it's the end of the song at 8:37 PM

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it's the end of the song at 8:37 PM

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Some people thought the architecture was pretentious but I beg to differ.. Why read so much into it? Or maybe i'm just being superficial.. For me, as long as they are asthetically pleasing, I adore it. A simple as that. Not really an architectural history kinda person.. Besides, it's not like it's some monument or church in Rome that has a long history of sorts.. The university is established because of its academics and culture, not so much of it's architecture... Well, to each is his own opinion=) No point.

See that pic with 2 girls in bikini in the fountain? well, here's something even better though we missed it=(

On May 25th (way after our programme concluded), our dear Prof, Daniel posted this our our Facebook group: "San Francisco Chronicle, yesterday's edition, has a pic of two Stanford female undergrads skinnydipping in the fountain in front of the bookstore, taking a break from protesting in nude against sweatshop production of Stanford apparels. Oh, the aesthetics of student activism here..." See this article - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/05/23/BAG7MPVUUB1.DTL&o=0

damn, we should have stayed longer. Haha.

it's the end of the song at 8:37 PM

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And here I am, finally at San Francisco after two flights of 14 hours in total!

We were chartered from the airport to the place where we have stayed for two weeks – Comfort Inn, Palo Alto=)

The is Comfort Inn

Except for the wireless connection, everything else was great here=)

My first meal in Palo Alto was at Jack in the Box, a fast food chain.. kinda like Carl’s Jr. I like Jack in the Box better=p

Then we rested in our rooms and waited for dinner… We had take-out from Pizza Chicago… The pizza was yummy and we were all photo-whoring our food=)

it's the end of the song at 8:37 PM

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The train station at the airport... Looks kinda like Hong Kong actually=p

The rush (This has not been photoshop-ed)

The journey to Shibuya took us about 90 mins odd (or longer), so it's PICTURE TIME! hur.

Guan Zheng & I

Christine, Gabriel, Jabir & Huishan

And... Shibuya, here we come!!!

Shibuya is a pretty and clean shopping district. It's so clean that it makes our very own Orchard Road looks like it needs some refurbishing... And looking at Shibuya's multi-coloured facet with its quirky architecture... WE NEED MORE DARING ARcHITECTURE IN SINGAPORE MAN! Ok, enough of s'pore-bashing...An interesting observation during our trip in Shibuya was that almost everyone on the streets carry an umbrella. Guys included. Many guys in Singapore do not carry an umbrella, not even when they have a bag. Did I not mention it was raining? Yes, it rained midway thru our trip.. what a disappointment but well, it was all nice and cooling so no complaints.. As a matter of fact, we saw many people on the streets carrying those transparent umbrellas seen in the pics above. We thought it was some trendy thing or something but we later found out that those transparent ones are apparently the cheapest ones available for sale at the train station. Hmm, makes sense but do they purchase one on every occasion it rains? Cos they do not seem to be prepared for the rain… at least not for us cos the weather was damn fine and cooling when we arrived. Maybe they had some rental thingy or smthg… we can only speculate...

Anyway, the stuff in Japan are all pretty and interesting. Just like what we’ve seen on tv. And of course, just as we’ve heard, things in Japan are damn expensive. Maybe because we didn’t have time to shop around for the cheap stuff or that we went to the wrong place. The girls bought some stuff though.. As usual… hurhur.

After shopping for a couple of hours, we decided to settled down for an authentic Japanese meal before we catch our next flight to San Francisco. We ate at this restaurant that a CD stall guy recommended… Mine was good but not fantastic… Should have gotten like sushi or something except that they didn’t have sushi I think… Everything on the menu is Japanese and only Jabir knows how to speak and read Japanese so ya, we all had to trouble him with the translation…

And not long after our meal, we had to make our way back to Narita airport=( The journey back was another 105 mins… While buying the train tickets, we got split into 2 groups. A few of us who came later looked around for the other group but we couldn’t find them so we took the next available train. Turned out that the other group took the train after ours cos they were waiting for us at another platform… Yup, and we were all worried if each other managed to make our way back to the airport on time… Pretty unfortunate but exciting on the very first day of our trip.

it's the end of the song at 8:37 PM

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it's the end of the song at 8:37 PM

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it's the end of the song at 4:51 PM

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15 May 2007 Tuesday

As usual, we had a lecture in the morning. It was on “Re-inventing Silicon Valley”. Insightful lecture on the icons (HP & Google!), the historical context, the features of SV and the implications and future of SV…

Then it was field research time for us in the afternoon! Many of them went to the library or stayed around in Stanford to do their research while Aileen, Shamiah and I ventured into East Palo Alto (EPA) again. We visited the Cesar Chavez Academy which is an elementary school predominantly Hispanic-dominated.

A group of students playing games during free time before school ends at 3pm.

They have their own mini track and field in their school!

A glimpse of one of their classrooms...

Saw this in one of the classrooms... Pretty insprising=)

We interviewed a relief teacher, a regular teacher and a couple of students. This tonga student whom we met left a deep impression in me.

