Singularities in Singapore.

 So lesson of the night number one, if a Japanese person ever uses the phrase “deshou” (the potential form of the verb to be, i.e ‘might be’) to end a sentence, don’t believe a word of what you have been told. We managed to get turned around twice before having to leg it for the night bus barely managing to get on in time. Our efforts were rewarded however by a super swank night bus. We had foot rests, blankets and even a weird cover to pull over our heads to block out light.

Suffice to say this return trip was a lot more pleasant than the outgoing one. No sooner had we stopped off in Osaka and we were catching a train out to the airport. This journey seemed to be fated wit coincidences and number one occurred at the airport itself. As we were checking in we ran into a friend of mine from Hmeji who was also off to Singapore, on the same flight no less,  to attend her friends wedding.

The flight was pleasant enough, super basic due to the low cost but since it was only 6 hours in the air  I can’t complain. To be honest I didn’t really miss having in flight movies since I usually don’t end up watching any. You get so much choice these days that I waste half the flight trying to decide what to watch.

At about 9pm we arrived at our final destination, Singapore. This was a bit of a spur of the moment decision but a very excellent one. My mate and myself had been getting a little bit fed up with Japan at this point. The language barrier was really starting to get to him and it put a lot of extra pressure on me. So where is the least Asian bit of Asia? Yup Singapore where English is one of the national language. Hurray for former colonies. (Disclaimer: that statement was entirely tongue in cheek I in no way advocate colonialism and the many atrocities that have occurred in its name.)

The main motivation for visiting Singapore was actually to meet up with an old friend. We’d met him at Liverpool University when we were just starting to play. He, like us, had continued to play and is in fact on the Singapore national team. He’d assured us that Singapore was a pretty small place so even though we didn’t have much time we could still get a lot done.

Having a friend who is local is fantastic when visiting a country. Firstly you’ll waste no time trying to figure out how to get about since you have a great guide on hand. They are more than likely to know where all the best/cheapest/coolest places to eat, drink and sight see are. Worry number two gone. Also if they are really nice, as was the case here, you don’t need to find somewhere to stay.

Admittedly you do lose a bit as there is no time to get lost and discover oddities, still time was short and I was so grateful for my friends hospitality. One cool thing about leaving the UK is definitely the fact I know have friends all over the world, and an even bigger incentive to do more travelling.

Back to the holiday then. Our friend took us from the airport to a nearby Korean resteraunt for dinner and to meet some of his teammates. Korean food is always good, super spicy and very hearty, and I could see the relief on my mates face as he was getting pretty fed up of Japanese cuisine. Me to for that matter.

After dinner we were treated to yet more food (running theme here). Desert consisted of a variety of sot tofu in warm or cold syrup as well as egg custard tarts.  We were led up some stairs to a little room with a load of benches that was crammed full of people. The thing that struck me most was that no one batted an eyelid as we walked in. In Japan there would definitely been some stares (some less friendly or indifferent than others.) Here, nothing. It was refreshing to not feel like an alien.

The following day we had a nice relaxed start and headed out to some street vendors for a breakfast of  Roti prata and curry with carrot cake (don’t let the name fool you it was essentially a spicy omelette though it did contain carrots). 

Now I’m pretty inflexible when it comes to breakfast and to my detriment I don’t deviate from cereal too often. I think breakfast is the meal people tend to be least flexible about, and is probably why Hilton hotels spent so much money developing their breakfast menu. Either way I decided to hang it and just went with it and you know what. It was blooming marvellous. The tea was also amazing; I’ve not had a good cup of black tea since I left the UK.

Fuelled up we were taken to the Marina bay area of Singapore. This place is like taking a step into the future. Being the central area for business and entertainment and is constantly undergoing development. We went to check out a recently developed area known as “Gardens by the bay”.

This area spans around 250 acres and consists of large areas of greenery and water.  The main theme of the gardens seemed to be one of sustainability and I’m sure the natural appearance of many of the structures was supposed to tie into this. At the centre of the garden are two large conservatories that reminded me strongly of the Eden project.

