Spring Break started at 1530 today after my Optics class WOOHOO! Dad and Max come tomorrow night for a quick day in Singapore before flying to Kota Kinabalu (Malaysian Boreno) so we can climb Mt. Kinabalu, a 13,500ft mountain above the clouds. Also home to some of the rarest creatures on Earth (including that cute little primate I posted on my FB, slow loris). I can't believe my stay is already half way over. I guess I can contribute that to my travels, another reason why my blogs have been from the weekend and nothing else. We can back from our trips Monday morning, I go to class that afternoon, and spend the week doing HW, and taking my fresh laundry straight from the wash to my bag pack for the next weeks' trip. After spring break, I have only 3 more trips out of the country, so things will be slowing down and I'll get to spend some more time exploring this lovely country I'm in now :)
I finally watched the DVD my tour guide "snuck" to Alma and I from Vietnam. It was a French DVD, over layed with an English translation, further underneath a loud Vietnamese translation. Therefore, I understood none of what was said. Instead, I googles the French title and found out that it is a French-made Mini-series that played in the 90s called Unknown Images: The Vietnam War. The writer got ahold of over 20,000 hours of American video footage from the war and showed the world in a 3 part mini-series. I watched about 30 minutes of the long DVD, it was mainly about Americans (since the video was ours) and some about the South Vietnamese. It was the segment on how the soldiers were treated, and what they did on a daily basis, not relation to the war but to personal time. There were some very gruesome and un-edited clips of the medic tent. I tried to search more to see if somehow the DVD wasn't allowed to be view in Vietnam, which would make sense given the secrecy of the whole thing. I couldn't find much about it, as it was either in French or googleing the title gave me war stuff, not about the series. I did find a comment from a post-war born South Vietnamese person who was glad to have watched the show on TV (I don't know where this person lived, but I believe Vietnam based on what he/she wrote). They were glad to see the "true images" of the war that they did not grow up during. I'm sure you can find it for free online to watch if anyone is interested. Its made by a famous French producer, Daniel Costelle, who has made many documentaries in his career.
I feel like I'm learning more about the Islamicate society here in Singapore than I am anything else. I don't remember if I explained this before, but Islamicate refers to the Muslim society and NOT the Muslim region. My Islam history class is VERY interesting, our teacher knows everything in the world and she gives us every interesting articles to read about the topic and stuff written during the period, stuff like why were many mosques back in the day just converted churches? What does it mean for one religion to convert, and not destroy or start from scratch another religious church? Between that and the book I just finished for ROTC, where the author would sit down and ask men many tough questions about why they believed what they did, I'm learning alot.
Chinese is going well also. I am learning the characters quickly (at least I think). We had our first test, which was only worth 5% or our grade (their grading here is so odd). The test went pretty bad, it was a listening test and the subjects we were listening to I swore spoke faster than I even do in English... but I find that the characters are actually easier than the pinyin. As some of you may know about the Chinese language, there are tones in the language, which make it hard to learn. For instance, the word "ma" can be said with 4 different inflections, and mean completely different things. However, each of those 4 inflections have a completely different character, making the characters a little easier than the pinyin I believe. There is a way of writing them through al that confusing madness, and when I'm out about looking at characters, they just look more understandable (even though I still have no idea what 98% of it means haha). There are only 6 strokes, may of them the same thing but mirrored. For instance, a diagonal to the left and a diagonal to the right are considered 2 different strokes, even though they are almost identical. Also, there are alot of characters, mainly the more complicated ones, that are simply multiple single unit characters (simple ones) that are smashed together. For instance, the word for male, is actually 3 characters ,and one of those is the word for "Strength", so it makes sense. Many words that are associated with the females have the female character in them, such as mom and Mrs. But then, there are many exceptions. The word for surname, the name you take from your fathers side, has the female character in it which makes no sense. So sometimes it can be a little misleading.
I keep hearing how easy Malay is to learn. Malay is written in letters like our language and has similar pronunciations as we use for each letter. I have found one main difference that I can't seem to get over. When ever I attempt to pronounce a Malay word that I see on the street or on a sign, I tend to assume its complicated or whatever reason I Do it, but I pronounce the last syllable as the main syllable. I am pretty much always wrong in the pronunciation, therefore botching the word and making no sense. the words all have a 1st syllable emphasis, which makes sense because easy languages should have easy words to pronounce, but I still keep messing it up and confusing everyone haha.
Nothing more to report. I will most likely be without internet during my spring break, so the blogs will come later when we get back. Here's our itinerary if anyone's interested :) Sunday at about 1am Dad and Max land, we are staying near Little India for the night for a nap. In the morning, I'll take them around Little India, Chinatown, and Marina Bay (the main city) to let them see the sites. We board a plane to Kinabalu that evening. On Monday morning, we hop a van early to make it to the mountain base. The gate closes at 10am to get into the Nat'l Park, as its a law you must have a guide to hike the mountain and they all leave early, therefore there's on reason anyone else should be coming into the park later. That day we will be walking around the jungle and getting used to the altitude, as we are already a mile above the sea-town of Kota Kinabalu (KK). Tuesday morning, we meet up with our guide, grab our bag packs, and climb to 11,000ft. This should take a good couple hours, but I hear the hike isn't too bad. That evening we will get to our "hotel" which are little wooden shacks without AC at 11,000ft above the tree line. Wednesday morning at 2am, we will be woken up to finish the last 2-3hrs of the hike in the middle of the night to reach the summit, which will be at 32 degrees potentially, even though the island is in the middle of the equator. We will then sit up there, freezing, overlooking probably the most beautiful view of the sky and milky way, as we are above the clouds and nothing will be blocking the view from the sky. We wait for sunrise and watch the sunrise from the peak. We then go back down to our "hotel" for breakfast and a break before heading back down the mountain. That evening we go to Poring Hot Springs in the park for some well deserved relaxation in hot water. Thursday morning, we head back down to KK maybe to wander the beach and see the town. We leave Friday afternoon for Singapore, where we will be having dinner in the city, because you can't leave Singapore without seeing its beautiful lite-up night skyline. The guys will be leaving bright and early Sat morning and I get to come back to NTU to study for my Optics Midterm :) Happy Spring Break!!!
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