Singaporeans Should Be Proud To Have Me As An Ambassador

The last thing I thought I'd be doing here is enlightening everyone of how awesome the English in Singapore is. ( Now ain't that a joke.) Many people here (by many, I mean more than one) now have the impression that all Singaporeans have beautiful accents and gloriously eloquent writing skills, and I'll just have to step up and claim the credit for myself. So I had been talking about how they forced me to belittle myself and take the English as a second language test, and then after that made me do yet another diagnostic test. Well surprise surprise, I've been exempted from the whole English course, and hence have fulfilled my Communications A requirement, a requirement everyone here, including locally educated students, have to do.

Their tone has completely changed after I got exempted. The profs now go 'Oh, you studied in Singapore, no wonder.', when in the past it was 'Singapore? Go take the second language test!". When is this absurd arrogance that only Americans can be native English speakers going to end. (Come to think of it, I *am* American..) Well in any case, the 'screening committee' now undoubtedly has a great impression of Singapore-educated students, so you're all very welcome. Feel free to add in 'Ambassador' to my resume.

Classes have finally begun for me - I was going stir crazy at home - and they couldn't be better. My first class, ever, is Geog 120 (Global Physical Environments). It's basically Physical Geog, a subject I loved so much in Secondary school, and I full expect at least an AB in this class. The classroom I walked into was just everything I'd expected a college lecture class to look like. It was a pretty small class, as far as lectures go, around perhaps 250 students. I was just on time, and the class was already ready to go. The eagerness of college students here is so evident in all these little details. No one has to quieten anyone down, or shush anyone, people are just geared and fired up for lessons.

The getting to classes rush in the morning is pure madness. More than 24,000 students walking, cycling, driving and moped-ing around the campus, trying to get to class on time. My classes are all pretty close to where I stay, and it's usually just one straight path. Still, trying to find the exact building and classroom is total pandemonium when tons of students are crowding about, trying to find their own rooms. I was pretty lucky, though. All the classes I needed to find always happened to be right in that random building or door I chose to enter. Lectures here are all only 50 minutes each, so I could only snort in derision (outwards, of course I portrayed the sympathetic pal, but you know I'm just in stitches on the inside) when people keep complaining about how tiring it all is. If only they had experienced the lunacy we had to endure with 2.5 straight hours of Math lecture as the last class of the day.

The motivation I have to study now probably comes from taking classes that I'm actually interested in. I truly find delight in reading A Midsummer's Night Dream, as opposed to the Herculean effort it took for me to do even a simple physics question in the past. Decoding the seemingly nonsensical prose of Shakespeare is much more rewarding to me than solving a physics problem. So it takes 'Jack' 50N of force to move the crate across the floor. But does he understand the beautiful, flowing poetry behind the cosmic significance and the hidden imagery of this simple motion? No? Dumbass.

I really would love to continue this rant about how awesome school life is, but there is a huge piece of sirloin tip steak in the kitchen, waiting for me to grill and devour it. (Food here is seriously so cheap, have I mentioned that? That piece of steak, which would cost me around $7 to $9 in SG, only cost me $2 plus here.)

Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you~

Let's Go To The Mall, Everybody!

One of the things I have a really hard time getting used to is the lack of shopping malls here. 'Instant Gratification' would be my middle name, if it wasn't already taken up by 'Madison'. I'm the kind of person (or, spoilt brat) that likes to have what I want when I want it, and the easily accessible malls in Singapore have allowed me to do that. (They're probably the ones that made me this impatient to begin with.) But over here, the nearest real mall is 8km away, and you can either drive there, cab there, take the bus there, or fly there. Seeing how I didn't drive, doesn't have a friend who drives, and the mechanical wings are in maintenance, I'm left with the options of cabbing or taking a bus.

I did try to be thrifty, I really did. But the public transport system here is so backwards and undeveloped, that I was really scared of attempting to board a bus. For an 8km journey, it would take me at least half an hour by bus, including transfers. What kind of city boy knows how to do transfers? We don't transfer - one reliable bus takes us straight to where we wanna go! It became a really distressing sitatuation for me. Also, I had seen buses pass by me on the road, with only one or two passengers on it at a time. I can't possibly submit myself willingly to the psycho-rapist-murderers waiting for me there. They gotta work for it if they want a piece of this. I was left with only one option - calling for a cab.