The first, and smaller, of the two is called ‘The cloud forest’ and is a recreation of the environment within mountain forests. It consists of several floors with the temperature dropping as you move higher up. The indoor waterfall was impressive and we were also treated to a geography lesson as we wandered around. Sustainability is at the heart of these buildings and it seems every little feature is in someway related to this theme.

The shape of the conservatories allows rainwater to be guided towards underground reservoirs. Here the water is cooled a piped back up to cool the air close to ground level. As the air heats it rises and is vented at the top. By doing this it reduces the amount of air volume that actually needs to be cooled and thus reduces the energy input.

This is amongst one of the many strategies in place around the gardens and in fact all the electrical power used in its operation is produced on site. One of the most striking features is the Supertrees, giant constructs of metal, concrete and plant life. At their tops they contain reservoirs for collecting rain water to power fountains and irrigation, solar panels for electricity and even act as vents for the warm air collected in the conservatories.

Impressed though I was it eventually became time to leave and move on to the next visual spectacular,  Marina bay sands. This is a resort complex featuring a large shopping mall, cinemas, theatres museums and a casino. The most striking feature is definitely the three tower hotel complex topped by a gigantic sky terrace in the shape of a boat. I’m assured there is a swimming pool at the top with a glass bottom so you can look down, sadly we didn’t have a look.

First stop was  a Chinese restaurant for noodles and dumplings. The wontons were good (but not as good as ma bo’s in town) and then xiao long boa, a type of steamed bun with a soup filling. All very tasty. Following lunch we went to check out the Andy Warhol exhibit in the ArtScience museum.

The term art science is something I could really get on board with. Sadly due to time constraints we didn’t really have time to see the permanent exhibit but the Wahol exhibit was highly engaging and there was even a bit of dressing up and silly photo taking at the end. The museum itself regularly hosts special exhibits so if I’m ever back in the country I’ll be sure to check it out again.

After getting a bit more cultured we left to meet up with a friend I’d met in Japan now living in Singapore, this was the start of what would be many interesting coincidences of the night. Whilst I’d only met this friend a few times before she had lived in Wrexham for several years whilst working so for reasons of common ground we’d hit it off. She’d only been in Singapore for 2 weeks so I think she was just happy to meet a familiar face.

We stopped off in china town for some tea, quite a lot of different teas actually, before coincidence two. My friend who were travelling around asia for their honeymoon, whom I’d met up with in Japan about a month ago, were now in Singapore. They were also good friends with my Singaporean friend and so were joining us for lunch. By chance they had run into a friend they had made whilst travelling around Malaysia and invited her along also.

The plot thickens however. On the way to the restaurant we  picked up a teammate of my Singaporean friend. He was Japanese and had moved to Singapore about a month ago. Here is were it gets weird. Turns out he was the older brother of a friend from the UK. He had lived there from the age of 9 – 15 and knew quite a few of our mates. Coincidence overload.

Obviously this was an interesting night with some wonderful conversations, great food, sadly I couldn't try the crab but all the other seafood was delish, and other such merriment. We capped it off by trying durian fruit. Give it a go if you get the chance, I’ll say nothing more. I do love that most restaurants in Singapore are street style, completely open and very casual.

The day really just confirmed for me that the world is incredibly small. What followed was a fantastic night out involving more food (it’s a national pastime apparently), some scary revelations (when inquiring if it was safe to leave drinks in a club we were informed that the penalty for possession of drugs is death), and even some late night/ early morning  antics in my mates pool (it was going  to happen really).

Day 2 was much more relaxed. We played some frizzers with the locals, enjoyed some more local cuisine and just about managed to squeeze in a viewing of the Dark Knight Rises. I couldn’t have been happier with the whole trip really. I’m immensely grateful to my friend for being such an awesome host. We hadn’t met in years but it seemed like just yesterday we were in the pool. I’m also still grateful to Ultimate, man do I owe so many of my opportunities in life to that wonderful sport.

I guess since this is a post about Singapore I don’t need the Japanese sign off so…

Laters.

