Gulliver's Travels...

Yes yes I know, I haven't updated my site in a while so this posting will try and summarize what I've been up to for the past week or so:
Thaipoosam: A Hindu festival in Singapore where participants attach spikes and such sharp metal objects through their back, face, nose, tongue, feet, etc. We went to the festival expecting to be disgusted but watching these men put themselves through enormous pain with a fixed trance-like devotion to God made me feel like a lesser person. Many spectators became emotional, and I felt a little overwhelmed too; makes you realize how different the self-serving culture of North America is to the Eastern philosophy of community and divinity. It was a cool experience, something I will probably never see again!

Sultan of Brunei: Yes, this is the very same royalty who invited Ms. America to be a guest in his country (for a reported sum of $250,000). Unwittingly she thought that she was going to be a distinguished foreign guest -- to her dismay and his pleasure she was essentially an over-priced hooker. Needless to say she filed for a sexual harasment suit once she got back to the US but nothing ever happened, money does buy you happiness! So this guy, received an honorary PhD in Law from NUS, Loc and I were lucky enough to witness the event and even luckier to eat at the Hyatt catered reception afterwards. Many notables were there, including the President of Singapore.

Kualampur, Malaysia: We visited the capital of Malaysia over the past weekend. Loc, Sonia, and I decided to take an overnight train (total cost for one-trip = $10cdn). The train was pretty sick except that it was over an hour late. We each had a bunk bed and I was on top :). We also met some MBA students from INSEAD (business school in France). We arrived in KL at 7am and didn't yet have a place to stay. The whole trip was kinda haphazardly planned so we kinda flew by the seat of our pants - which was fun but tiring. A bunch of other students from NUS were staying at a nice hotel so we put our bags there and did the tourist thing. Petronas towers (featured in Entrapment - tallest twin towers in the world - booyah NYC), and then the Batu Caves. A collection of temples carved out of a mountain. They were REALLY dirty due to some huge festival and monkey, cocks (as in the bird - perverts), and bats were everywhere. The place smelled like the toilet after Paan is done taking his daily shit and so we got the hell outta there ASAP. We then visited Chinatown -- Holy Fuck -- these guys have fake shit from Tag watches to Diesel shoes to DVDS. The largest size of shoe they had was a 12 and since those who know me know I where 13 -- I was shit outta luck. There XLs are also the equivalent of a Large/Medium back home so I was fucked again. But I did buy some DVDs and bracelets and some gifts for my mom. I also bought a nice necklace for Jennisa (happy? ;). I thought about Toops (shout out) but didn't get anything for him. (I had to put your name in somewhere -- happy you bastard). So - the night progressed - - we went to a jam (surprise surprise). The Beach is supposedly where the hookers go to pick up middle aged white men, so no one approached me. I was brown, broke, and smashed. We did have a good time though, 5 of us got a bottle of vodka upon entry and that set the tone for the night. I also wolfed down some hot n spicy mutton curry after the club (highlight of the night :).

This was an extremely high level view of my week -- I'll add some tidbits later. I'm going to Phuket this weekend...until next time...

Yes, as the title suggests we visited a nearby island on Sunday, Jan. 23/05. (I'm not putting dates because I'm a stickler for details, but to give you guys an anchor with which to guage the time difference so you know exactly what I was doing while you were shovelling snow.) Loc organized a trip to "Pulau Hantu" -- Island of Ghosts. Legend has it that to fierce Malay warriors who had a bitter rivalry went to this island to duel it out. They fought for many days, turning the ocean crimson with blood. Jinn the god of the ocean became angry and using the currents of the sea he sucked both warriors down to the bottom where they perished. The other gods were a little peeved about Jinn's involvement in humanity's behaviour and thus ordered him to return them back to life. Well, as he couldn't put them back in their original bodies, he made them islands so that they may live on earth once again. -- We visited this island. We took a shipping service from mainland out to the island -- a beautiful 20 minute ride. The place is completely deserted, save for a few garbage bins, a sign and toilets. There is no other human influence whatsoever! There are 2 lagoons on the island, our group picked one and basically lazed in/around the beach for 6 hours (hence I look really Tamil now). Some germans collected fallen coconuts, and we broke them and ate them -- pretty good all-natural snack. The tide here is crazy! At about 3pm the lagoon had disappeared and only a bed of sand remained, the water had receded all the way back into the ocean! The boats picked us up at 4pm and we headed back into town to enjoy the rest of the day. I passed the fuck out for a couple hours...
P.S. Would any of you lazy asses muster up the energy and will to reply to my blogs via the "Post Comment" link. This is supposed to be a dynamic forum where we get to communicate with each other...i.e. tell me what pics u want me to take, or if you want me write about something specifically, pantyriderz.

Aight so I'm going to this Indian bhangra thing tonight (lol), it supposed to be really crazy (yar). I hope to take some crazy pics so that you all might amuse yourself just as I do when a bunch of paks jump up to some hardcore desi beats (Lobo, this goes out to you). Haha. A few things about Singapore, (did I say someone is always washing something?) I've attached pics of takeout containers/methods. Anyway what I failed to mention was that last week I go trashed (along with Loc and Xavi), and puked my guts out from a cab window. And guess what! I wasn't with my friends...before going into a club we asked some local which place was hype. So we went into this bar and one thing led to another -- all of a sudden I was pissin alcohol (no not by the bar, in a bathroom -- fuck u ass, paan, 00, karim, Tony, and anyone else). So this local dude comes up to us chills with us and buys us drinks. He was really nice, well-dressed, etc. So I got trashed, my friends left the club at like 3am and I decided to stay with my new found friend. Anyways he took me to another club and then got home (which is when I puked)...and my "ass" hurt (no I'm kidding). Ass shout out. Today was a great day; I woke up, drank some tea, read the news, checked email and went to the gym. After working out my temple, I went to the pool. (Will add pics of the GORGEOUS pool soon). There I did some laps, froclicked in the cold water and then went to sun tan (insert Paan's comment here). It was the closest thing to paradise, the ice cold droplets of water were slowly dried by the hot, dry, sun. All the while the soft whispers of the Backstreet boys crooned to me via my earphones and I passed out for a blissful 10 minutes. After that, ate lunch,did some archery classes and then went to class. K gotta go shower/drink///pz out niggas.

