Clubbing in Singapore: some insights

Clubbing here in Singapore is a lot of fun. It is also very expensive. So there are a few things you can do to do it for free:

First of all, you have to be a girl. This is very important. Once you have this under control, you should go out on Wednesdays. This is because Wednesday is Ladies' Night. This means girls enter clubs for free AND they get free drinks as well, usually 3-7 vouchers that can be exchanged for any drink. Guys, on the other hand, have to pay the regular cover fee of 30-35 SGD (around 25 USD). While you are in the considerably-longer girl line waiting to go in, bouncers are very vigilant of any individual of the opposite sex who dares to talk to the girls. If they spot an offender, they immediately proceed to kick him out. Girls in line cannot talk to guys, they explain with a serious face, they have to do it inside. It's a good money-making strategy.

SINGAPORE: my first impressions

SAN FRANCISCO --> BEIJING --> SINGAPORE

I'm finally in South East Asia, after 24 hours of travel with Air China and a good dose of interaction with Chinese people. After spending about 15 hours on the plane to Beijing, I silently thanked the unfriendly San Francisco airport lady that had assigned me corridor seat instead of the window seat I initially wanted. I was able to take toilet breaks and walk around as much as I wanted. Well, except when another person was walking too, even if the corridors are wide enough for two people to walk past each other without touching. I swear it seemed everyone on the plane was brushing up against me, especially the flight attendants. Besides moving very brusquely, they were also screaming their heads off in Chinese, running around and signaling each other, which made me feel I was in a chicken corral. So much activity allowed me to assume the topic of the conversations they were having from one side of the plane to the other. "HAVE YOU SERVED PASSENGER IN 27D?? NO?? GO GET THE DIET COKE!! I TOLD YOU LIKE TEN MINUTES AGO!! OMG THERE'S TURBULENCE, FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT!!"

Beijing was freezing; it was even snowing outside. At the duty free and other airport stores they barely spoke English. And I discovered Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, after many unsuccessful connection attempts. On the flight to Singapore, the Chinese man next to me kept burping quite noisily without bothering to conceal it, and loudly collected his phlegm before spitting it into those plane paper bags. A friend told me she once saw someone using the plane blankets for that. So my story is not as disgusting.

I got to Singapore and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to leave the airport. You don't even have to go through customs if you don't have anything to declare. You get a passport stamp and you're good to go. For a country with death penalty for drug possession, this is quite lax. I have also discovered there are many rules, but there seems to be more of a tendency to turn a blind eye than to enforce the rules. An exception to my observation is a guy I know here who had to pay 300 dollars for pizza possession in one of the music rooms.

On my cab drive to Oscar's parents house, I was amazed by how much green there is in this city. Singapore's urban forest is very impressive; the streets are lined with trees covered by mosses, ferns and lichens, and the scenery is very beautiful and very tropical. Not at all the cement jungle I was expecting, or the collection of modern high rise buildings (this is only in certain parts of the city). The tembusu is an evergreen tree native to SE Asia, and it's everywhere, including the five-dollar bill. The air is hot and very moist, with really warm rain. One interesting thing is the rain-friendly architecture in the city and on campus: you could potentially get from one place to the other without getting wet because everything is connected and your head will always be covered. They make covered bridges to cross the street, and covered passageways to get from one building to the other. Very impressive. Vancouver, take note.

Communicating with cab drivers, and with adult Singaporean in general, can be quite challenging. Usually the conversation starts off with spoken English and ends with physical motions to describe what you mean. It's like playing charades, except you do it all day and it's not funny. That particular ride was fun, though, as the man was chatty and tried to offer some suggestions on what NOT to do in Singapore (e.g. go to where the prostitutes hang out. Why he thought that would be something on my to-do list is unknown).

Oscar's parents were great: they showed me around and we went out for lunch and dinner to very good restaurants. I also got the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) 101 crash course to learn how the subway and bus system works here. After a day with them, I headed to NUS. The Prince George Park Residence where I am staying looks like a combination between a tacky one-star Acapulco beach resort and a high-security prison, with a dash of dilapidated Mexican vecindad. I feel at the beach because of the palms and the flip-flop culture, as well as the hot and humid weather. To get to my room, there are three levels of gates, bars and locks I have to go through. When I opened my room, the smell slapped me in the face. Now I love my room, but at first it was the dingiest thing ever. It was a matter of moving the furniture around, opening the windows for fresh air, and getting bed sheets and covers.