Mecha Inaka – Mountain-top Frisbee

Well after a week of recovering from night shift induced jet lag we are moving on to our next experiment. This one whilst not as time consuming is no less intense. We are working on the UVFEL, a prototype to the XFEL, this week. It is similar in terms of brilliance and intensity to the XFEL but it has a much longer wavelength, around 60nm.

This basically put a much higher limitation on achievable resolution however we are hoping that we can still use it to test the feasibility of imaging on an XFEL. For these experiments our equipment needs to be much hardier, to maintain the high coherence of the UVFEL beam the sample chamber needs to be under a pretty serious vacuum, so the chamber is made of aluminum and about an inch thick, i.e. it was a pain in the bum to set up.

Once set up the arduous task of aligning the various internal components begins. The sample stage, beam stop, slits and windows need to be aligned to an accuracy of micrometers using very sensitive motors. This again took hours, as at the time we didn’t have the beam passing through the chamber. It basically meant we were working past 1 o’clock on a Friday night for the umpteenth time, I remember when Friday nights were fun…I think.

 

Right anyway now that we are set up we can actually do some very exciting science, I promise. Using the UVFEL we are trying to image silicon membranes with nm sized patterns printed on them. Now these can actually be imaged through another technique, but if we can gain the same level of image resolution using the diffraction pattern produced when the sample is exposed to a single pulse of the FEL beam then it validates this as a method of imaging.

In principal we could then move onto other samples that can’t be imaged using current techniques. The main limit to any high resolution imaging techniques is radiation-induced damage. The FEL gets around this problem due to the high speed of each pulse, imaging the object faster than it is degraded, hence why we need to get a good resolution diffraction from a single pulse.

The actual data acquisition isn’t particularly interesting sadly. We spend hours meticulously scanning the membrane surface until we find the images printed on it and then, to be crude, zap it. The sample may then last for 50 pulses or only 1 before disintegrating, each one costs about $1000 so we hope it's the latter.

Due to the massive power consumption of the UVFEL beam it can only actually be maintained for a limited period of time in a day, between 10am and 7pm. This is nice, it means we can actually go to bed at a reasonable hour. Of course we also have many of the higher ups breathing down our necks checking the experiment is going well, again due to the massive power consumption of the UVFEL beam.

Ok stepping back from the science now time to talk about the weekend. Given that we had a big week coming off I thankfully had the weekend free. It appears that free weekends aren’t a right they’re a privilege so I’ll take them when I can. I actually got up stupidly early on Saturday to play some DnD with friends from Durham. Mega geeky for sure but to be honest I was happy just to chat with those guys. Haven’t seen them for ages and they are a good laugh.

After that I pegged it to the bus to meet Sam and Arnaud in Aioi. They were planning on heading to a Shopping mall out in Otsuu and Ignace had kindly offered to drive. It was a good chance to get away from the mountain and closer to civilization so how could I say no. I was also planning on going to a mini Frisbee tournament on Sunday and so needed a green sports top.

Ignace drove down to the station with his girlfriend Moe and picked us up before heading back onto the motorway for Otsuu. It was a fun trip with much wisecracking about me being English. I keep getting asked ‘how do you say this in English’ or ‘what’s the English word for this’. Most of the time I can honestly say I don’t know, also my English is terrible and I’m not the person to be learning from.

The shopping mall was called JUSCO and was medium sized. It was so hot by the time we got there, like maybe 32 degrees, we were very happy to be inside with all the lovely air-conditioning. Inside it was, well a shopping mall, nothing to be blown away by but it does beat wandering around Aioi.

Our first stop was the sports shop, Ignace and Moe needed to pick up some running gear and I needed a new shirt so it was a good first stop. I won’t really bore you with the details of shopping, lets be honest sports outlet stores all look the same. I was done pretty quickly and Sam mentioned he could use some new shoes so we moved on leaving Ignace and Moe in their sports gear odyssey.

Arnaud took us to a discount shoe shop called Asbee, which apparently sounds very similar to something funny in French though it’s totally slipped my mind. It made me giggle just because it sounds so much like ASBO. Ah but Engrish and Fraponese are hilarious. Actually I’ve seen many more examples of Fraponese than Engrish so far, maybe just because I’m around French speakers a lot, or maybe the Japanese just think it sounds sophisticated. Either way it’s pretty funny.

