Recess week is on!

So the last weeks have been a bit hectic with hand-in assignments, quizzes and mid-terms. I realized that I haven't had a day free from studying for over two weeks now so it feels a bit good to finally get a break. This week I had a hand-in assignment and a group assignment in quantum mechanics (we're I learned some awesome new things like matrix exponentials for instant), a quiz in Chinese and one in number theory and to top it off I had a mid-term in introduction to solids.

When I get back from recess another mid-term awaits on Monday morning, a hand-in assignment until Monday, a mid-term the following Friday and the Monday after that another term-test. The picture above is from one of my regular lecture halls.

Last Wednesday I received the first part of my Wushu-club uniform; long-pants and a t-shirt! Now I'm just waiting for shoes and a belt. I'll post pictures of it when I've gotten the full uniform!

So the day before yesterday you could feel recess moving closer and I had to go collect my ticket for the Singapore Grand Prix, the collection point was inside one of the more expensive hotels in Singapore and just walking in there in my school clothes made me feel a bit under dressed. But afterwards I was one awesome ticket richer!

So after everything on Friday me and some friends took a cab and went directly into the city to try to catch the first F1 practice session. We just made it and they started driving just as we were trying to find a good spot to watch from.

We had gotten the cheapest tickets available (38 SGD) so we always had a net in the way of our view and it was a bit crowded at times. The F1 is spread out over three days with two practice sessions on the Friday, one practice session and the qualifying race on Saturday and last but not least the real race on Sunday evening. The ticket was only valid for the Friday and the tickets for the other days cost about 150 SGD, but that really isn't a problem since I'm going to fly to Bali instead today!

But watching the F1 was really cool, to see how light and fast they are and feel the camera shake from the sound every time they accelerate. Truly incredible cars!

Taking photos of the moving cars was kind of a challenge, pretty soon I realized that the best way was to try to follow them with the camera but it was still hard trying to adapt the speed to cars so a lot of the pictures got blurry but I've tried to upload the better ones.

The guys I went to the GP with are three Danish guys (Jacob, Jacob and Mahmoud) that I'm taking Chinese and Introduction to Solids with, we are also going together to Indonesia (Bali and Yogyakarta) together with another Danish guy and a Korean!

And of course there were not just F1 all the time, there is a lot of activities going on when the cars are not on the circuit. For example a lot of bands, unfortunately the Friday bands weren't especially famous (compared to Shakira, Linkin Park and Rick Astley that are playing today and tomorrow), but we saw the Bollywood Express which is an Indian pop-band. It was actually better than I had imagined and the music was some kind of Indian-inspired dance-pop with a lot of dance and show accompanying it.

There were also girls with "sufficiently covering" clothes, which of course is customary during male dominated events like races and game conventions.

Between the two F1 practice sessions there was a qualifying race for the JK Racing Asia Series (also known  as the Formula BMW Asia series). Smaller and slower cars that almost looked like go-carts with F1 chassis (as Jacob stated).

But even though they were slower they still managed to crash repeatedly so I believe three or four cars had crashed at the end of the qualifying race.

But of course the F1 cars was the coolest by far!

We'll see when I get a chance to do another blog post but it might take a while since I'm going to Indonesia so have a nice recess week everybody!

P.S. There are more photos available to watch at https://picasaweb.google.com/114175536639546946829/QuantumGrape?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJPNyLuouqWtxAE&feat=directlink

Weekend studies

Well, there's a lot to do in school now so I have actually spent the last two weekends studying. More or less the whole days and it's a bit scary; I usually never study especially much or hard on the weekends in Sweden (except during the exam periods of course). But it might be due to our recess week coming up in a week and I have mid-term exams in most of my courses. So don't go around thinking that life's that easy down here!

But at the same time recess week is coming up and I have booked tickets to Bali and home from Jakarta together with some new made friends! We're currently planning but it looks like it's going to be a tight schedule with volcanoes, temples, beautiful beaches and a lot more. And since we're leaving on Saturday afternoon I have bought tickets to Singapore Grand Prix on Friday evening. Sure, it might just be training sessions on the Friday but it's still F1!

But I can fill out with some pictures from Fort Canning Hill and Chinatown since I haven't posted them on the blog yet and hopefully from Friday I will start taking a lot more photos again.

The pictures are from a day a few weeks ago when me and Jonas went to Chinatown and then walked through two parks and eventually wound up at City Hall, a nice walk in short!