Omitting the overly-complicated administrative side of the University (I won't get into this, but the take-home point is that it's more complicated to register for a course than you could ever imagine), the lecture system is quite similar to UBC's. The main difference I have noticed in lectures is that the students don't ask questions or comment, they just take notes and the lecturer speaks the whole time. The participation is expected during tutorials. But even there the students are reluctant to talk and they are very shy. In the one tutorial I have had, we had to introduce ourselves and then present a plant we were holding. The TA gave an example "Hello, my name is ----. I come from ----. I study ----- and my favourite animal is ----". The first student only said his name and mumbled his hometown, and by the end of the round the last student rushed into quickly presenting the plant, avoiding the personal introduction and eye-contact in its entirety. And when it comes to giving a personal opinion or view point, it's even worse.

Something interesting is the Singaporean sense of humour. It's very simple, very superficial, some might call it stupid. Example from Friday: I have this lecturer who was telling us how to dress for a field trip, and said we shouldn't wear high heels. We should wear CLOSED (he lifts up a right foo very high up) SHOES! (lifts the other foot up in the air). Everyone cracks up. Like it's the funniest thing ever. The girl next to me is almost crying with laughter. I am in shock.

Being witty and creative is something Singaporeans are not, but they are very friendly. I have met a few in my lectures and on my floor and I've had a great time getting to know them. A great occasion to bond is over food. Food here is very good, and it's EVERYWHERE. People love to eat and I am trying out new things I had never seen before. Usually canteens have many food outlets, and in the center there is the desserts and drinks section, always very colourful and eye-catching. Overall the food is cheap, but on campus it is the cheapest. The other day I paid around one CAD for a plate of rice, fried tofu, green beans and potatoes.

Besides eating, the national pastime seems to be shopping. Malls and stores are the tapestry of this city state and almost every subway has an associated underground mall. Yesterday I went to a mall in Marina Bay that had a river running through it, with boats and a waterfall. Malls also have hotels and pools in them, and I hear at Christmas time people line up to enter the Prada stores and the like. The amount of shops is impressive, but it's even more so considering they are always packed.

A very American holiday

January 4, 2012

I’m driving through California's grand Central Valley right now with Leslie, Mike and Miss Mocha the cat (my parents and sister left yesterday for Mexico). It’s a five hour drive from Lake Almanor to Cupertino and I’m witnessing the seasonal migration that takes place twice a year. In the past few hours we have gotten some breathtaking views from the car, with the blue oaks silhouetting on the purple sunset canvas. We have crossed forests, foothills, cattle grazing pastureland, vineyards, and agricultural fields. Now we are surrounded by city lights, reaching our destination.

Leslie has always been a family friend, and the story goes back thirty years when she and my dad met at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco. She was representing Elsevier the publishing company, he was attending the conference. Long story short, they became very good friends and since then they always see each other when my dad goes to SF, we have been to the city and to Almanor several times, and Leslie has been to Mexico also many times. She is a traveler and has been all over the world. The upcoming trip is to Oaxaca, where she will be volunteering for three months at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca.

We had a fantastic couple weeks up at the lake. The house is like a chalet in a country club in a peninsula, with a stunning view of the lake and the mountains. Clouds draped around the nearby hills and the water shimmered with the sunny breeze. The nearest town is the town of Chester, about 20 minutes away. Chester is a collection of random settlements with a highway backbone where only pickups drive through. Here is a quote I loved from Nicki: " I'm imagining people churning butter, chopping their own firewood, little children running barefoot in the meadows and an old man playing a fiddle in front of the fireplace while the family huddles around on the rug."

Indian Valley

It was a relaxing time where we did some typical American activities: got artistic with some crafts, baked cookies and cakes, ate delicious food (italo-american style – the kitchen was taken over by my mom and by Leslie), and shopped ‘til we dropped. That last one was mostly my mom. She pretty much had to go into every thrift store or antique shop she saw, and she never left empty handed. One day we went to Quincy, a tiny town with a worryingly high thrift store density. My theory is that people just don’t buy that much new stuff and the old stuff is recycled from thrift store to thrift store. Personally, I don’t enjoy going through disorganized bins and boxes of old, used stuff, but there must be some hidden charm I am oblivious to. Even if I waited in a corner without touching anything, I felt dusty by the time we left.

