Singapore is like home

This week so far has been pretty ordinary and therefore deserves recognition.

By this I mean, now when I wake up every morning I am not startled by the heat, I nod my head in recognition to the security guard for our apartment, I don’t notice curious eyes watching me on the train, I’m becoming more familiar with my lab…

It is like I used to wake up and say “Wow I am in Singapore today” and now I just wake up. I do not mean this to imply that I am ungrateful for my opportunity or that I am bored of the country. Rather, that this country is feeling like home.

There are some parts of this like home (Singapore) that I do like. Most mornings outside my window there is a bird, about the size of a crow, covered in goldenrod feathers, that makes a melodious whistle chirp.

Occasionally, I will find a land snail too. I watched one yesterday for about five minutes, I think it was eating ants and personally I feel like it wasn’t moving all that slow.

Last Sunday, walking home from church, I was excited because I thought I found a large sea shell on the grass (the big spirally ones that are always broken at the beach). When I picked it up, it was a giant snail! No lie, the size of your thumb to your pinky finger!

We also have geckos. Our first gecko in the apartment I named Scottsdale (previously Elias named a gecko Winfield, so now I feel that all geckos should have very proper names) but Scottsdale moved out. Then yesterday, I found a new buddy about two inches big. He wiggled under the counter when I tried to catch him. I think these geckos are nocturnal because they have almost translucent skin.

I am glad that Singapore is a like home. In addition to my unique research experience, I wanted this trip to serve as a test run for real life. I am away from home, am working full time, am supporting myself (with help from Rutgers, thank you so much again), and am responsible for figuring out what to do with myself when I am off work.

The reason why Singapore is a like home and not my actual home (ahem the United States of America, god bless) is because of some of the things Singapore lacks.

This past Sunday after a hike in the rainforest, Dibyo mentioned how it would be nice to have a slice of pizza. Like a disease, the thought infected the entire group. PIZZA! I’ve never had a desire to have pizza back home-but that Sunday I needed to have pizza. We scoped out the entire strip of restaurants near the nature preserve and disappointedly settled for Indian food (it was delicious, but it was not pizza).

The next day, Elias and I were grocery shopping at the mall (the malls here have complete grocery stores) and we found a place that served pizza!! We ordered a $13 pie for the both of us. Unfortunately, the waiter lied to us because the $13 pie was not meant for more than one person-or maybe not meant for more than one American. So after eating there we went to Burger King for fries (we did that with extreme pride).

The following day I made spaghetti and poured Prego tomato sauce on top. It was so delicious; I can’t even begin to explain it. The sauce was no where near what my mom makes at home- but the taste was so familiar and different than everything I had eaten for the past two weeks. Its also one of the cheapest things I can eat here (6 meals of spaghetti costs me $0.80 and I bought a big jar of sauce for $3.50-they were on sale =] ) so I will be having that more often.

This week, I’ve also had a little bit of reverse culture shock. A friend at work asked me if I go out a drink a lot and then said “It would be interesting to see how you dance.” One of our apartment mates (French Masters student, born in Columbia, who speaks fluent English, French, and Spanish, conversant in Italian, and is so excited to be taking Chinese classes-yeah I like her a lot) said that when she heard she would be living with Americans she expected that we would be partying every night. Now, I got the moves-but how different are they than Singaporean moves? I guess there is a stereotype that Americans are just party revelers (GRE word-I’ve been studying instead of partying).

Two people gave me the inkling that Americans like to party. But, two other Singaporeans gave a little old state university in New Jersey- maybe you have heard of it? Rutgers -some serious ups. One person said she recognized the name from all the research articles that she has read. The other was really excited. “Rutgers! Isn’t that an Ivy League school?” It settles it for me, Rutgers has some serious science clout as its prestige has carried its name all the way to Singapore.

The weekend will be rolling in soon-they are always very busy but extremely exciting. We are planning to go to an island offshore from Singapore that is a little less developed to get some more nature time in.

From like home to home with love
=]

Pretoria June 11-16th

“This is all nothing but miserable stammering. I do not know what Africa is really saying to me, but it speaks.” –C G Jung, in a letter to his wife in 1920

My first week showed me just how true that is. The first week was spent at a wonderful guest house in Pretoria, called Kniff un Gaffel (if you ever go to Pretoria, stay there!). The owners there are marvelous; every meal is eaten together like a family so you meet everyone staying there. Ron, the owner's son, even took some of us out to a local square and taught us sokkie. Sokkie is a social ballroom dance that most people learn growing up; it's called sokkie, meaning “sock” in Afrikaans, because it is done in socks. It was a much different scene than something you'd see at a bar in the US. A lot of the music was familiar except for a few songs; those unfamiliar tunes seemed patriotic. The first night I was there, Steffi, who became a good friend, decided to make Shakira’s Waka Waka (the African version) our theme song for the next three weeks. The next day the rest of the girls arrived and our 22 day adventure began.

We were a group of thirteen girls: ten from the US, one from Canada, and two from Trinidad and Tobago. We met our guides Morne and Jaco (Ya-ku) and first laid eyes on, Jezebel, our bus; we had our first dinner and started to get to know each other. Our first day brought us to the University of Pretoria and the Onderstepoort campus, which is home to the only veterinary school in South Africa. The university was very impressive, and the vet school had amazing facilities. Unfortunately, it is a seven year program; once I found that out, I immediately changed my mind on applying there.