So tomorrow morning the last rush before recess week begins: time for force study! (like in Star Wars for those who doesn't get it)

Just want to end with letting you know that I miss all you people at home, especially you Linda, just so you know.

And also for you who doesn't know yet; I planning to go home to Sweden in December. I haven't decided on the exact details yet but I'm going to be in Sweden for the major part of December!

Live long and prosper!

The Zoo

The delay for this blogpost might have been a little long since I visited the Singapore Zoo Tuesday last week but there's been a lot to do and other things to post about!

So Monday and Tuesday last week we didn't have any scheduled classes due to the presidential election making the Monday a public holiday and the Tuesday was Hari Raya, the Muslim new year. So even if I had been in Malaysia during the weekend I thought that I had to do something during these days off and the Singapore Zoo seemed like a nice day-trip!

After some last minute bail-outs it ended up being me, Hallvard and Sanaz. The trip to the zoo took approximately one hour, the zoo being located far north in Singapore at the top of a big nature reserve.

One of the biggest differences of the Singapore compared to Swedish zoos is the density of animals; in Sweden a lot of animals are able to hide in their enclosures and you're never able to see them but here in Singapore the enclosures are so small that it's more or less impossible for the animals to hide and you get to a lot of cool animals!

Another thing is of course the assortment of animals which is a bit different thanks to the climate, so we could see crocodiles, a lot of different fishes and turtles which I don't think are so easy to find in Sweden.

Then we saw this strange animal as well; they call it a Norwegian! They resemble us humans more than you can imagine actually! :)

But of course, with a smaller area for the zoo it easily becomes crowded (classic Singapore) and at some places it was hard to get a good picture due to all the people.

I also ate one of the most expensive ice-creams I've ever eaten (at least compared to what I got, Smultronstället is bit more expensive but then you get a lot for the money); I paid $10 (55 SEK) for two scoops of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the ice-cream but sure, it was good ice-cream.

We spent our whole afternoon walking around the zoo and I think that it was sufficient, at 17 you started getting a little tired of walking around but that was at about the same time as we realized that we had gone around everything and seen almost all the different animals. In conclusion, it was a an afternoon well spent!

Shifu

Today we had our first proper training with the clubs Shifu (master), he teaches the traditional Wushu session on Wednesdays. The traditional sessions are more focused on application and we also go through some self-defense techniques. It was fun, pretty sweaty and my hands are a bit sore now after the self-defense technique. Afterwards we had an early celebration of the mid-autumn festival by drinking tea and eating mooncake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake). And no, even if it sounds like they contain drugs, they don't.

Had my second meeting with the research group, I'm going to help out with a simulation now of an entangled dual-particle system. Going to get to the code they use on Friday and also get a MatLab ISO since it takes to long to download it from LiU's servers. I don't understand how I forgot to install MatLab before leaving Sweden... You actually feel a little empty without it.

Found this sign a few days ago:

Accidentally took more dishes than I had planned for lunch today so when paying I got the comment "Very hungry!" from the cashier, haven't gotten it before and the funny thing was that the cost of the whole meal was 3,50 SGD (ca 19 SEK). It feels good that you can get a "Very hungry!" meal for that amount of money!

I can end with commenting on one of the differences between Singapore and Sweden; here in Singapore the period of the traffic lights is much longer so that if you just miss a green light then you have stand and wait for like five minutes or something (okay, maybe not but you have to stand there for a while). Sweden's traffic lights you barely have to wait for but at the same time we have lower population density, I guess the difference in population density is one of the main causes for the larger differences between Singapore and Sweden. When taking the bus or the MRT here you never check any timetable, you just go there and it will always come a bus or train within ten minutes, compared to the Pålsboda - Örebro bus that you have to wait for for two hours on weekends if you miss it.

Now I'm going to bed, might read a little "A Clash of Kings" before falling asleep.

Nattinatt!

Life in Singapore 101

But I guess one of the things you're wondering the most about is what life is like in general (as it is on request as well).

