The touring day of Singapore.

So the group of us spent a day touring around some of the more famous spots around Singapore. I was sad that we could only spend one day but such is life.

The first up on that tour day was a trip to an island that had formerly been a gun emplacement for the British when Singapore was a colony. On this island there was a bunch of the standard tourist traps but there was also a bunch of good scenery.



This is the merlion, what I call the mascot of Singapore.

Then we went down to the beach and out onto a smaller island which according to the sign is the furthest southern point on the Asian continent. Which also makes it the furthest south that I have traveled (Surpassing Shreveport Louisiana).





While walking along the beach we found a coconut that had fallen from the tree. Some how I got the idea to break it open, whether it was someone else who suggested it or not I can't remember. So here is some of the pictures of me doing that and the results.




It would have probably been better to use a sharp machete but all I had was the corner of a concrete block embedded in the ground.

After this we took a gondola ride back to Singapore and then up to a mountain. Here are various shots of the harbor from inside the gondola. Mind you some of these pictures were taken through the plexi-glass of the gondola so the quality might not be that good.





For the last part of the trip we went to a botanical garden that had a dedicate orchid garden. So I used up a bunch of pictures on that. Here are some of the highlights.












Finally that night we went to little India for dinner. Here is a picture of dinner. mmmmm... mutton.



As always there many more pictures on flickr. For starters looks under Singapore.

The last service at the old church building

Last week we had the last service at the old church. We will be building a new church. Below is a picture of the original church.


And here is a picture of the congregation after the service.



As the new building goes up I hope to put together more posts.

Merlion & the CBD

Merlion & the CBD
Originally uploaded by voux.

This is the merlion that I showed in the previous post. This showes what I hoped to see when I took my pictures.

The First Set of Pictures from Singapore

In this post I will include some of the pictures that I took during the conference. Sadly I did not have a lot of time during the conference to take pictures or walk around much. These are just some snap shots that I took as I was walking to and from the conference. Notice the architecture there. It was all I think very new but what I liked is that typically designers tried to not make all the buildings either simple rectangles.







This next set is some shots that I took while walking around at night after the last day of the conference. Some of the shots are not great but that is the only chance I had t get some of that stuff.









One of the sad things about the timing of this trip was that the tiger thing with water coming out of its mouth was being cleaned so we couldn't see it. Here are a couple of pictures I got of it but they are not all that great.

The first Singapore Post

Hello everyone again.

I am actually typing this on the plane coming back from Singapore. Not that I won't get a chance to post it until I get on the Internet again.

So first off why was I there?

I was in Singapore to present a paper on my research (APCOT2006.org). The presentation I guess didn't go as bad as I thought it did and I met a bunch of interesting people doing other types of research or dealing with some of the same topics as I deal with.

In some later posts I will post pictures from the trip.

For now i will leave you with a link for googleearth to go Singapore. If you are like me the first time that I realized that I was going to Singapore I could not place it on a map so this should help some what.

Googleearth (tested in v4 however it might work in v3)(This is a collection of links that I found. Depending on how I feel and ambitious I am I might set up my own site for storing kml file.)
maps.google.com

Here I will put some of my thoughts of Singapore. I always thought that Japan was known for its clean cities. Singapore puts Japan to shame. things were really clean there. The second thing to note that for me was odd the first day or to was that we were basically on the equator the sun did not come up as early as it does in Sendai in the summer. There are two official languages there, English and Chinese. Guess which one I used. It was really nice to be in a country again where I could speak English with people. Singapore also seems to be a very international city/country. This made it feel like I didn't stick out as much as I normally do in Japan.

As I will mention later the architecture there is probably all new but I liked it. To me the prices were not that bad compared to Japan even though it was listed in the top 20 of the most expensive places to live in the world. The food was good there even though I really don't know what is truly from Singapore. But again because people understand English I could always ask for not spicy. Also the variety of food was quite good also.

A few of the points that I didn't like about the city but there is really not much that can be done about some of them. One was the humidity. The second was related to the first and that is the amount of electricity that must be used for cooling. During the conference I was in a suit and tie every day and as long as I was in AC building life was good. When I went outside I began to pour sweat out. The third thing that I didn't like was pushy restaurant owners.