And if you don't want a cup...u can get any drink to go like this :) Just add a straw 

Wish you were here... 

Take out anyone? For real this is what take-out trays look like! 

Saturday (Jan15/05) Sentosa Beach 

Warning: this post is probably going to be extremely short and uninsightful. I just wrote a long-ass posting and accidently closed the window (FUCK). So a week has passed by and it feels as though I've been in Singapore for years! I must say we're pretty lucky in North America -- there is no such thing as customer service here, i.e. if you buy something its yours. No refund policy or anything like that. I've met tons of people from all over the world, namely the US, UK, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Spain. Everyone is pretty cool and chilling, but my immediate crew is made up of Loc (Vietnamese Canadian from McGill), Xavier (Spanish from ESADE), Jema (Spanish from ESADE), and Sonia. I've visited Little India, Chinatown, the Boat Quay, Orchard Rd. (Toronto's equivalent of Bay/Bloor), and Sentosa Island. We went to the island on Saturday (Jan15./05), and it was pretty crazy. Just like everything else in Singapore it is totally manmade! They imported the white sands from Malaysia and populated the island with wild peacocks! The water is alright, and they built smaller islands around it so that you can swim from one to the next. That night the MBAs sponsored a party on the beach at one of the clubs -- it was very high schoolish. The people here are very innocent and eager to help just like in the movies! I don't know if I said this before but clubbing is extremely $$$ here! I spent $150 in one night -- needless to say I'm done clubbing till Toronto. On another note; there are always people cleaning EVERYTHING. The country is clean, but I mean these guys hose down the basketball courts, clean the walls of buildings, sweep out sewers, etc. Its kinda amusing to watch -- but what you must understand is that Singapore is a country that is run like a company. The gov't has a tight control over all aspects of life here and so far they've done a splendid job, thus no one really complains. My classes are alright -- the students laugh at anything that the teachers say...but the teachers are highly qualified with many from Harvard, MIT, London School of Economics, etc. I'm going to add a few pics...until my next post...peace out biatches. P.S. Although I'm having a wicked time I miss home and all you guys ;) Paan email me your resume...

Prevention is better than cure 

So after being cramped for 18hrs on-flight, we finally touched down in Singapore. Singapore Airlines is truly a world-class air carrier, it makes Air Canada look like a cargo plane -- so I step out off the plane, and no joke I'm driving down a palm tree laden highway in 30 minutes! No customs, just 5 min with immigration, and the baggage came out as soon as I was ready to pick them up. The first night was a lil daunting, the size of my room is almost the size of my bedroom closet (pics to follow), and the shower head ends at my neck. So to wash my hair I have stand on my knees. The NUS campus is a mini-city, its a mixture of terracota roofed houses, a complex of Isaac Asimov styled residences, and a modern collection of glass buildings. The inner roads are lined with palm trees, and other tropical greeneries. I was up at 5am on the first morning b/c of the time difference, which worked out as there was a lot of admin stuff to do. Met a bunch of Norwegian/Swedish guys from the MBA class, and then headed into town with Sonia. We went to Little India (surprise surprise). Sonia brought a passion fruit slurpie onto the train without realizing that she could get her ass caned for that. Little India, is just that -- Little India. It isn't like Gerrard street where its a bunch of paks in stores. This place is really India! Smells, buildings, signs, everything screams of the country. Found some alright deals, got scammed on others. Ullah was right -- stuff here is $$$ (other than food). Ass's crappy phone retails for $300 Singaporean !!! Thats about $230CDN. Archie you're shit outta luck for phones here -- unless you wanna spend like $300-$400 CDN. Food on the other hand is cheap -- we both ate full lunches for a total of S$4.40 = C$3.00. Aside from some other random shit and a lot of walking around it was a pretty tiring day. Today is Friday, a day which I can eat meat on...

Ya so I guess some would call it a blessing in disguise...who would want hydroulic problems over the Pacific? I arrived at Vancouver's airport after flying over the sexy rockies only to find that we were grounded due to technical issues. I must say, however, that Singapore Airlines really took care of us throughout the whole ordeal -- we couldn't have been made any more comfortable throughout the event. I'm in my hotel room right now enjoying free internet, 2 double beds, and a free buffet dinner (Singapore does it up proper ;). My flight leaves in 11 hrs, so that gives me time to check out Van City downtown -- see if it compares to the capital of Canada (that is Toronto for all those Albertans that needed to ask). Tony man, Vancouver is truly your city, its full of portugese/italian errr punjabi people. Around 70% of my flight were sikhs, and the thing is they're always with extended family! Its never the typical nuclear family, instead its like 2 brothers, their wives, 8 kids, and 2 pairs of old couples. I also met this guy who works with Haliburton (a la Dick "Penis" Cheney) in Brunei. He's been with them for over 15 years and you know that guy is making some serious duckets...Therez a bunch of white people going to ashrams in India for "spirtitual enlightenment", lol only in Vancouver. The people here a really nice, everyone from the waiter to the bus driver was friendly, a little too friendly. Its a very tree-huggerish city where granola is the provincial snack. But in all seriousness, they really are nice. Anyways, gotta jet to see the rockies at night...until next time. V for Victory or something corny like that...