So in the shoe shop I was blown away. The brands aren’t much different really but the number of styles is ridiculous. They have the stuff we have but it’s just, well, shinier haha. In fact there were some really spectacular shoes in there, like the high heel converse, and some really minging ones, why a nation needs so many crocs I’ll never know. A special mention goes out to the Airwalk batman range, hella cool shoes and I took a picture just for you Bazman.

After much faffing from the staff Sam managed to get a pair of shoes he liked and we headed back to the sports store. Ignace, Sam and Arnaud bean conversing rapidly in French and I tried to pick out what I could. Not a lot it would seem and I must have been pulling a stupid face because I was immediately met with a good ripping. Ignace then proceeded to speak in very slow broken French, I think I need to start brushing up so I not the butt of many jokes next time I’m with all three of them.

Joking aside it turned out Arnaud and Sam had both missed breakfast, tut tut, and I’d been up since 7am so was pretty hungry also. Ignace thought that Moe would take a while longer so suggested we go eat now. We went back downstairs to check the restaurant. First though we stopped to have a look at the T-rex on the first floor. Alright it as a guy in a scaled down T-rex suit posing for kids but fascinating nonetheless. The theme music of Jurassic Park was playing in the background, ah that tune makes me happy, love those films.

So next the dreaded question, “Where should we eat?”. God I hate making decisions about food though everyone asks me since I’m the one with restrictions on what I can eat. Screw that, just pick somewhere and I’ll find something I can eat I’m actually not that fussy.

So we went to a ramen-ya on the first floor. It looked pretty good and there was a short waiting time to go in, always a good sign. They had the usual plastic dishes outside and it looked like a good selection to me. I went with a standard miso ramen with “moyashi toppingu” (bean sprout topping). Sam and Arnaud got the places “osusume” or recommendation. I believe it was called “Paiku”, no idea what that means but it seemed to be some kind of beef, and therefore no good for me anyway.

The ramen was good though and once we were fed up we hit Caldi. Ah imported food shops you are so expensive but so nostalgic. I have no idea how much I spent but it is worth it. I ingredients for some Italian cooking (including olives), something I’ve not had in ages, can’t wait. I also got some Bengal spice tea, my favorite of all teas and it makes me think of home. There was plenty of other cool stuff in there but I had to pull myself away before I spent a ludicrous amount of money.

Our final stop was Joshin a big electronics store at the far end of the mall. They had pretty much anything electrical you could want and maybe even some you didn’t, or at least didn’t know existed. My particular favorite was a circular fan made by Dyson, it just looked so cool, not sure if it makes any difference though.

As well as all this wall-to-wall electronic craziness Joshin, and a fair few other Japanese stores I’ve been to has it’s own theme tune. With a twinkling chorus of “Jo Jo Jo Jooshin” and a wailing electric guitar it was infectious, and nauseating, all at the same time. Incredible. I briefly wander into the videogames section but unfortunately all the display consoles were occupied, maybe next time.

Sam bought himself a wireless router, which he’d been after for a while, it would apparently cost 1000 yen a month to rent one from his IP, mental. We met up with Ignace and Moe afterwards but they still had more shopping to do so we departed for the train. Arriving at the station it seemed like there had been a major accident in Kyoto and all trains bound for Himeji were delayed.

I swear I have the worst luck with these trains. Arnaud and Ignace have told me they’ve had maybe 1 or 2 problems in the whole time they’ve lived here. I’ve been on 4 trains so far delayed by more than 30 minutes, lame. We managed to get home ok in the end, a train pulled up just as Ignace offered to come pick us up naturally.

I made it home safe and sound and tried to get to bed early. It was a big day on Sunday as I was going to a Frisbee tournament up in Wadayama. It’s pretty far north of where I live and that meant getting up at 6:30am, oh the things I do for Frisbee.