Otherwise I really liked the city and highly recommend it to people for a visit at the least. I don't think it would be all that bad for somone who was single or as a retirnment home either.

Google Earth - Home

So this week google earth 4 beta came out. Now how does this relate to Japan and the like. For one it has a Linux client so I can use it now and secondly they have improved the resolution around Sendai. So this means that I can now actually find my apartment.

So still why the blog post?

Well because I am paranoid that if I post my address (even though I probably have in some other way and just don't realize it) some maniac will come to my door. So if you want a link to see where I live send me an email or an IM (all contact info is on the right) and I will send it off to you.

So thanks google for putting out this nice product for free and a Linux client.

Google Earth - Home

A relatively small Japanese pagoda

cimg2071
Originally uploaded by ehud4242.

On a weekend trip I saw this pagoda. It just so happened there was enough space to setup a forced perspective shot.

Here is the original without me in the shot. I will put more photos up of this trip later.

Chevy and Bicycles

Just an amusing picture or two.

Who knew that Chevy made bicycles too.

Dentisist in Japan

Today is just a short post on a topic that has come up for me in the past.

Dentisist in Japan operate a little bit different than they do in the US. Here no appointment is necessary. So sometimes the wait is a little long but there are enough densist around that it is not too bad.

The second item that comes up is that when the dentist cleans your teeth he or she only does one half at one time. So when I went they cleaned by lower jaw first and then I went back a week later and they cleaned my upper jaw.

The price for this is quite reasonable or at least what I ended up paying. In Japan the the health care system is government operated so that makes prices reasonably cheap and espically for students.

Thats it for now,

Survey Marks

Yes I know it has been a while since I posted. I have been bery busy as normal and just could not make time for this. Oh well such is life.

Here is an interesting topic for some people, survey markers. I don't remember seeing these all that often in the US and it was pointed out that you see these all the time here. These are primarily used with marking property boundaries.

Here are a couple of examples. The first one I think ins intersting because the survey marker was molded int a cement wall.





The final example, I am guessing is for putting new survey points in.



I am not sure if these are more common because I am in a city or not, but it shows the value of people's property.

You can see more examples atflickr.

Trash Day at the Lab

Just a couple of pictures of trash day at the lab.





Basically in my lab we have a storage room in the back that every couple of weeks we need to empty to take over to a main collection area. Of course like everyone else we need to see what is the least number of trips we can make. I am of course guilty of this.

A somewhat common scene

cimg1555.jpg
Originally uploaded by ehud4242.

Today I am only have a short post for you. Specifically I am looking at this display that I saw outside of Sendai Station. This display tells you how much energy solar panels are converting to electricity and how much CO_2 is not being produced because of these Solar Panels. These Solar Panels I believe are part of the compliance with the Kyoto Accord. So if you are in Japan you might see displays like these near new buildings or buildings that have been recently renovated.

My Morioka Snow Festivile Trip

Well last weekend for a change we had a Saturday off so Ye-san and I went on a trip to Morioka which is north of Sendai. The reason for the Trip was to go see the a snow festival in a town outside of Morioka. Here are some of the picutres of the snow festival.



This festival was nice except for one thing which was that it is designed for children. Ye-san and I got their pretty early and we wanted to stay until the evening because they would light up the snow sculptures. However there was nothing then to do for four or five hours so we went back to Morioka to look for someplace else to go. We ended going to a museum where you can make get some hands on experience doing traditional Japanese crafts. Some of the photos are here.

The highlight was I made nanbusenbei. Nanbusenbei is kind of a traditional cookie or cracker in Japan. Here are a couple of the pictures for this.




From there we went back to morioka and I grabbed some night shots there of the city skyline, which I think came out pretty good.



The final photo that I will show here is of someone who obviously missed their bus and had been waiting a while.



Yes that little guy was sitting on the bench at the bus stop that while we were waiting for the bus to come to take us back to Morioka.

This was not that exciting of a trip but it was just nice to get out and see someplace different. Here is the link to all of the photos from the trip.

Until next time,
Andrew