A few of us went for a walk one Sunday afternoon. We passed the rich neighborhood where the homes were like duplex-style townhouses. They were huge and beautiful! They were white and looked very western, but there was still that Asian influence in them. Then just past those houses we stumbled upon this crazy place. It was like a huge park devoted to Asian and Buddhist culture, full of painted statues from folklore and stories. It was so big we didn't even get to see the whole thing before we had to leave.
One part was so weird though, and kind of grotesque. In the eastern religions here, they mostly believe in reincarnation. So their doctrine is that after you die you get judged and depending on how well you did in life you cross one of three bridges to your next life. The golden and silver bridges are good, but the third bridge is the one to the 10 Courts of Hell. You have to go to each court and if you committed a crime punishable by that court, you have to suffer a punishment. Some of the punishments are really horrible, and there were little statues and figures demonstrating of all of it. Some punishments were getting sawed in half, having your guts pulled out through your belly button, being thrown on a hill of knives, being boiled in hot oil, and other really gruesome things that I won't mention more. It was so weird!! There were some I couldn't even look at because of how graphic they were. Talk about disturbing. Not exactly what I'd planned on doing on a Sunday afternoon--church in the morning, walking through Hell in the afternoon... But it made me again very glad to know the truth. Quite comforting to know that when I die I don't have to feel more pain--no arms getting chopped off or getting ground by a stone. I'm also glad that I only have to deal with mortality once, rather than being reincarnated over and over until I can become good enough to break the cycle. The spirit world and kingdoms of glory just sound so much better to me, plus they make more sense and the Spirit constantly confirms the truth of it to me all the time.
Monday the 24th we got out of class at noon. The NUS students love taking us around to tour places and trying to get us to eat different foods and things. So we went to the Steamboat restaurant for lunch, and as expensive as it was, it was really fun. It was like a buffet, but way different than a US buffet. They bring these huge pots of soup to our table and put them on these hot plates to cook. Then we go and grab all this raw food--meat, noodles, and all kinds of things that I don't know the names for-- and we put what we want in the soup. It was SO good! And then the broth left over after having so many things cooked in it tastes amazing! There was this mango flavored pudding and some rose flavored ice cream for dessert. Both were delicious!! If it didn't cost so much money I'd definitely go back!
Afterward we went to Sentosa! It's a little island off the southern edge of the country and is still part of Singapore. It's a big tourist attraction, but being Monday there was hardly anyone there. We spent all of our time at the beach because it was so gorgeous and there was so much to do. We had a blast and took some amazing pictures as well. We stayed until after the sunset, then walked around the island some. There's this huge Merlion (mermaid + lion) statue there that is just beautiful and is all lit up at night. It's about 10 stories tall and is very majestic looking. It was a really fun afternoon, even though I'm pretty sure a responsible student would have been doing homework and research with all that free time instead of having so much fun.
The following days were mostly just full of lectures in class and group work outside of class. My group consisted of myself and three other people: Sin Lian, Siraj, and Wayne. Sin Liang and Wayne are Chinese, and Siraj is Indian, I think. We decided to redesign a product that would better accommodate a person transferring from the wheelchair to another surface (bed, toilet, couch, etc.) and still keep it affordable. We explored so many ideas, such as a wheelchair-friendly bed, some crazy transfer devices, and the wheelchair itself. Our final design is a wheelchair with a transfer board built into the armrest. It took forever to get to that point though! We ended up actually buying a used wheelchair and building a very rough, functional prototype and I made some final sketches of what it would look like if produced commercially (see below, though they're not as good as I'd like them to be). I really like how everything turned out, but getting there was really difficult. Three very different engineering-minded people and an industrial designer rarely see things the same way to start with, add a communication barrier in there with people who speak the same language at different levels and with really thick accents and you get a lot of stubbornness and frustration from everyone, though I think I felt it most. Though the thing I learned most from all of this was patience and perseverance.
I wish we'd had more time there for sight-seeing. I didn't have time to ride an elephant, swim with dolphins, or go on the Singapore Flyer. The last Friday there we presented our final designs to the class, and then at 3:00am that night we were on our way to the airport. But we made the best of it, and a bunch of us went out to have fun that last night.
