01S70

Least in Singapore, you don't have to turn your clocks back and experience a twilight-zone-sque timewarp when your roommate and you wake up at (what you think) is 0830 am for church, and then realise later that it's actually 0730am, and you rushed for nothing.

But America IS truly the consumer's haven. I got 2 dress shirts at a grand total of 15 USD yesterday from Gap. OooH.

I'll be down in NY from 17 - 21 Dec, then I'll be back home from Christmas till end of January. Let's check out the new Zouk. Pics please to whet my appetite.

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devil himself. or that was how the lse security guards greeted my arrival.

happy halloween!

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I deperately NEED to protest.

ALEX!!!! OK, i know NUS is limited and going to rivers in malaysia ain't that great but hey! if it makes me happy :) i saw cattle...does that help?
and so alex ain't jealous. haha maybe those who dun do bio will?
maybe not..those overseas will get hell more exciting experiences than....
FINE FINE *pouts*

anyway i've made my point.hahah... i shall go back to my darn term paper...
influence of age on usage of modern and traditional medicine in singapore....
someone help me out here man....

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Hello everybody,

nice pics of Chan lek's bathroom. I would post one up too except mine is sort of green and algae-ish.

Been sort of busy lately with projects and crap like that. But i managed to fit in a visit to Tetsuya (google it if u have too, but its the Aus equi of Thomas Keller) and was sorely disappointed. All these hats and stars and whatnot all bullshit. Give me fresh unadorned sashimi or a crisp roti anytime.

And Lip, no I'm not planning to get married anytime soon. Not until I get a diamond the size of my paw. But I will be applying for permanent residency next yr. Surprise surprise. I lurp singapore but my cost-benefit analysis has convinced me its better to stay here for a while more at least.

I'll be back in Sg end of November (as usual) and in Europe sometime April around Easter. So if anyone is free for kopi-oh then, email me chua.maria at gmail!! Haha. Happy pizza good. Happy stirfry ehhh.

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i was here for the week. i spent time sampling data. i climbed a mountain. i chased sheep and thought of flinging one off the cliff - just to see if there were super-sheep in the population.


field centre for ecology


freedom in the first degree


sheep! sheep! sheep! sheep! sheep! sheep! sheep! sheep! sheep!

sorry jenny, but your field trip aint proper.

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Can we have more updates on what everyone is up to:)?

Alex:
i woke up late today, but still i managed to post the letters back to singapore, have a really lousy chinese buffet for 5 pounds at Mr. Wu's, and bought rice back from chinatown. nice, i could now study hard, reading my notes and doing what i had been doing for the past few days. (Oct 15)

Jesse:
the october rains have arrived, and london is starting to resemble the sopping wet mess i expected it to be.it's not that bad... when you sleep at 2 and have to wake up the next day to go for early class, you're always not really awake. until you step out and it's raining and the wind blows in your face, then you just want to keep running along. or turn back into hall, but that's a wimp's option. (Oct 21)

Where are the rest of the people!!! Zhengyan? Yes we know you're very hot in Upenn:) Jeff, we know came to Chicago. Jianrong? how's the german coming along? Chan Lek?

Joses:
It is my coldest morning in Providence today. 9 degress. Brrr. Thank God the heating in my room got turned on.But it's still a beautiful day! The sun in the clear-blue sky is beaming into my room!Again, I'll be away this weekend. There's this Fall Conference by the CHC guys, so I'm chipping in and playing the guitar for them too! It'll be good.The liberal curriculum here is now working against me. There's too many classes I wanna take next semester. Arggh. (Oct 20)

It IS getting pretty cold here. Chicago's been hovering around the single digit Celcius temperatures:). And this night, it got down to -2 brrr...

So.. Huili, how's medicine? SMU people? How's the new campus:)? (I know you can Zao Geng very easily).

Has anyone been to the new Zouk yet? Wendy? Debi? KEVIN???

We must catch up when I'm back in Dec! Weng's going back too.. Maria? Have you got your wish to get married before graduation yet:)?

