a little bit of guess cheating, but still)

***

I thought blood would have been more intuitive than red beans. MOSES will agree.

Incensed by Manila’s unwillingness to withdraw, Beijing resorted to economic measures to punish the Philippines for encroaching on what it viewed as its sovereign territory. Quarantine authorities reportedly blocked hundreds of container vans of Philippine bananas from entering Chinese ports, claiming that the fruit contained pests.

The decision to quarantine the bananas dealt a major blow to the Philippines which exports more than 30 per cent of its bananas to China. Subsequently, China began slowing inspections of Philippine papayas, mangoes, coconuts and pineapples. Mainland travel agencies also stopped sending tour groups to the Philippines, ostensibly due to safety concerns.

China’s Coercive Economic Diplomacy: A New and Worrying Trend – Bonnie S. Glaser

A bit scarier if it happened over local island disputes.

I wonder how much a night of this costs in Bintan..

I shower beside an open window facing the forest

The trees in florida: they are the same tropical sort of trees. Together with the weather, it reminded me of – too warm and too humid.

Being able to chill on the beach is nice sometimes, but  I realised how much happier I was walking around Boston on a wintry morning. Harvard is beautiful. everything that Providence has, Boston has it bigger and better.

oh well.

You got 50 people, they got 50 million people.

Saw this early in the morning a few days ago and thought that it was a joint military exercise to fight mainland Chinese.

Reference: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/OA26Dh01.html

But in actuality, I didn’t – and I was surprised that I didn’t.

The time on the island was also a time of plain blankness. I wasn’t strategizing how to avoid things or trying to wayang my way to getting noticed (like those occifer wannabes). It was really just pure blankness. Not questioning. Not thinking. Not even resenting.  Just going through the motion.  I didn’t grow much till after the island (when I actually had to do a lot of manouevering) – but more about that some other time.

I think posts from that month better describe it, time to pimp my archives a bit:

http://findmuck.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/the-reality-of-sisyphus/

http://findmuck.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/rifle/

http://findmuck.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/holiday-advertisement/

http://findmuck.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/this-kung-pao-chicken/

The last one isnt related to the island. I just found myself amused as I looked back.

****

Be EmpTy.

It was actually a good thing that I extended my stay till my dorm open, or else I would not have had a place to stay back in Providence because reslife locked the room I was illegally staying in. But anyway, how are Penn and Brown different? Here is the view of a foreigner who spent less than two weeks at Penn. 

1. Campus: In my (biased) opinion, Brown is nicer – because of architecture style and actually having a main green to laze around in. I think it’s largely due to being on a hill away from the city as well.  

2. City: Penn is busier and has an actual city full of shops and restaurants. Brown has a mall somewhere downtown.  There are a lot less tall buildings. There is no chinatown. While Brown is geographically nearer to downtown, it is on a hill which makes it troublesome. Penn might be further, but there’s a subway (and most things arent even that far) 

Moving on to the more important differences, 

3. Intensity: I think students at Penn are far more intense and busy. Based on my small sample size, the typical penn sg person takes around 6 classes. I have a friend taking 7, and I hear there’s a crazy mofo taking 9. Compare and contrast this to Brown, where the norm is 4, you’re not ALLOWED to take more than 5, and you actually have room for two non-consecutive semesters of 3 classes. And let’s not even talk about wharton. 

In addition, most people I’ve met have meetings constantly and some other project/society that theyre working on. Most of my friends at Brown only have extracurricular clubs on Friday and Saturday night, usually with music and alcohol…but that might just be the people I know. Speaking of Friday night, one girl I met was planning to pull an all-nighter on friday night – the first friday night of the sem

4. Curriculum requirements: I was very amused to hear people talk to each other about taking classes to fulfill “physical world” requirement etc, and how some classes like asian american history can count for two of the requirements at once. It was all foreign to me. I’d hate myself if I had to take classes just to fulfill a requirement. True, Brown still has Major requirements (which makes sense) but even then, I’m trying to bypass them by Hmmm. There are more differences, but I don’t really want to go into them. 

5. The sg community: This is a key difference. The sg community at Penn is significantly bigger. There is actually a presence. Groups of sg ppl often come together to eat and mingle. This could be due to the larger numbers – one of the years at penn took in close to 30. Contrast this to Brown where the Sg ppl are largely dispersed and each year has less than 10. This could be a good thing as it allows more mixing around, but it does feel nice to have the company of a variety of sg ppl at times.  

6. Food: THE FOOD AT PENN IS SO MUCH BETTER OMG – in terms of variety, price, asianness, tastiness and the presence of a supermarket. There are more foodtrucks, and their food is cheaper. 

In conclusion, I really like staying in Penn. I like the place, the food and the people. I could actually picture myself at Penn for four years. But when it comes to the actual crux of schooling, that might be a different story. More importantly, I’ll probably be happier if I get to do whatever the hell I want. (Still planning it now)

This winter travels did not fully fulfil its primary objective of being an After Action Review for the next Work Plan, but it left me with an awareness of the things I lacked and an appreciation of the things I have. 

More about the other parts of my winter travel some other time. I’m simply glad to be back right now after being gone for close to a month.