We went to Orchard Boulevard, the busiest and most crowded street in the entire country I think, and walked around, shopped, and watched street performers. We went to this spa to try one of their services too. They have these little fish that eat the dead skin off of your feet. All of us Americans had to try it. My friend Brian and I went in first, and as soon as he stuck his feet in all these little tiny fish immediately covered his feet and went to town. I had the hardest time putting my feet in after I saw that, because it reminded me of leeches for a minute. But Brian talked me into it. It was the weirdest sensation in the world! My feet are the only place I'm not ticklish, but it tickled so much, especially when they'd wiggle themselves between my toes! We were all laughing and squealing while trying to be quiet in this nice relaxing place where people were in the next room getting massages and pedicures. My feet did feel pretty nice afterward though. It was so much fun! I want to do it again.
Then we found this huge playground. I mean, I'm not kidding. We didn't even get to see all of it because it was so humongous! And there were fun things for adults too! It started out with this small merry-go-round thing that maybe four people can stand on, and as it started spinning you'd lean in and it would speed up. It was so funny to see people try and stay on it when it started spinning really fast. It became a game to see who could stay on the longest and who could walk in a straight line after being on it. There was also a two-story high pyramid with a web of ropes inside it for climbing on. And then my favorite part were these short zip-lines. I seriously want to build a playground like that in Provo because tons college students would seriously love it, along with kids.
None of us went to sleep that night, and then on the flight back I slept for five hours during the first flight, and about three for the second one. Jet lag is kind of rough, but coming home was great! It was wonderful to see Bob again. I got dropped off by a shuttle at my house, and Bob came out to get my suitcase. As soon as I saw him my heart did a flip and I couldn't stop smiling. It felt just like old times when I'd visit him before we ever lived closer than 12 hours away from one another. He'd put his hair in this little faux-hawk thing that I think is super hott, And as soon as we stepped inside our house and closed the front door we just stood there and hugged for several minutes. I don't know how to explain it, but something about his touch just relaxes me like nothing else in this world.
I fell asleep for most of the day. I couldn't sleep much that night, and around 3am I found myself completely awake and unable to even close my eyes, much less fall asleep again. It turned out that Bob was awake too (since his sleep schedule was all thrown off from staying up too late playing video games and things, and not liking to sleep without me there). So we got up, I made some pumpkin bread and we played Halo on the X Box for a few hours until it was daylight. (See, Bob had borrowed our friend Scott's X Box soon after I left, since Scott had recently gotten some other gaming consoles and never uses this one anymore... and it might just end up ours, who knows...) Then we both fell asleep at about 10:30am, and I didn't wake up until 3pm, which meant we completely slept through church. And then I somehow woke up again at 7:30pm, even though I don't remember falling asleep again. Adjusting to the time here is proving a bit more of a challenge than I thought it might.
Lastly, I am so glad to get back to familiar food again! In Singapore there are food stalls and restaurants that claim to have "Western Food." Never go to any if you ever happen to be in that country. I tried one, just to see what they thought American food was like. I got barbecued chicken, and it came with French fries that reminded me of cardboard, some vegetables that I didn't entirely recognize, and an omelet. The chicken tasted more like it was fried in lard and then covered in Catalina salad dressing. Needless to say, it was horrible. Now, I loved the authentic food in Singapore, but my insides did not like it very much. I had a stomach ache almost every day from it, and my intestines just did not like absorbing all these weird, new things. The last night there we ate fish head something, frog legs, shark fin soup, and of course--rice. It was really delicious, but a few hours afterward I had to find a bathroom every half hour, because I definitely ate something I should not have. Not fun, especially having to fly home shortly thereafter.
(Fish head. See it on the right side of the platter?)
So on Saturday night I cooked again. I missed cooking! I missed being able to read food labels too. Even though the national language is English, everything is still in Chinese or Malay for the most part. So I made barbecued chicken sandwiches with peas and carrots on the side, something I am familiar with that is cooked right and didn't give me abdominal problems the next day. Such a relief, and it tasted so good.
It was a fun trip, but it's good to be home.
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