Jenny's life is in the previous post:), and frankly, if you think we aren't interested in YOUR SAD PITIFUL EXISTANCE, well, you thought wrong:) at least I'm interested:)

Post post people!

lip



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yes yes...i'm still alive. been busy with all that nonsense in school.
anyway just to update, the most happening thing that occurred in my life lately was my fieldtrip for my ecology module!
we went to Gunung Belumut, Kluang, Malaysia. went to 2 rivers there to do sampling!!!!
waded into the rivers, up to thigh high and disturbed the river bed and caught animal samples with a sampling net. IT WAS VERY FUN. caught some wormy stuff and nymphs to identify next week.
sadly i did not bring a camera to snap photos! :(
but it was really really fun and really really cool.
the hike to the 2nd river was so....i dunno...arduous? so many steep slopes and sliding and climbing and slippery rocks and a pebbled river bed. it was TOTALLY COOL. alright i'm getting overexcited here.
but hey guys, believe me it was really enjoyable hahhaa...
anyway good luck to those having exams soon! :) stay happy.

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My birthday pictures are up! Go to http://levoodoo.blogspot.com to view them! and comment on how chio the girls are :) hehe.

Happy Birthday to Jeff as well! It's 24th Oct, SO WISH HIM!

lip

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Since its completion in 1973, the Sears Tower was the undisputed size champ in the tallest-building category until the 1996 opening of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. But the matter wasn't that simple. The 88-story Petronas Towers were shorter than the Sears Tower until two 111-foot decorative towers were added, topping the 110-story Sears Tower by 20 feet. Chicago's civic boosters licked their erectile wounds until the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the international group that certifies tall buildings, came to the Sears Tower's rescue. In 1997 the council expanded the categories of tallest buildings from one to four: height to structural or architectural top; height to the highest occupied floor; height to the top of the roof; height to the top of the antenna.

Under this scheme, Petronas wins the first category until the opening of Taipei 101. Sears takes the second and third until the opening of Taipei 101, which left the latter the winner of the third and the second disputed. The taller of New York's World Trade Center towers took the fourth until September 11, 2001, when Sears once again regains the title. So thanks to a series of uncanny circumstances, Chicago and the Sears Tower still win at least one out of four.


It may be the world's tallest building, or it may not be, but there's no doubt that the Sears Tower has become a symbol of Chicago. It boasts the kind of stats that make good grade school presentations: 110 stories, 4.5 million gross square feet of floor space, weight of 222,450 tons, 43,000 miles of telephone cable, 2,000 miles of eletrical wire, 25,000 miles of plumbing, 2232 steps to the top and enough concrete to build an eight-lane highway 5 miles long. The highest occupied floor is 1431 feet above ground, the top of the roof reaches 1450 feet, and the antenna soars to some 1730 feet.


Much of what's inside the building is mundane office space. But the lure of the world's highest observation deck draws more than 1.3 million people a year. We joined the mobs on the Skydeck. Our journey to the top started with a slow elevator ride down to the charmless waiting area, where visitors queue for the US$11.50 tickets. A sign tells us it'll take 45 minutes to the top. It's said that on busy days it can be an hour or longer, so it'd be a good time to confirm the visibility displayed before investing time and money. We went up in the evening, when the visibility was 30 miles. On good days, it is said you can see 4 states: Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin.

A dark series of rooms followed the ticketing area and cleverly disguised the full scope of the waiting line. Eventually, we reached a theater, where we watched a film titled Over Chicago. The syrupy narration of the aerial footage of Chicago seems endless, but the film lasts only 15 minutes, though the footage is rather spectacular.

More lines after the film mean that any lingering nausea will subside before the 70-second ride to the top in the world's fastest elevators (that move as fast as 1600 feet per minute). Your ears will definitely pop on the way up. Once there, we definitely thought the view was worth the price paid in money and patience: the entire city stretches below, and we took the time to see exactly how Chicago was laid out.


View to the southeast. You can make out the Museum Campus by the shores of Lake Michigan, and Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears.


View to the east. Lake Michigan shines brightly by the light from the Moon. The building in the middle echoes all White Sox fans, who rejoiced that night when the White Sox scored a fantastic victory.


View to the northeast. You can see Navy Pier in the background. This area (the Loop) is the commercial hub of Chicago, as evidenced by the skyscrapers. The tall building in the middle is the Aon building, the third tallest in Chicago.