That's him beside me... His name is Alofangia. Nice young chap=)

He’s in 8th grade and the President of some student group. He was a problem child and was recently transferred to this school because his previous school requested for the transfer. But since his transfer, he met this really great teacher who changed his life and now he’s doing so well. He has a GPA of 3.0. Pretty good for a minority student in the States=) His greatest aspiration is to be a policeman so that he can give something back to his community in EPA. He believes that the media has often reported the stabbings and shootings in EPA but neglected the social problems the community has to deal with. He wants to go to college too, maybe Stanford=) We were so inspired by his community spirit and idealism. Hopefully, he can achieve his goals in the years to come…

We also interviewed this white American boy. He’s one of the few Caucasians in the predominantly-minority school (sounds oxymoronic… the minorities are the majority in this school). Surprisingly, he said he gets along very well with the other ethnicities and he did not feel alienated just because he is surrounded by the minority ethnicities… I wonder why...
The school ended at 3 and we did not have time to make it in time to another school in the vicinity so we decided to make a trip to the Police Station to get some statistics of the EPA community.

See, it states so la!

However, it wasn’t exactly THE Police Station per se. It was in fact, the records department, which explains why it closes at 4.30pm that day. Hiya, then say “Police Records Department” la… waste our time only…

As they have just knocked off, we decided to knock on the door anyway. Fortunately, someone opened the door and let us in. While we did not get any statistics, we heard from the people in the records department that there had been a shooting yesterday and a stabbing incident a couple of days back. And they kept warning us how dangerous it is to hang out in EPA. Hence, one of the ladies (I guess she’s a latino) who is currently training to be a policewomen offered to give us a ride to downtown Palo Alto=) Sweet.

As downtown Palo Alto, we got free scopes of Haggen Daas ice cream because a new flavor was introduced today and they were giving free scopes of ice cream. I tried the Sticky Toffee Pudding or something like that. Very sweet but good la. So Singaporean to go for free stuff... But that’s definitely not something that I am proud of being a Singaporean…

After savoring the yummy ice cream, Aileen and I headed back to Stanford. We had our dinner at the food fair for International Week.

Setting up in the morning...

There’s Turkish food, Mexican food, Indian food, Chinese food, American food (whatever that means), and Italian food. The silican beef skewers from the Italian store was damn good la. Yummy! There was only a rock band playing and you’ll see Stanford students dancing to the music. Really cool. Wish we had that in NUS=(

After which, we crashed a lecture on bilingual education in the school of education. The prof was pretty nice and made us introduce ourselves to the whole class of about 15-20 students. Surprisingly, none of them knows where Singapore is. One even said we are at the east to China (that’s Japan la)=( During lesson, we broke up into a few groups to participate in jigsaw learning. Each group talked about a specific question and they will re-group themselves with people from other groups and teach the rest on their specific topic. Anyway, that’s not the point. The last time we interacted with the Stanford students who hosted us, I felt extremely inferior because they are all so smart, so well-learned about almost everything… but after interacting with students from this education class, Aileen and I felt that the comments that these Stanford students made were not exceptionally intelligent. I think they are comparable to NUS students except that they are more vocal and willing to speak up without fear of embarrassing themselves… Some to learn from them…

When class ended, the prof, an educational psychologist, was damn nice la. He drove us back to our doorstep even though he lived nearer to campus than we do. Cool!

it's the end of the song at 4:51 PM

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14 May 2007 Monday

Just left Berkeley this morning=( I was kinda sad that I won’t be returning here for exchange next semester. Back in the Comfort Inn in Palo Alto now… so much better than YMCA in Berkeley la... Ok, shall not complain…

We went to the Opportunities Industrialization Center West (OICW) in Menlo Park/ East Palo Alto (where the low-income people reside)...

The staff there were fantastic. We had a session with Poetess Kalamu Chaché who is also the in-school coordinator for the youth services. Basically, OICW is a centre that co-ordinates work opportunities and skills learning for the underprivileged youths – mainly African-Americans and Hispanics/Latinos. Kalamu Chaché answered our questions passionately, and on our request, she recited one of the poems she wrote… I can’t remember the title exactly but it’s something along the line of “How I Believe in Love”… It was totally beautiful=) I’m not a fan of poetry but her works aren’t pretentious and has the African-American’s “love” slant to it=) I tried to google for the poem but I couldn't find it… Maybe I shall email her for it… Hmm…

For dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant next to our hotel… The nachos and salsa sauce were pretty good but my main course isn’t great=( It’s some enchilada tepa (sautéed chicken with seasoned potatoes and avocado slices, cheese etc)…

Kinda taste like some Indian dish…

Anyway, this trip has just affirmed my dislike for certain kinds of people.

First, I detest people who exaggerate their reactions to almost anything and everything that it seems obviously pretentious and attention-seeking to me.Second, I hate those who have ordered their own meals and eat almost everyone else’s but their own.
Third, ##%^$&^%&*%(*&(*$@!... Ok, I shall not say because I’m not sure who’s reading this now…

I don’t like to gossip.

Ya right.

it's the end of the song at 4:51 PM

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