Sitting on the fence

Have been tweaking my personal statement for the past week...it's almost but not quite done, and everytime I look at it i feel sick, and don't feel like doing it nor anything else cos I'm supposed to be working on the statement....

Will finish it soon, I promise myself. Then again I promised to finish it before October.

Anyways, today I've got my Singapore permanent resident identity card. Thought it was a date worth noting. Short term means I can borrow library books, and have to contribute 20% of my salary to CPF (central provident fund) now....mid-term, maybe I can buy a HDB flat?

Mum and bro and sisses coming this weekend, a weekend's break! Maybe I'll stay awake tonight until I finish the statements, so I can truly relax then....

Ppl wish me all the best...

Back in Singapore / USA photolog

I'm back in Singapore....whew after 2 weeks of travelling....and an 18 hour flight....much as USA was fun, it's good to be back home, will take the day off to properly rest (ie slack)

Hmm 2 weeks to cover, hadn't been able to update much during the trip...I guess photos are the best way to go eh?

We went to Los Angeles after San Francisco (Stanford)...popped by Caltech, but it's not really a pretty campus....so we went to Hollywood! If you zoom you can see the famous white "HOLLYWOOD" sign in the background...






Of course, there's the Hollywood walk of fame...the streets are paved with hundreds of stars, but most of us will be familiar with only half of them, as many are before our generation...wonder if our children will recognize "Tom Cruise" etc....well a few more famous ones: Tom Cruise, Marilyn Monroe, and someone (something?) kinda unexpected...








And one more for a friend who's a big fan of Julie Andrews...



There's also another place Hollywood stars get eternalized...that's by casting their handprints in concrete in front of Grumman's Chinese Theatre:

Frank Sinatra, and Julie Andrews again..............

On the right, some less expected footprints?

Ok then enough of Hollywood...we went to Beverly Hills too, VERY posh shopping area:

Chic chick?

Onwards to Boston, home of the two great unis: Harvard and MIT! Stayed with Leah for almost a week...very gracious host, though we hardly could talk to her, she being stressed out as usual, haha....I did meet up with two professors, several graduate students, and lots of old friends!

Ok first off, a panorama of Harvard Yard (click to enlarge, looks better bigger)...reminds me a little of the courtyards of Cambridge, except Harvard has maybe like 2 courtyards, and the buildings consist of dorms, a library, a church, various departments etc...

The gang....old Cambridge (the original in UK!) ppl Leah and Kenneth, and Wee Lee (Singapore Police Force scholar) at the extreme left....

The city of Cambridge (the USA one, which Harvard and MIT reside in) also has this beautiful river running through it....left is the Charles River during sunset, right during the day...

Harvard also has the world's only collection of glass flowers, which a professor of botany once comissioned a father-son team of glass blowers to make....these are INCREDIBLY DETAILED LAH!!! You wouldn't believe these are PURE glass! From flowers to leaves to the roots....zoom in to see the detail...there are like hundreds of specimens like these...

And of course, the unexpected event that drew most of the Malaysian and Singaporean population in the area to the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard one Monday night:

Anwar Ibrahim in the flesh! His speech as I said wasn't impressive, more filled with politicians' catchphrases...but it was something to see him in person....apparently he's doing the lecture circuit now, being a fellow in Oxford, teaching in the University of Illinois, and now giving a speech in Harvard.

Ok I guess enough of Harvard....MIT has ugly buildings though, so not many nice photos, but one cool one here....the MIT nuclear reactor....man we should get ourselves one of those....

Hmm with regards to the actual purpose of the trip, I did meet some professors and lab members, and they were really nice and helpful in describing their research interests, but I still dunno how much help this will be for my applications...ah well....rest of this month have to chiong...must finish long-long-overdue personal statement soon else I'll be going nowhere.....

Ibrahim!!

Lotsa places to write about, but I'll have to skip them all for one big thing that just happened...

There was a talk at the Kennedy School of Government this evening, and it was by no other than Anwar Ibrahim! The topic was "Islam and democracy", and lotsa Malaysians and Singaporeans went, including me. It was incredible to see this guy who's been missing from the Malaysian scene for years, up front.

He gave an ok talk, I felt strong on style but less on substance, but I guess most politicians talk like that. It was still amazing to have seen him though...will write more about it when I'm back in Singapore...