View to the north. Wrigley field is on the right, home of Chicago's other baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.


View to the northwest. The long straight line of streetlights mark Interstate 94 that continues north toward Milwaukee, Wisconsin.


View to the west. You can see just how far the suburbs of Chicago stretch.

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This was not the view I first saw of Chicago. As I was busy searching the map at the time, I neglected to take a photograph. I wished I did though, because we arrived at night approaching the city on Interstate 94 from Indiana in the south. As we passed the toll bridge into Illinois, what met us was an absolutely breathtaking view of the illuminated Chicago skyline surrounded by the most vast expanse of dazzling lights I've ever seen. Having been in suburbia for the past 2 months and after a 4 hour drive through near darkness, it was impossible to describe that feeling of wonder.

The Chicago skyline though, is no less magnificent in the day, as can be seen in the photo above taken approaching the city from the north on Interstate 94.


The skyline of Chicago from the shores of Lake Michigan. You can make out the Sears Tower on the left, John Hancock tower in the center and Navy Pier on the right. (Do not email me about how to assemble photos properly.)


Another view of the Chicago skyline from the Navy Pier.


Chicago is a world leader in architecture. The modern skyscraper, with its steel frame, high-speed elevators and curtain walls of glass was invented here. The "Chicago School" of architecture tossed aside the classical forms of Greece and Rome that architects the world over continued to apply to major works and instead stressed economy, simplicity and function. Yet this didn't result in a lack of adornment. The architects used a powerful language of simple geometric shapes, primarily strong vertical lines crossed by horizontal bands. Relief from the sharp lines came in the form of bay windows, curved corners, sweeping entrances and other details, which gave the buildings a pragmatic glory that reflected the city around them. The variety of architectural styles gave rise to a skyline unparalled anywhere in the world, and drew scores of future architects to Chicago to follow in the footsteps of famous forefathers like Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Fazlur Kahn and Bruce Graham, who designed both the John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower.


Today, continued construction of burly and aggressive Chicago style buildings keep the city's skyline vibrant and fresh.

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Hi guys,

Sorry it's been so long since I posted anything. Missing everyone lots. So here's a deluge of photos to make up for what I owed. Hope you guys will enjoy it. As you might have known, this weekend was my Fall Break and I drove down to Chicago for a nice holiday and here's what I've seen.

-Jeff

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Gene Shumkov doing a gymnastic pose after a few beers in my room

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Yes folks, that's Shang Thong Kai, our beloved secretary of council who read the announcements everyday. And that guy behind him is disappearing because of my nifty camera skills. nice:). 

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The entrance to my dorm room:). Fuck all ye who enter here. and Hongyan! I met Julia from NUS/Upenn. Please acknowledge because we both agree you are a very very good drinker.

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Suitemate Jon playing guitar is a funking get up. He's stressed from Not being able to proof Calculus (i.e. if a>b why -a>-b and why mod a > mod b). Tada. 

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Hey dudes!

How's it going? It's going pretty awesome around here. Been up to no good since I've gotten here, and it's pretty sweet!

That's American Speak btw:)

And hope u all are doing fine. Miss u guys:).

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Screw England. Come to New England.

the international hub of the world.

where you get a warm, friendly welcome.

and where the food is oily, greasy, and absolutely tasty.

Contemplating the river at the foot of Mt. Washington, the highest point in New England.

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as a child, have you ever wondered, when your mom told you to finish all your food, because children in africa were starving, where the food that you wasted actually went to?

it gets shipped to cambridge, where the swans grow fat and so does chan lek.

from top:

1. how would you caption this?
2. i think that's king's college chapel. am i right? i don't know, i can't even remember 5 digit codes.
3. moon river...
4. ne marchez pas sur le pelouses. cambridge has a lot of grass.
5. switching attention from the tiramisu to the apple crumble.

oh some friggin' people threw some bottles at us. only time we were made not to feel welcome in cambridge because chan lek's room is as fat as the swans they have here. i hate cambridge, because they put up your name in gold letters on the entrance to the hall and make you feel SO lousy you're not in cambridge with your name up in gold letters. hrmph. I have to make do with crummy London and the cramped confines of my room 622=(.

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