Exam's Over

Now it's done, no more exams - finito. Unfortunately this also means that there will be no more Singapore. Without having too high expectations I think I did quite good on the papers, at least if they can read what I've been writing and can open the answer book that I accidentally soaked in coke.
The plan for the future is to travel more of Southeast Asia, probably Vietnam and maybe Myanmar (Burma). But until I find a cheap ticket I will enjoy my time here in Singapore.

Geylang

My friends thought it was a real shame that I hadn't seen one of Singapore's most exciting places: Geylang!
Therefore Alvin, Alda, Zenhan, (left picture) Weisiong, Yanqing and Yijie (right picture) took me there. Geylang is famous for its good food. We had some really nice food, for the first time of my life I tried to eat frog legs with porridge. For dessert we went on to have fermented bean curd, which is not so bad after all.
We also took the tour to see what else there is to do in the area. One of the activities is reconstructed by Alda and Zenhan in the picture to the right.

Exam Studies

Life abroad is not only free time, vacations and parties. After some time the inevitable exams comes up and procrastination is no longer an option. Some two weeks are more or less dedicated to studying for the (hopefully) four last exams of my life. The papers here are slightly different from what I'm used to; the time constraints are harder, you only have two hours per paper instead of five, of course with fewer question, so you have to carefully watch how much time you spend on each of them.
Fortunately I found some nice people who I can study with and to help me keep up the work. We stay in room with air-condition that the Singaporeans just love to crank up to create something like permafrost and a freezing exchange student.

Back in Singapore

After only a week of Thailand's sun I had to go back to Singapore to write a test and to start study for the upcoming exams. From Phuket Airport I flew to Kuala Lumpur from where I, after some struggles, managed to get on a bus back to Singapore.
When my parents returned here we did some touristy stuff as taking the tour boat on Singapore river and visiting Orchard Road, Little India and Arab Street.
Since my parents found out that they have their 30th anniversary this year we decided to go to have a lobster dinner and get a feel of the old colonial Singapore at the famous Raffles Hotel.
Before they left we also experienced the "monkey business" in Singapore while trying to buy a camera at Sim Lim Square.

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Koh Phi Phi with my Parents

After exploring Phuket we decided to go over to Koh Phi Phi, an island in between Phuket and Krabi in the Andaman sea. We spent one day on a snorkeling trip going in one of the famous long tail boats. Between the banana pancakes and milkshakes we went to see some of the more remote beaches on the island. Unfortunately I had to leave early to write a test, but my parents continued their Tahiland trip for another week. After Koh Phi Phi they went to Ko Lanta and further up to Ao Nang, Krabi, before returning to Singapore.

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Phuket With My Parents

We left Singapore in the late afternoon and arrived in Phuket at dinner time. We stayed the first night in Patong, but didn't really like it. Therefore we decided to rent some motorbikes to travel around the peninsula. During the next days we went to Karon, Kata, Chalong and many other nice places around the southern part of Phuket. We didn't spend that much time on the beaches since it took some time for two of us to get used to the sun after a few months of winter.

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My Parents in South East Asia

After not having seen my parents for about nine months, they decided to go see me instead. They flew to Singapore to spend a night here before the three of us continued to Phuket in Thailand.

Parties

When studying hard it is important to take a break every once in a while. For exchange students this usually means to go partying even though we do not really study that hard. When going to Insomnia last week I ran into my second cousin, Erik (in the picture to the left), who studies at NUS for this semester.

For the weekend we heard a rumour about someone throwing a house party. Since we are all tired of going to the same places over and over again we decided to see if this was true... and yes, there was a house party going on. And we were not the only ones who had heard about it. The house was filled up with hundreds of people (mostly foreigners, but also some Singaporeans). It was going on fine for a few hours, before the police decided to show up and ... the party was over.

Mosaic Music Festival

There is not much going on at the campus these days. Fortunately Singapore is a big city with plenty of events going on. Therefore I and Mark, an PhD student from England, decided to go down to the Esplanade to see the grand finale of the Mosaic Music Festival. The festival had been going on for the past ten days with performances of famous artists from all over the world. We could enjoy over four hours of various free music performances during the night before heading back for another week at the campus.

X-Physique 2007

Me and some other exchange students from NTU decided to join what is called "the most exciting urban adventure race" or X-Physique 2007. An urban adventure race that included running, swimming, cycling, kayaking and abseiling taking place in the city of Singapore for about half a day. There were two teams of exchange students that participated, my team - Team Adrenaline, consisting of me, Perrine, Jörg and Timo, and the other team - Team O. Unfortunately non of us succeeded in winning the race, but what was more important was that Team Adrenaline ended up before Team O and we all had lots of fun.