Well, it's hot. How hot it is it? It's so hot I pour McDonalds coffee in my lap to cool down. Okay, maybe not but you will probably burn yourself pretty badly if trying to walk on asphalt or the basket courts here during a sunny day. But the heat might not be biggest problem, we have wicked humidity making you sweat rivers and which keeps my pillow (in our non-AC apartment) constantly moist. But how does the Singaporeans solve this? AC is the weapon-of-choice and after having adapted to the heat you now freeze on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) and in the lecture theaters. The funny thing is that staying in an AC room for a while will make water condense on your skin when you walk outside, it's a bit weird, kind of like sweat but not really. It's fake-sweat.

Random picture from campus, the Yunnan Garden:

Since Singapore is so close to the equator the night/day ratio is very close to 1, the sun goes up sometime between 6 and 7 in the morning and sets at about 19 in the evening. So parties start pretty early here in general (but it might also be due to the MRT and regular buses stop going at midnight).

I'm kind of an early bird since I like to maximize (t' = 0, t'' < 0) my days so I usually get up at around 6.15. Walking to the toilet I keep an eye out for wildlife (read cockroaches) in the kitchen, if I find any I launch a swift and decisive offensive with chemical weapons and remove all signs of them from the premises.

Having made sure that I belong to the dominant species in the apartment I sit down to eat my breakfast. My breakfast usually consists of expensive yoghurt (since it's the only available in Singapore, 30 SEK/L), cereals or müsli, wholegrain toast bread (since more proper bread costs about 20 SEK/7 slices) and on that I usually eat crab sticks now since it's the cheapest (taking quality into consideration) food I've found to put on my sandwiches. And sometimes if I'm feeling a bit luxurious I might add some fruit to that.

I then go to school (if I'm not free of course) by walking for just over 10 minutes, getting a sweaty back due to the backpack, and then taking bus 179 to campus. This is also one of the reasons I like to get up early, the bus goes from a bus interchange and between 7.45 and 10.00 the queue gets so long that multiple buses are filled before you're allowed to board, my record is two buses and me getting on the third.

Then it's like school, school, school until lunch. Mmm... lunch. In Singapore you almost always eat out (especially students) since it's so cheap, and I'm only allowed to do light cooking in the apartment. And when you eat you eat at food courts or hawker centers, the difference being that the first one is air-conditioned. There you can find tons of different food stalls where you can get what you feel for at the moment. The usual setup is that the stalls have a bunch of different small-dishes but I think I'll go more into the food in it's own future blog post but if you can't wait there's a sneak peek below of some vegetarian food.

Canteen B, the place where I usually eat:

Just to clarify, the food is NOT bought at the place above, it's at a food court in a shopping mall near where I live.

After the lunch school continues until about 17.30 at the longest for me and afterwards I either go home, meet up with friends or stay at school to study more (yeah, for real!) or because I have Wushu training at 19! I usually try to eat my dinner at school as well because it's cheaper in average compared to the food courts and hawker centers around where I live.

And after that long and hard day I take the bus home, go by Fairprice if I need to buy some groceries, and walk home with my book-filled backpack. I get in, throw the backpack off, spend a little time at the computer  (and hopefully making a blog post) and then I go to bed.

Malacca

Last weekend I went to Malacca in Malaysia together with a ton of exchange students from NTU, NUS and SMU. A bit crowded, a bit too much of waiting and not the best execution of the plan but still had a lot fun!

We left on Friday evening with bus from campus, starting our journey north. The customs between Malaysia and Singapore was efficient and problem free and afterwards we had about a three hour drive to Malacca. The feature movie was Limitless which wasn't that bad at all and a pretty good bus movie. Arriving in Malacca at about 23.30 we we're served a tiny portion of cold chicken and rice balls, "the typical Malaysian cuisine". It was edible but didn't really feel like a proper meal at the time. We then checked in to our hotels and most of us went to sleep.

You couldn't really appreciate our 17th floor view in the middle of night as you could in the morning. It was a good view to wake up with and it felt like it was going to be a good day!

After some breakfast at an Indian-restaurant we started moving to old-town (Malacca is divided into new-town and old-town, old-town being the original Malacca with old buildings, churches and so on). Being a rather large group it took a while and we did a pit-stop at McDonalds for the people that hadn't eaten breakfast yet.

Finally we arrived in old-town were we went to the Cheng-Ho museum, a chinese merchant-fleet captain to dominated south-east Asia during his time.

And they had a cool compass with what I believe to be some sort of calendar.

