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| It's been almost a month and a half since my last post. I don't remember how long I've been here, but at this point it's easier to count how many days left. My tentative return is Dec 11th, I still have to change my flight.
Since coming back from China (I climbed the Great Wall), I went to Siem Reap, Cambodia; the home of Angkor Wat. My camera got pick-pocketed on the Shanghai subway. So the pictures from Cambodia are with my new camera. It was about time to get a new camera. I'm still trying to get pictures from Shanghai and Beijing from a friend.
This is from the big lake in the middle of Cambodia.
This is the main Angkor Wat Temple, just before it started to rain. You can see the rainbow going right in the middle.
This is from inside the temple area, nice reflection off the water, although a little overcast.
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| I haven't updated in a while. I'm about to leave for China in a couple days. First to Shanghai, then to Beijing. This is our mid-semester break. One of my classmates is going to Tibet (maybe some other time).
During this past month, I went to Bintan (an Indonesian island, very close to Singapore). The north side of the island was developed by Singapore developers, but we stayed on the eastern side, in huts.
We had a bonfire and roasted some smores.
I actually slept outside on this hammock,underneath the stars.
I also went to Tioman Island, off the coast of Malaysia. The purpose here was to go scuba diving. It's supposed to be one of the best places in the world to scuba dive. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of me scuba diving, but the ocean life was amazing.
We stayed at this place. To get here you have to take the ferry or take a 15-20 minute walk through the jungle.
Here's a better picture of how blue the water really was.
The service at this place was pretty bad. If you go, I would recommend staying at a 4 star place. However, the fried bananas with ice cream was incredible.
Just another beautiful sunset in southeast asia. Political instability aside, southeast asia is a great place to study abroad.
After I get back from China, it will probably Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Then after the semester is over, maybe Japan.
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| So in my International Financial Mgmt class, the professor recommended this book entitled, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." I started reading it this past weekend while we were in Bintan (pictures to come) and couldn't put it down. Anyway, it's a fascinating book about how large companies in the US, NGOs, and the US government would go into developing countries and loan them $ so that they could undertake construction projects to build up their country's infrastructure.
But in reality the $ generated from there projects were insufficient to pay back the loans because the economic forecasts were doctored. Then these countries would be forced to do what the US wanted. The leaders of these countries became very wealthy if they cooperated, while those that opposed the US were deposed or assassinated. While all this is going on, major US companies are getting rich since they are doing the construction projects. Halliburton and USAID are mentioned.
It's a fascinating book, that puts current events into whole new perspective and gives insight into what's going on at the highest levels of business and government.
It also mentions the five SIL missionaries that were killed in Ecuador (Jim Elliot, et. al.) and implies some connection between oil companies and SIL. I don't really question the motives of the missionaries, but I don't think they realized the ulterior motives of the oil companies. I suspect that what the oil companies were doing in Ecuador gave the Acua tribe reason to distrust and kill the missionaries.
If you want to understand what's really going on in the world right now and why so many people hate the US, this is a must read.
Some of the countries mentioned include Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Saudi Arabi, Iran and Iraq.
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| So today was moving day. A few weeks ago I posted a classified on SingaporeExpats.com, looking for a room. I was contacted by a few people. I wanted to live closer to the city and get off campus. My campus room didn't have any A/C and it was impossible to do anything during the day. The weekends were even worse, since the buses on campus ran sporadically it was impossible to get anywhere.
On Saturday, I checked out an apartment. It was in a nice neighborhood, fairly close to the MRT (Subway), air-conditioned, 1 subway stop away from the center of the city, right above a grocery store, and I get my own bathroom. Did I mention the maid service that comes once a week? They wash clothes, clean the whole apartment, and iron stuff too. I'm renting from a singaporean woman (about my age) that works in marketing. It looks like she has the entire collection of "Queer as Folk" DVDs. I'm not to familiar with this show.
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