I actually had a close call as my alarm didn’t go off leading to a mad dash or the bus. I arrived at Aioi with plenty o time to spare so I grabbed some scran from the train station before meeting Arnaud to head into Himeji. In Himeji we met Yuko who had apparently been up since five, I quickly shut my gob about the act I’d had to get up at 6:30.

The train to Wadayama was pretty amusing. There is apparently only 1 train that runs on that line because it’s “mecha Inaka” (very countryside) and not many people use it, a bit like the bus I have to get down the mountain. We started out on a 2-car train that was old enough not to have automatic doors and set off on the long journey north. Whilst it isn’t that far we were riding a local train so the journey itself took over an hour and half. The views were kinda nice though and I was so tired anyway.

About halfway we switched to another train, this time with only 1 car and it what looked like desk fans on the ceiling to act as air conditioning, old school or what. At the station a friend of Yuko’s named Kakashi picked us up and he drove us to his house.

I’m going to take a moment to just appreciate his house. It was awesome, one o the advantages of living in the countryside in Japan is you have space to build big housing. According to Yuko Kakashi was loaded and this was his second house. Also he’d designed it himself. As you come through the front door the first thing you notice is a climbing wall. That's right this guy has built his own climbing wall in the front hallway. Epic.

Just after myself Arnaud and Yuko had gotten changed the rest of the team began to arrive.  I was rapidly introduced to quite a few people and so subsequently forgot the vast majority of their names. A few of the guys had their own names rather than nicknames, which always helps.

We then moved onto the field. And I mean literally a field. Gatson, the captain of our team, told me that they had been cutting down metre high grass yesterday and we needed to clear it before we could play. I did not sign up or this and apologized to Arnaud, I don’t think either of us were expecting serious manual labor. Again the things I do for Frisbee.

After around an hour of clearing up some of the other teams started to arrive so we could finally take a rest. There was a air smattering of foreigners in the other teams and in act one team composed entirely of gaijins. The vast majority were English teachers from the states or Canada.  I guess that makes sense with Ultimate since it originated in North America and doesn’t actually appear to be that big in the Kansai region.

It’s cool as it means I’ll always bump into other English speakers, but in a way unfortunate, as I feel this really skews the Japanese’s impressions of westerners. The overwhelming majority that they meet will be in their early to mid 20’s and North American. One guy I met called Jarred from Australia shares this view I think. He picked out that I was English and when I asked him how it was apparently because I’m not loud and obnoxious enough to be American.

With the field finally cleared it was time for a spot of lunch. It turned out the Arnaud had missed breakfast (again tut tut) in his rush for the train, he’d been out drinking till late last night. On top o that he’d not managed to grab any food before we got here. I had a few onigiri with me though fortunately so I shared my lunch with him.

Now onto the games. They were a lot of fun, well Frisbee is always fun, but they were relaxed. It was good to get playing again although the skill level wasn’t particularly high, as I said before it’s just not as big out here as I’d hoped and it didn’t seem like any of the teams played together that regularly. That being said there were still some awesome plays made and Arnaud even managed to et himself a layout D, not bad or a Newbie. Hopefully he’s had a good taste and is eager or more.

We played one game on and one off and had three games in total so as always the journey time was more than double the actual playing time. Roll on Tajima in two weeks I can’t wait. The players of the team we played for, Disc-o, were all pretty cool people. Gatson, whom I’m guessing has been settled here or a while, seem to be in the role of coach and captain, giving speeches in Japanese between games. I think sentiment of “swing the <expletive> disc” require no words for me so I didn’t need a translation.

Tired, sweaty and covered in some monster insect bites it was time to head home. Before that though someone had suggested a trip to an “onsen” (Japanese hot spring). I kind of wanted to get home, but on the other hand I’d not been to an onsen yet. I didn’t really have much say in the matter anyway and I was willing to suck it up and pay taxi fare.

The onsen was apparently “Yume” (famous) although I don’t remember its name. This was a definite experience to say the least. First we bought our tickets from, of course, a vending machine and then proceeded to our separate bathing areas, “otoko” for guy and “Onna” for ladies.