We celebrated New Year at the bowling alley, with blasting music, neon lights and drunk teenagers. Super fun. We made it a rule to do a dance move before throwing, which made us the greatest team playing there that night. My sister was even harrassed by an old man that liked her Michael Jackson impersonation. The surprise for the night was the bowling talent that runs in the family. Somehow, my dad won both games with a huge advantage.  My sister and I were not entirely sure how, as he stumbled his way to the beginning of the alley and almost tripped before throwing the ball.

Cookies Caro and I made

We documented the process of going to get George the Christmas tree. Here’s the video for your enjoyment.

We visited an artist's studio. Sally Yost makes amazing paintings, and these are her sketchbooks.

Collins Pine

For the winter break, I went to Chester in California with my family and family friends Leslie & Mike. This post is about one of my favourite experiences there.

Leslie is one of one of the best people I know, always extremely enthousiastic and full of great ideas. Knowing I’m majoring in Natural Resources Conservation and that I’ve had some experience with forestry, she was super pro-active to get us a tour of the Collins Pine forest operation, based in Chester. We toured the some of the private forests and the mill with the Forest Manager, and I was very impressed with what I saw.

In the US, forestry is done somewhat differently than in Canada. In both Canada and the US, the East side is where more of the private land is found due to the initial colonizer settlements, but overall in the States has a higher proportion of private land than Canada. In California, for instance, about 50% is private whereas in BC only about 5% of forestland is private (Vancouver Island is an exception, it’s like 23% private). Half of the Californian private forests is owned by smallholders (usually each owns about 70 ha) and the other half by companies such as Collins Pine.

The Collins Company is a private family company operating in California, Oregon and Pennsylvania. It was the first company in North America to become FSC-certified back in 1994. It has no publicly traded stocks, so I think this is what drives the sustainability of the operation – things go beyond the short-term profitability needed to make the quarterly statements look good. The land in this part of California was bought in the early 1900s and logging started in 1941. Currently the Collins Almanor Forest (CAF) is abut 94 000 ha with only 10 permanent staff (Forest Manager, RPFs and wildlife biologist) and about 100 mill workers (and logging is done by contractors).

They practice uneven aged management, which is very different to what I had seen in BC (with clearcutting of old growth) or in Chile (with intensive plantation management of non-native species). For this type of management, the maximum area that can be completely cleared is about 1 ha whereas for even aged management the clearcut sizes are 8 – 12ha (versus 40 ha in BC’s coast and 60 in the interior!) In Oregon the maximum is about 50 ha, in Pennsylvania about 260 ha (so a huuuge range of maximums…) The Collins Pine land is intermixed with another company, Sierra Pacific, which is SFI certified and practices even aged management, so we also got a chance to drive through a couple blocks that were completely cleared.

Uneven aged forest management

The Collins private land was also mixed with National forest (public land, which in the States is mostly under federal jurisdiction), and there was a stark difference between the two. Due to decades of fire suppression in the National forests, there is currently a very high level of accumulated fuel that will make any upcoming fire very severe and intense. These National forests are not at all like the natural forests, where early settlers could drive their carts through. Nowadays it is hard even to walk through: tree density is extremely high, trees have a lot of branches and there are many dead and dying trees everywhere. The forest is thinning itself out, but with the potential of fire it is a disaster waiting to happen (like the recent and devastating Moonlight Fire in the area). Even if fire is part of the natural disturbance regime, Collins does not use fire in its management practices. Instead, they use selective logging and biofuel harvest to thin the forest and get rid of excess biomass.

