Day 14 (19/5) - Adieu
This was the final day of the program, and we had a Forum with the Stanford students.
Walking in for the final time
On the way in, I plunged my face into a fountain (not only was the fountain water colder in the morning, I figured no dogs would've bathed inside yet). The chill was invigorating.
We didn't know they were providing us breakfast, which was nice (Strawberry Cream Cheese is weird). Unfortunately it wasn't nice enough to tempt more than 6 (?) of the Stanford students to come; various parties the night before (one had fireworks) might have had something to do with that.
During the forum we were supposed to talk about puzzles we found in America and our paper topics. I realised I could've done the thing about Asian men and non-Asian women, but in the process of doing research for it I would've been beaten up (since I'm not an Asian girl).
Someone commented on faux diversity in Stanford - in a picture they had promoting the school there was a picture of one White, one Black, one Asian. OTOH, NUS is even worse - on a similar picture we had promoting our centennial, almost all of the students were foreign exchange students.
Ady observed that the Chinese and Indians in the US want to get a Green Card and stay there. Meanwhile, those in Singapore still identify with their home countries, have a mercenary attitude and want to get out as soon as possible. I interjected that this was because those in the US are there because they want to be there, while those in Singapore had to be bribed and imported.
Despite Jag's perception that hiphop treats women as sex objects and are the lesser gender, he found that most organisers of hiphop events there were white women.
Someone overhead a black woman talking to another black woman on the train that she'd moved to a new neighborhood and it was nice, but that the best thing about it was that it was an all white neighborhood. But then as a Chris Rock routine went, "I love black people, but I hate Niggers".
When they came to Singapore, the Stanford students went to Malacca. On returning, a couple were glad to return to Singapore because affirmative action is in the Malaysian Constitution and Singapore is meritocratic. Wth. As someone pointed out: it's more likely because Singapore represents civilization, with aircon and safe drinking water.
After the forum was only the second time I saw a girl in a bikini on campus, and the second time I saw someone in a fountain.
The girls said I looked like a minah. Uhh.
For lunch we went to an Italian place where the names of the foods were in Italian and there was no English translation. My theory was that the waiter could laugh at how we mangled the Italian names. I had Spaghetti alla Vodka. It had bacon too. Mmm.
I found that 2 more batteries dropped out, including 1 rechargeable (but it was 4 years old). Gah. I then wrapped the rest in a ziploc bag to wedge them into the case.
Little Red Riding Hood (she says she looks like an Indonesian Maid, because only they take pictures alone)
Roomies
After some farewells, the 7 of us set out for San Francisco to catch our bus for LA. While waiting almost an hour for the Caltrain I got a cheap thrill out of standing on train tracks for the first time (Vinod and the other Indian guys had gotten their fill of it on earlier days).
Backpacking with 6 people using wheeled baggage was interesting. At times (eg just before turning left in front of a steep hill in San Francisco) I was almost tempted to walk a longer, steeper route than strictly necessary.
The overnight bus wasn't too bad. There was more legroom than the Eurolines bus I took.
Quotes:
They try to be colour-blinded (blind)
air'm'br'air'ce race's (embrace races)
core'noy'sear (connoisseur)
We're from Singapore. We speak English, but we have a lot of people who speak Chinese, Malay and Indian. (Tamil)
[Female student on guys not talking: They're just standing still and keeping quiet.] They're communicating with their minds. [Female student 2: Guys like to make girls talk about them.] [Male student 2: Let them talk about us.]