Singapore Impressions and a 20 Minute Ferry to Indonesia

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Disclaimer: This post is supposed to be informative and has therefore been designed to give YOU, the reader, a LOT of information using FEW words. (May require an adaptation of your reading style; I suggest reading this to a friend out loud, if you are experiencing any problems.)

Onto Singapore!

Singapore City Center Police Station

Four weeks are over, time flies, and I’m still kicking. I have adapted to the Singapore lifestyle:

•         I live in an extremely small room
•          I eat rice for lunch and for dinner, Monday to Sunday.
•          I ride the MRT and stare at my Smartphone the whole way
•          I don’t eat food in train stations or in the trains (Fine $500)
•          I carry around an umbrella because I know it will rain every afternoon for the next two months
•          I have removed all dairy products from my life and have moved on to improved (and less expensive) soya products (Full sugar, half sugar, or no sugar, depending on my mood)
•          I have accepted the fact that the shoes I brough to Singapore, will have to last for my whole stay here (6 months), as the maximum size sold is 45.
•          I chew no gum, as fines exceed 500$
•          I now consider Potato’s to be a vegetable that is used sparingly

Singaporeans Waiting for the Release of Halo 4 (a computer game)

  However I am still working on a couple of points, including:

•          I do not play loud smartphone shooting games without headphones on the MRT.
•          I do not eat rice for Breakfast.
•          I just cannot stomach fish balls in my meals.
•          I turn off the air conditioning when it gets cold.
•          I go to work before 10:00, and leave before 20:00
•          I do not know all the rules and fines by heart (most likely requires years of work).
•          My smartphone is only half the size of the average Singaporean’s
•          I do not own bright red Beats headphones
•          I do not drink ice coffee out of a plastic bag.
•          I went to the national park wearing my hiking boot, expecting an exhausting day, only to find out that walking the longest trail possible takes less than 1.5 hours.
•          I find Singapore’s tallest mountain at 163 meters to be very small (but I may be wrong)
•          I consider 800$ rent for an apartment that I share with 5 other people terribly expensive.
•          I always thought that living on the 2^nd story in Germany was quite high, whereas the average Singapore Apartment Building has over 20 stories.

Good Singaporeans standing in Line at the University waiting for Food (1 person = 1 square)

My Multilevel University Building and the Department I work in.

Any questions?

Onto Indonesia!

Little girl practicing her strutting at a Local Beauty Show

However, as great as Singapore is, the city does seem to make you a bit claustrophobic. In order to counteract this feeling, Tobias and I spent the weekend on an Island 20 kilometers south of Singapore. The Island is called Batam, and belongs to the Riau Archipelago of Indonesia. It is a Free Trade Zone [an area within which goods may be landed, handled, manufactured or reconfigured, and reexported without the intervention of the customs authorities - Wikipedia] and has therefore experienced an extreme industrial and shipping boom, drawing workers from areas far far away.

Nearing the Port of Batam, Indonesia

Anyway, we came up with the trip idea on Friday, and took the ferry on Saturday morning at 8 o’clock, meaning we didn’t do any planning (very very un-german). Arriving on the island, we were greeted by a horde of Taxi and Motorcycle drivers all vying for the privilege to drive Tobi and me around. Unfortunately for them, we walked into the city…

After walking around long enough to get a sunburn, we found a hotel and paid 7 EUR per person (not bad for no planning, eh?). However, our grand plans for touring the island and finding hidden beaches were ruined when we found out that this town doesn’t ever get any tourists, so there are no motorcycle/bicycle rentals (only with drivers). Too bad. 

Oh by the way, we saw no other white people that weekend.

Being driven around by our new Friends

Nonetheless, I learned a very important lesson on this trip: how to relax like an Indonesian. To give you a taste, let me tell you about an Indonesian’s perfect weekend:

Fire Thrower at Kampung Bule

Karaoke Club

1. No work at all
2. Wake up at 15:00
3. Go to the mall and shop for fake Louis Vuitton bags and cheap flip flps
4. Go to the game center and spend hours playing various money-losing games such as “Shoot the Fish”, “Beat the dinosaur”, “Drop a coin”, [take a nap on the bench], and end strongly playing a shooter game with a life size machine gun.
   