There are zero cabs on the streets here - the way you call for a cab is to literally call for one on the phone, and they'll dispatch a cab to you within 15 minutes. Seeing how I'm treating my blogging now like investigative journalism, I figured calling a cab would just be me being professional, not extravagant. So I rang for one, went down to the lobby to wait, and got a call within 10 minutes telling me that a cab was here. The guy calling to inform me wasn't the nicest guy around, I'll say. "The cab is waiting by Lake Street. Where is Lake Street? Just look for a sign that says Lake Street!" *Hangs up* Granted, Lake St was just 5 meters away, but he could have just said it was to the right of Lucky. 

The cabbie was a really nice gentlemen, and so I was talking to him about how difficult it is to get around without a car. He asked if I drove, and I said, no, I hadn't learnt yet. He somehow took that as a confession of how terrified I am of cars, and spent the time convincing me of how it's all just common sense, and I could even be good enough to drive cabs in the future. I am a university undergrad. Surely he could be kinder and suggest a slightly higher paying job than a cab driver? He drops me off, $18 dollars later, with a 'don't be afraid, you can do it! You're very welcome." at the main door of West Towne Mall. There are two main malls in Madison, West Towne and East Towne (located, as you've gussed, on the east and west sides of town. Why there isn't a proper on in the middle of the city is beyond me.) , and I've just taken to calling it Westmall.

The whole mall is only one one very spread out level, and it's laid out like a cross. There are four extreme ends, with four major stores like Sears, JCPenny, so on, at the ends of it, and to get to another wing, you have to walk back up to the middle junction. I spent most of my time walking back up and down the same wing, trying to find what I wanted. I don't know what else there is to say about a mall, other than.. it's practically much the same as every other mall. There is definitely something very 'homecoming' about stepping into a mall, even one that I've never been to, perhaps because they're all the same. There are a couple of stores here not available in Singapore, ones that I've seen on TV (like the Pottery Barn that Rachel, and eventually Phoebe, was obsessed with, but that was about it. I did feel kind of disappointed, but then again, this was exactly what I knew it was going to be. Perhaps that's why it was so disappointing. I had realized that I'd come all this way, just for another duplicate mall that I could find practically anywhere.

Not one to be deterred by a little negative epiphany, I dedicated myself to some lunacy-shopping, so it makes up for all the time and money spent on getting here. I can't let my cab fare be the most extravagant thing I spend money on, after all. $120 was spent on an Abercrombie and Fitch jacket and berms, a velvety throw and a long sleeved tee from Aeropostale. I really don't know what I got the throw for, but the moment I felt the lush, orgasmically soft texture, I haven't been able to put it down. I just wanna go to bed with it, sing 'you'd be like heaven to touch, I wanna hold you so much', while stroking and cuddling it. I'm still talking about the throw here.

This trip did have it's plus side. I've realized that I don't need a mall to survive. It's not unique, it's not affordable, and there's really not much there that I can't get from the stores around me. It's that concept of 'housing them all together' that's appealing, but I wouldn't feel the need to go out of the way to find a mall again. I felt like this was what I had to do to get it all out of my system, and sure enough, it has. The truly signature quality of Madison lies in State Street, and I'm now glad that there isn't a mall to ruin the whole small city atmosphere here.

I'm just kidding. BUILD ME A FUCKING MALL, GOD DAMNIT!

I want to leave you with quite possibly the best song of Canada's pop history, Let's Go To The Mall by Robin Sparkles.

'Take your shirt off'

I don't know if there's a list somewhere, that compiles all the phrases facial-beauticians are not supposed to say to their customers, but 'go ahead and take your shirt off' is probably up there. So I was there in a lovely dimly-litted backroom of Aveda (the salon place in my building where they have hairdressers, manicurists, facials, etc), staring at her and wondering if I signed up for the wrong type of service. She was a lovely lady, in a Nigella Lawson type of way, albeit a little on the heavy side, so there I was, wondering why a lady this comely is doing working such a back-alley business. I was just about to ask her if it was her traumatic childhood that turned her towards this line of work, when she explained that there was an arm and shoulder massage, as well as a feet massage, so I could go ahead and take off my shoes and socks as well and get under the covers.

