Hello all...

Right now I've just returned from some very humorous lessons in basic Mandarin Chinese, and I figured it's a good time to post on the blog. The past couple of days have been fairly relaxed, which has been fantastic, but then that doesn't really give you a lot of reading material. That said, the majority of people who read this probably wonder when I'll ever shut up sometimes, so this post is for you.

Monday I had class as usual, but instead of going to the Deck for our usual lunch, we ate in style with the NUS president. From what I've gathered, Dan Gold ran into him in Korea or some other Asian country a few months ago and they agreed to arrange a lunch for our group of 25, plus Shu (NUS alum who helps us out), Meredith (UNC grad student), Dan, and Joey (UNC sophomore). We had to dress up a bit, more than the "smart casual" when we've gone out to events before. This time was a tie and slacks for guys, and the female equivalent for the girls. Anyway, we ate in the University Hall on campus, which reminded me of a modern, less swanky version of the UNC Alumni Building on south campus at UNC. The three round tables were in a large, circular room with a great view of the campus and beyond into some of the outskirts of central Singapore. The NUS president said a few words, as well as Dan, then it was wonderful food for all. Food food food... I seriously need to find something else to talk about in my blog. It's just that it's so intense here and quite different, in a way.

The assistant professor at our table was in the history department and native to Australia. I feel like a lot of professors at NUS and around Southeast Asia are Australian, just because those old enough now to be professors did not have such schooling options like NUS as there are now. In that sense, the demographics of professors should change in the next few decades. At least, that's my humble and very unqualified opinion, based on personal observation (as Professor Gold would have me note carefully). The professor specialized in comics and how the evolution and production of comic strips reflected social norms and conflicts within a society, particularly in the US. Now, I'm not much of a comic enthusiast. The extent of my knowledge comes from Get Fuzzy, Peanuts, and Garfield, and that's not exactly the type of comic he studies. As for ones like Batman, Superman, and Xmen, if it's not in the movies (or early episodes of Smallville), I don't have a clue. At any rate, it was an interesting dinner topic. Then we got into other things like the mad quantities of text messages that Singaporeans, as well as this professor, seem to receive and send. Even Carrie was texting the whole weekend, while I've sent only two in all the years I've had my phone. That conversation also led into the logistics (and horrors) of Facebook, which is always an engaging topic because it's always amusing to see people's reactions to the concept and exactly how popular it is among students.

After lunch Rebekah and I went the Singapore Art Museum. We'd thought about going to the Botanical Gardens, but we finally decided to stick to an indoor activity and save the gardens for a weekend. The art museum was cool, especially since it's so rare to see actual Asian art. Some of the modern stuff was really good, and it's a shame this strain of art is neglected in school and in Western museums.

And then we investigated the really modern art, like a film called The Seven Lost Loves of Frank, in which this guy tries for years and years to find love until he's in a nursing home or something and then he meets the perfect woman. Very unusual film. There were also strange exhibits with things hanging from walls, even an entire room with red fluffy stuff on the walls like something right out of Dr. Seuss. Strange. Then we went to get some homemade fried dumplings and fried rice and Milo ice cream milkshakes. Amaaaaaaazingly delicious.

Last night I just messed around, did my reading, and talked with some of my fellow group members for a while.

And the highlight of today, after classes and lunch, was when about fifteen of us got together and had Dan teach us some Mandarin. Ha. The hardest part about Mandarin (aside from the phenomonally difficult task of learning to read it) is the four different tones. English doesn't really have any structured tones, except maybe sentence inflections when you make your voice rise at the end of a question. Well, syllables in Chinese have high tones, falling tones, rising tones, and falling then rising tones.

Needless to say, all I learned was how to say one through ten, and even those are horrible. I would write them here to prove it, but I can't write Mandarin. All I know is the Romanization of the language, or how it looks phonetically to us, and even that's difficult because I don't know how to do the tone accents. You'll just have to believe me!

So that's about it for today. All in all, very relaxing. Right now I just want some Milo milkshakes, though. Mmmm.