National forest with tons of fuel accumulation

Thinned demonstration private forest

With selective logging, about 30% of the trees in a stand are taken every 15 years or so, creating a multicohort forest with a variety of species, ages and sizes. There is a lot of natural regeneration and good wildlife habitat with all the seed trees, snags and downed wood left behind. There are five main species being harvested here: ponderosa pine (similar to the very common Jeffrey pine), white fir, Douglas fir, incense cedar and sugar pine. Usually the trees that are not doing so well are the ones that are logged. For example, the priority is to harvest white fir, an abundant species that is very susceptible to insects, diseases and climate change. All the species are harvested at the same time, but the mill has periods of a couple weeks where a single species is processed. Then the mill is cleaned and another species goes in. The interesting thing is that the mill is made to adapt to the different sizes of logs coming in for processing, they don’t all have to be the same age.


The biofuel harvesting is something I thought was very cool. The smaller trees and all the branches and slash from harves are used for bioenergy production in the 12 MW plant that completely powers the whole operation (the mill, the office, etc.) In fact, only half is used for this and the extra half is sold to PGE. Something else I though very interesting where the permanent plots that are scattered throughout the forest. There are 566 of these plots and every year about 10% of these are visited and measured to calculate the growth of the trees and determine the amount of wood that can be cut each year. Plots are about 1 acre (0.4 ha) and all the trees 28 cm in diameter are individually tagged and measured at DBH every 10 years (the “DBH” is quite subjective so these trees have a line marked around so that they are measured on the same spot every year). To avoid bias, these plots are not treated any differently than the surrounding forest, and trees inside the plot are managed and harvested as normal. There is a downed wood inventory too, as well as regen surveys on temporary plots (pretty much what I spent my Vancouver Island summer doing) that were started about 15 years ago.

Wood chips for energy production. They also collect forest waste from people (kind of like a dumping ground)

Not all of the company's forest is FSC certified. To avoid having dual inventories, they can mix the wood (so that it is 50% FSC and 50% non-FSC) as long as only half is sold with the FSC logo.

 

The main product of Collins is softwood lumber, which goes to the US and to China. There is no pulp production because all the pulp mills in California closed. 

AND NOW... HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW PENCILS ARE MADE?

They make the incense cedar slabs here, send them to China where the pencils are made (no pencil factories in California), and then these pencils (and eyeliners) are sold in Europe.

UPDATES - a quick summary

I haven’t written a post in a loOoOOng time, so here are some of the highlights of what happened during term 1 of my third year.

I missed Vale a lot while she was having a blast in Turkey learning how to say banana in Turkish. Our beautiful international Fairview house from last year is just a pleasant memory for me now. Rits was cool and quiet, and my roomies were adorable. I felt I was just there for four months and didn’t feel like it was my house or anything, so, for example, not much effort was put in beautifying and decorating the living room. Oh, this year I also had two unofficial roomies! One was Stephanie’s teddy bear and the other was the ant colony living under the kitchen. Exciting stuff :) However, the absolute BEST part of living in Rits was that I was super close to Nichole.

I was lucky enough to have a class with Sam, because otherwise he would still be “random forestry guy I barely talk to” and not most awesome guy ever. Because of him, I spent way more time downtown AND got the chance to visit his hometown Quadra Island. We went on the long week-end and I loved it. The wooden blue house, built by his dad, has a view of the ocean and the forest. And the inside of the house is pretty much a Mexican arts market, except that things are not for sale. His parents love Mexico so I felt even more at home, as if his very-welcoming family, fantastic home-made meals and super-thick room carpets weren’t enough.

Quadra Island

Christmas time came and one of the Christmassy things Nicki and I did was go to Stanley Park to watch the lights. The Van Dusen Botanical Gardens are way better; more professionally done and no incoherent displays sponsored by the Fire Department with moldy toy decorations and creepy mechatronic Santas. Still in the Christmas spirit, we made cookies. I took some home in a Ziploc bag. On the bus I put them on the seat next to me and forgot about them until I was downtown. I looked and they were gone. I searched under the seat, behind it, under my feet. But no, they were gone. There was a guy sitting on the other seat and he was looking at his phone. I touched his shoulder “Excuse me? Hi. Yeah, have you seen a bag with cookies that was here?” He looked at me for a couple seconds, deciding what to do, and then pulled them OUT OF HIS POCKET and said, “Oh yeah… these ones? Yes, sorry, I thought they were someone else’s and I was hungry.” Is that awkward or what.

One of the terrible decorations at Stanley Park. Looks like a sled running over someone, but those are not legs, they are actually two elves (I think?)