After the museum we visited a tea-house just next door were we got to experience a "traditional Chinese tea-ceremony", it was fun to actually brew Chinese tea the "correct way" with all the cleansing of the cups, don't drink the first brew and so on. (Picture on the courtesy of Hallvard)

And to go with the tea we got some rice-pudding or something, they were a bit gelatinous for my taste though.

Afterwards we went looking for lunch, we found a place but due to a really slow restaurant and our lunch being time limited I had to leave before getting my food (everyone else got their food...) so my lunch consisted of water, cashews and peanuts... Kind of disappointing.

We then met up again to take a bus to our afternoon activities, and I had signed for an "ATV jungle adventure". It might not have been that much of an adventure as I had hoped but it was great fun driving the ATV-buggy me and Hallvard shared.

We managed to break to of them, we don't know what happened to the first one and the second one was missing a bolt for one of the wheels when we got back. :)

In the evening we had a eight course (I even think it was nine including the rice) dinner at a restaurant in old-town, it was fun to get to taste so many different dishes with everything from fruit and vegetables to mussels, chicken, fish and mutton.

We then headed back to our hotel were we had our pre-party pool-party! The pool might not have been that special but it's always nice to get to cool off here in south-east Asia! The real party then was at a club just across the street, it was a bit funny since no one was dancing until we arrived and I think we made the DJ feel a little more appreciated actually giving some kind of response to his music.

On the Sunday it was more free-for-all and I went around with Per and Hallvard looking at some of Malaccas historical sites, we took a boat-tour on the Malacca river and took a stroll in a shopping mall. So now I have a sun-feather and a couple of sun-glasses!

We saw a lot of monitor lizards in the Malacca river!

At 17 we went home with the bus and unfortunately the featured movie was a crap-quality Fast and Furious 5 so I mostly slept on the way home.

It might not have been the perfect trip but I still had lots of fun in Malacca! :)

Physics at NTU

Well, as most of you know (or understands) I'm currently studying physics here at Nanyang Technological University; or mostly physics that is. Since the different subjects are handled by different schools (sv: institutioner) I take most of my courses at the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. The courses I'm currently enrolled in are:

PAP221 - Classical Mechanics
A course that introduces the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism of classical mechanics. The level of the course might be a little too easy actually since I've already covered most of the applications in Linköping; but I believe that learning of the formalism is essential for my future studies, especially in quantum physics. The problem is that the physics students here learn the formalism pretty early on compared to the Y-program.

PAP232 - Introduction to Solids
An introductory course to solid state physics, this one might also be a bit too easy but it is required for continued studies in solid state physics.

PAP311 - Quantum Mechanics II
This one is probably the only course that I'm enrolled in this semester that is both important on the right level, it might even be a bit above my level of knowledge but I think it is possible to catch up to any difference in previous knowledge. New notations, broader applications and a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics, this course is the real deal!

MAS323 - Number Theory
How does numbers work? I've been interested in taking the number theory course in Linköping for some time so I thought I might give it a shot here in Singapore. But although I might have studied more math than the physics students, I have certainly not studied more math than the math students; rendering this course a bit hard for me but I believe it to be manageable.

LC9001 - Chinese Language Level 1
They might say that everyone speaks English or something close to it here Singapore. But a lot of people are struggling with their English and combine that with Chinese being the world's most spoken language you have a pretty incentive to learn it. But it's probably one of few courses where you can sit and laugh at yourself almost all the time. I also have a Chinese name now, Bai Kai Long (白凯龙), since you of course need to have a Chinese name when speaking Chinese.

The good things with the physics courses is that we have the same course literature as in Linköping, except the Introduction to Solids which I believe has a simpler book.

Besides this I have also joined the NTU Wushu club which you can read about in my earlier post (and very likely in future posts) with which I have training sessions two times three hours a week.

But one of the cooler things is that I have joined a theoretical physics research group here at NTU and SPMS that is working with quantum entanglement and chaos theory to explore fundamental properties of quantum systems. NTU encourages undergraduates to do research so that they can experience what it means to be a researcher and (hopefully) encourage to further studies. I'm currently a bit behind with the physics but I'm catching up quickly with the mathematics thanks to my quantum mechanics course; hopefully the physics will sort itself out with time.

That's a summary of what I'm doing in school now and what's taking up most of my time (in case you're wondering why I'm not more active with the blog, online on Skype etc.)

PS. Got back my first hand-in assignment today, graded A; feels pretty good actually. The picture above is me in front of the art and design school.