It was unlike any facial I had ever gone to. For starters, it was ridiculously useless as a pimple clearing/cleansing procedure. The thing I remembered her doing most was lather delicious smelling salts and stuff on my face, then putting a wonderfully warm towel on my face, massage it, then remove it along with the 'stuff'. A supremely relaxing and invigorating process, but I had been hoping for more cleansing than relaxing. I'd grown accustomed to facing a needle and hundreds of pricks on my face every Tuesday for 8 months with Annie, so all this pampering just seems wrong. The soothing ambience was rubbing me up the wrong way too. (Although Isabella's arm massage was definitely rubbing me the right way.) Annie used to chat with me about Mariah, Whitney, Celine, Barbra, her children, her life in Taiwan, the time she got accused of sleeping with her boss by the boss' schizopheric wife... There was zero communication at Aveca, and customers are forced to listen to ambiance music and actually 'relax'. (Picture me saying that with a disgusted face, like every time I say 'Miley' or 'Gaga'.) 

Needless to say, I loved every minute of it. I didn't know it before I stepped into Aveca, but a Botanical Elemental Facial was just what I needed after travelling for 10000 miles (I've taken to saying miles instead of kilometers now, to further trick everyone here into thinking I know what I'm talking about) over to Madison. My arms (like all our other various other body parts) never knew what they were missing until someone starts rubbing it. This is another chance for me to be relaxing, but there was always this little nagging voice in the back of my mind going 'I hope she's not secretly laughing about how skinny my arms are'.

I step out of Aveca rejuvenated, reborn, and $25 poorer. I felt ready to take on any challenges the world presented to me. (As long as it was gift wrapped with the original tag and receipt still attached, cause you know how sometimes someone gets you something, and it's not in the right color, or right department, or in one case right gender, and you still have to smile and pretend you like it, but when they're not looking, you quickly race to the store to get it exchanged within 30 days?) Right, moving on. I was feeling rejuvenated. And might as well, because on Friday, I was on to my fourth test already, and my classes haven't even started yet. Apparently I scored well enough on my ESFLAT (English as a Second Freaking Language Test) to get a place in the highest placed class, but not well enough to get completely exempted from it. The prof told me on Thursday, when I was collecting my results, that she was deliberating whether to just straightaway exempt me, or to keep me around a while longer to see if I reallyyyyy reallyyyyy knew how to write. I think she just wanted to see if what I produced was a one-in-a-million lucky shot. She offered me another chance to sit for yet another diagnostic test, and if I manage to convince her this time round I could be exempted from the compulsory English course that everyone was expected to go for.

And so I sat for it. I don't know if I managed to produce something as presentable as what I used to do back in GP (and I'm just being a slight show-off here), in the days where I was bound to score the highest in any GP essay, and half the time I didn't know what I was going on about. The passage was about technology, and the author was arguing that it does not in fact make us stupid, or attention-span-retards, as the critics say it will, but would actually make us more knowledgeable due to the easy access we have to information. I was supposed to write a summary of the entire passage, and an opinion of it (which I'm tackling like an AQ question) within 50 minutes. I was so rushed at the end, which is a first for me, seeing how I always finish ages before the time is up, doesn't matter if I end up get 20% or 100% for the paper - I just do it quickly. I didn't even know what I was talking about anymore, just throwing random nonsense out, like how when everyone's so buried in their BlackBerries, it's an issue of their own innate personalities of 'not being able to let go' surfacing, and is not caused by technology, just brought to light by it. Dear lord - it sounds even more ridiculous the second time I write it.

It would be so embarrassing to fail to make it out of that class, even after three tries. Most just take one test, accept their fates, and move on. But nooo, I had to go for it again and again, to break out of the terribleness of doing a whole semester of English. It is true that it's not the worst fate in the world - there are others who got posted to do two or more semesters of it, but I promised myself that the English placement test was the last English test I'll ever take, and I intend to keep that promise. (The following two tests don't count. Stop being anal about it, if I say it doesn't, it doesn't.) And don't give me that 'at least you tried' bullshit. If you try once and again and don't make it, you're not determined or courageous - you just suck. (I would make a great guidance counselor. Or a gynecologist.)

Therefore (the original point I was making was that if I don't test out, it would be embarrassing), I don't intend to tell others that I didn't make it out, in the likely event that I don't. I'll just say the prof finds me such a delight to teach, so she decided to keep me around for as long as possible. Being the delight to teach that I am, I just had to let go of my personal selfish attitude and take one for the prof. That's the story and I'm sticking to it!

Oh gosh please let me be exempted from it.