5. Subsequently, while still at the same huge mall, watch the newly released movie “Breaking Dawn” or any other chick flick.
6. On the way out, buy a box of 12 doughnuts, buy 2 Liters of palm oil and 30 packs of “Mie” Noodle Soup
7. Just before the long ride home, get a foot reflexology massage just outside the Mall doors.
8. At home, meet with your friends at an outside diner.
9. Drink coffee and eat the "Mie" Noodle Soup
10. End the night by singing along at a Karaoke club where everyone has an average height of 1.50 meters.
11. Drink more coffee while waiting for the sun to rise.

Making Friends

Now I must admit, that Tobi and I, being the culturally adaptable people we are, tried to live the perfect Indonesian Weekend. We were successful in doing 10 out of the 11 points I listed above!!! I leave you to guess which one we skipped (feel free to send me an email with your guess).

Here are some of the pictures from our check list of being a perfect Indonesian: 

Game Place

Little People Playing Big Games

Chapter 2: Welcome to Singapore, Singapore

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Good Evening, Fine Sirs and Madams! 

I would like to welcome each and every one of you to the next installment of "In The World". As some of you may have guessed by the title (please don't feel bad if you didn't!), I have decided that since the Near East just doesn't serve as a permanent home, I need to experience the Far East...

Singapore is a city-state located 1 degree north of the Equator, making it highly tropical and subject to monsoon rains. Singapore is surrounded by water on four sides making it an? ... (Yes kids, an ISLAND country :) 

Brief History: Singapore has been inhabited since the 2nd century CE. During the exploratory age, it became a sovereignty of Great Britain, who lost it to Japanese occupation during World War II. Singapore then declared independence in 1963 and united with other British territories to form Malaysia. It separated from the rest of Malaysia two years later and has since risen far, to become an international financial powerhouse with massive wealth increase, massive rain forest losses, and massive space problems.

It is this country that I have chosen as my next location to work in.  Specifically, I am employed as a Research Staff at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for the next 6 months. My supervisor is Asst. Prof. Terry Steele, who has a laboratory group in the School of Material Science and Engineering.

An extensive survey after Saudi Arabia showed me that people are actually interested in the research I do, so I will increase writing activity in that sector:

My project at NTU is in the area of biotechnology and aims to develop a therapy against a common complication in immunocompromised (people with bad immune systems) patients, particularly HIV/AIDS patients. 

I will start slowly: In this bad bad world there exists a group of Viruses called Herpes. The most important characteristic of a Herpes Virus is that once you have it you cannot get rid of it, as it will lie dormant in long-living cells such as neurons. There are 8 types of Herpes, and the common adult has between 3 and 4 types lying dormant in their body, kept under control by their functioning immune system. Cytomegalovirus is the name of a Herpes Type V virus and is present in 50% of all European Adults. In most adults this virus will never be noticed at all. However, the medical world is concerned with the that subset of people that experience an activation of this virus. This subset is mainly comprised of immunocompromised people. In my project we are concerned about HIV (= human immunodeficiency virus) patients whose immune system is being decimated slowly by HIV. In these patients, CMV is likely to activate and become a widespread secondary health problem. Activated CMV will enter healthy cells and cause them to grow to extremely large sizes which then burst... Just like everyone has a preference for different types of food, CMV also has a preference to which healthy cells it attacks. In this case, it is the cells of the eye, which first leads to a complication called CMV Retinitis and then to blindness. 

Treatment of CMV is done with a drug called Ganciclovir, which is a nucleoside (building block of Virus DNA) analogue and works by being mistaken by the virus during reproduction as the real nucleoside causing reproduction inhibition. Sadly, Ganciclovir has a number of side effects, including liver damage, headaches, hallucinations, and neuronal damage, making it a very delicate drug to use. An idea to reduce the risk of Ganciclovir for the treatment of CMV Retinitis is to only apply the drug locally, instead of injecting it intravenously. 

My project at NTU is aimed directly at this dilemma: we are trying to develop a thin biodegradable film that incorporates the drug Ganciclovir can be placed directly on the eye and release the drug at a constant rate over a long time period.

I start with laboratory work next week, so wish me luck.

On the other hand, I have been in Singapore for a week now and have managed to settle myself into an Ueber-expensive concrete hole that these people call apartments. Although I have done more paperwork than sight seeing this week, the city is kept very tidy, and contains a number of impressive buildings. The public transportation network is fantastic and very modern. The food is cheap and very Asian, although all other goods are over-priced.

My favorite excursion has been a trip to the Singapore Orchid Gardens, where they manage to display an impressive 3000 different types of Orchids.

That's it for now. More Updates soon. Thanks for reading :)