Sunday, April 30, 2006
I'd just touched down 3 hours ago and I'm making full use of my body clock's screwed up timing to blog at 3.44am, since i'll probably procrastinate it by 10 years if i dont.
So hello! Yes I'm back from little over a week spent in philly and new york, jetlagged, hungry, and broke. But heck, it was money i certainly dont regret spending, seeing what a fantastic time i had there. I'd just finished downloading all the photos, fully intending to share the good ones with you right here, but there are just too many of them! So being the indecisive li'll bugger i am, i'll just post all of them on some image hosting site (when i finally get round to subscribing to one) and let ya see them. Let's see what I can scrounge up for now:
(I'll just talk about the Philly leg for now, my New York pics are still with debbie so i'll talk about it when they come!)
Hey Day
Barely 12 hours after I'd landed in the US, i was walking with the singaporean juniors (3rd yrs) at Hey Day, a Penn tradition where juniors get pelted by eggs, flour, shaving cream, mustard and other yucky stuff by the rest of the student population.
Penn Singaporeans
A friendly, intelligent and craaazy bunch of people who balance the work/study ratio extremely well. Everyone's either a president scholar, a national water polo player, army high flyer or has some other amazing achievement. Pressure man. They also party like there's no tomorrow. Hearing it was my birthday on tues, they tried to make me down 21 shots (they didnt succeed). Here's what I looked like after 5 shots and some red wine:
They made me feel welcome from the moment I'd landed though. Some even took the trouble to give me a midnight birthday surprise (prev post) even in the midst of frantic exam studying!
Philadelphia
Next was a one day tour of the great city of philly with debbie and her mum, who is, in debbie's words, "the young energetic type". We tried, among other things, 2 stalls across the street from each other competing for the #1 spot for philly cheese steaks. A pity i dont have a picture of the cheese steak itself, but here's one of the menu, which shows what a culture it is over there:
Campus Tour
Deb brought her mum and i around Penn the following day. I didnt take alot of pics though, seeing how I'm probably gonna have too many pictures of Penn by the end of the year anyway. Penn's a marvelously charming campus. In a Sinagporean context, its sorta like NUS and SMU combined. There're ultramodern high tech buildings, like the spanking new Wharton School, and there're the lovely old ones with mahagony floors, carpets, and lamplit tables by the windows. In debbie's words, one cant help but feel you're part of this amazingly long and rich tradition.
The campus is right in the city, with streets seperating it from the bookstores, shops, etc, but there's a cobblestone walk that runs through it where you can meet everyone on. The campus itself is entirely self-contained. There's a gym with an indoor pool and rock wall (yay!), many churches (including a Catholic one with great architecture), a bookstore run by Barnes and Noble, restaurants, theatres and everything else you need.
As for the students, I like the fact that everyone seems so different and diverse. You see people from all over the world, people with tattoos, people with gigantic ripped holes in the butt of their jeans, people in tuxedos, in business suits, track suits, and birthday suits (or so i'm told about the streakers during big events haha). On Locust Walk (that cobblestone walk i was talking about earlier), I've seen breakdancers, scholars, atheletes, political activists, artists. And the great thing is, nobody judges you because everyone is just so different. Deb tells me there's a hip hop/breakdance performance group on campus too.. sounds good!
All in all, i'm excited. I've been there, seen it, and it surpassed everything that i'd imagined it to be. All that's left now is for me to wait...
Stay tuned for my post and pictures of New York! (when i manage to get them, that is)
(yes, yes, i know my pics arent enough to showcase all the stuff we did, its just that i hate to clutter my blog up and would prefer to put them all into a nice image hosting site okaaaaaaaay. so be patient!)
he rocked the party at 12:44 PM |