The first thing you do at an onsen is strip completely nekkid and have yourself a good wash at these little sit down showers. It was a little bit weird but I’ve long forgone modesty thanks to years of communal showering. Once clean you then  go into the spring area itself and soak in the lovely warm waters. This one was fairly fancy and had adjoining hot rooms and saunas.

I’ll be honest nice though it was on my tired legs I was getting a bit fed up after 20 minutes, natural or not I still don’t really like baths that much. I hauled myself out and headed got dried up and headed out to the main entrance where I was informed I could keep the towel I’d used, unexpected souvenirs are the best.

Once everyone was thoroughly chilled out we headed back to the cars and were going to a “Kaiten-zushi” (conveyor belt sushi) place or dinner. I’m not proud of it but my heart sunk, my old anxieties were flaring up. I’ve been getting better at eating out but I think it was just the large umber of people I didn’t know making me anxious. I’m not sure what it was entirely but I suddenly decided I ‘wasn’t hungry’ and became really moody and complained about needing to get the last bus or something.

Fortunately for me, I guess, the place was fully booked and wouldn’t have a table free for about 30 minutes. I must have had a right gob on because it was somehow decided that we’d drive back to Himeji to try and get me to the station in time for the last bus. However we only had just under an hour.

Getting back entailed some exceptionally awesome and most likely illegal driving on the expressways. I can’t remember who was driving the car, I think it was Takashi-san though I’m not sure. Either way it was a hell of a trip and frequently “giri giri” (sketchily close), but we managed to get me to the station with 5 minutes to spare. “Sugoi”

I’m not proud of it but I was glad to duck out of the meal. My head still needs some sorting I think. Don’t worry I did eat when I got home. Anyway it was a bit of a let down to what was essentially an awesome weekend. Now back to work. I’ve actually got myself some editing work checking the “Engrish” of grant applications for my colleague Komura-san. Should be good experience I hope, plus it's a nice distraction from my lit review.

Mata atode mina-san.

Enl(eye)tening

Well It's been like a week so I'm going to put up a new post. This one isn't japan related but I love a pun, possibly more than most, and this post is a tribute to my gammy eyes. For years I've had a weak left eye but I've just kind of got on with it. My vision wasn't great but it was managible so I just ignored it, silly  I know but I think thats how I work most of the time, I'm very much just  shut up and get on with it, something I'm almost certain I get from you dad :P.

Anyway a bit of background and some tasty tasty eye gore, you have been warned. So whats wrong with me. I have a condition known as Keratoconus (no not Kerry Catonus although i thought that was what the optician told me first time around). What this basically means is that the corneas of my eyes are cone shaped rather than rounded and so incident light is not refracted onto my retina properly, everything seems to be about the diffraction, refraction or reflection of photons of light with me at the mo.




Right so now a bit of a sciency bit. The treatment for this is to remove the top layer of cells from the cornea, they're dead anyway so it;s actually fairly straightforward. My eye was anesthetized and then washed with alcohol. I did have to watch it being scraped off though, that wasn't much fun :(. After that I had to lie still for 1 hour as drops of riboflavin were added to my eye every 5 minutes. The idead is that the riboflavin (or vitamin B2) will be used to cross link the keratin in the cornea, making it more rigid and so flattening and thickening it. Then hopefully normalish vision yay.

Of course you scrape off a load of cells from your eye it's like having a graze on your eyeball. Suffice to say I'm currently suffering alot of Itami no meh. It is a bit frustrating. I had the operation done on monday, can;t see anything out of my left eye of course and it;s a bit of a fight to keep my right eye open.

I can't really read, watch T.V. r do much of anything really. I'm able to right this post simply on the virtue that I don't really need to look at the keys. It's worth it in the long run though. It's funny in a way because I;d never have found out about this if it wasn't for frisbee. A couple of my mates noticed I always seemed to drop discs when they were on my left side and maybe I needed an eye test. I brushed it off the first couple of times but eventually went and pow. I could have gone blind if not for frisbee, what an awesome sport ey. Anyway time to go take it easy (whatever that means).