The next few days were spent with Community Led Animal Welfare (CLAW), an organization that provides free healthcare for animals and helps to educate their owners. We went to a township called Lawley, where there are one-room homes with metal walls held together by rocks and tires; broken glass shined on the ground where people walked barefoot. When the news spread that we were there every family paid a visit with their animals; we dewormed almost every animal we encountered, and ended up taking orphaned puppies home. It was hard to see some of the dogs because of their conditions--emaciation, tick-bite fever, etc., but in Africa, animals are viewed as protection not pets. Many dogs are given poisoned meat by intruders, and ticks are allowed to grow to the size of dimes; puppies and kittens were plentiful and regrettably, most will die because their owners cannot afford to feed them. Our second day with CLAW, we went to a school to spend time with children; they learn Afrikaans as their first language and English as their second. The school had no electricity or heat, and it does get cold during the winter months; it would never meet the standards of an educational facility in the US. The children loved it there and enjoyed singing songs about the days of the week and the months of a year, listening to music, dancing, running around and playing games; they were okay with where they were and made the best of it. The children were fascinated by cameras and loved to get their pictures taken. When we said goodbye, I wondered when the last time they had eaten anything was.

Back at the guest house, our 7 am breakfasts and 7 pm dinners were consumed with gusto. Our last breakfast at the guest house was a bit interesting though, we were served eggs and fish sticks; even our guides were a bit confused.

We loaded up Jezebel and set off toward Horseback Africa where we would get the chance to play with some lions! When we arrived we were given a second breakfast with the rundown of the facility; it is home to lions of all ages, and there are plans of introducing disease free lions into game ranches. Kruger Park’s lions have Feline AIDS and Tuberculosis which impede on the lion population. We went on a walk with some of the 7 month old cubs where we got to hold their tails and watch them play. They wrestled and climbed trees as if they were rowdy cubs in a Disney movie. We were warned of the “McDonald look” that they give when sizing up a target; their eyes get big and round and they stare hard. Apparently, a bop on the head is enough to tell them no, but if a lion's looking at me like its next meal, I’m not so sure that defense would even cross my mind. After the walk we migrated to a big enclosure where the rest of the older lions were and watched them tear apart pieces of a carcass. Next, we observed 12 week old cubs; we gave them belly rubs and played with sticks while their lunch was being prepared. They each received a bowl with milk and meat to help transition their bellies into growing up. At one point the runt was being bullied and ended up sharing his food--poor little guy. Finally, the cutest of them all, at 3 weeks old! There were two, a boy and a girl; I liked to call them Simba and Nala :). We bottle fed them and burped them and rubbed their bellies until they were bored. When you gave them their bottle they would reach up and try to grab your arm, it was adorable.

Back onto the bus we went, filled with giggles from all the adorable-ness we just experienced. We were on our way to Imbambala in the Loskop Nature Reserve. First, we had to stop at a food store to stock up on breakfast goods for the weekend; this is where the trip went sour. A half an hour passed while in Groblersdal and when we returned to the bus we found a broken window. Our bus was broken into and things were stolen. Out of 13 backpacks, 3 were gone. Since we were moving out of the guest house we had everything in our bags: journals, childhood friends, cameras with pictures, money, credit cards. By the end of our police report we found that the thief had taken over $6,000 worth of personal belongings between the electronics, medications, and documents (yes, two passports). The guides told us to leave our things so that we were not targets in the store, little did we realize that the bus (a giant safari bus) was to be left unsupervised, a target in itself. It was a long and emotional bus ride to Imbambala with cardboard over the broken window. Africa lost a bit of its charm.

Going from Paris to Aix en Provence

In my first entry, I mentioned that I was on a TGV train heading from Paris to Aix en Provence. These super fast trains are a huge improvement to the slower train system that stood previously. It is most comparable to the Acela train that runs from Washington D.C. to Boston. However, this system is much more extensive. The TGV interconnects with the still existing slower rail lines to allow most travellers to reach almost any French town or city. It goes further and allows the traveller to go internationally by rail to places such as Brussels, Berlin, and all the way to Moscow. The rider can arrive up to the leaving of the train to the station and get aboard to go anywhere. I know from my experience that I much prefer this method of travel to flying. Sit back, relax, and watch the view go by.

I arrived in Aix en Provence which now has a beautiful new station that was built in 2001 with the extension of the TGV system. Unfortunately, as I found out the hard way, the station is 13 kilometers away from the center of town where my hotel was located. Unfortunately for me, I found out that the French labeling in this particular station is not very good, and I was lost on how to get to the center of town without walking quite a distance. Lucky for me, and I say that sarcastically, there was a nice French information desk where I tried to ask in Frenglish how to get to Aix center, as they call it. The information desk was no help because all I could get out of the man was the phrase, “There is a bus downstairs.” I thanked him and went downstairs to find the bus stop. A bus stop I did find. However, there was no bus schedule to tell me when the next bus would be and where it would go. I was further concerned that there was no one at the bus stop.

Discouraged, I pulled my bag back upstairs to ask at the information desk about the bus and when it would next come. To my discontent, the man was gone and the information desk dark. At that point, I became quite worried. Tired of travelling and out of my element because I was no expecting a station on the outskirts of town. I wished I was still in Paris where the signs were clear and the metro could take me anywhere I wanted. In my opinion Paris was much nicer than this small city in the south of France. Just wanting to get to my hotel, I took the sky bridge over the tracks to the otherside of the station where I had seen other people getting into taxis. Dearly wishing that there would be one, I found a line with a sign post saying taxis. There were several in a cued up line that reminded me of the taxi cue outside of Penn Station in New York City.

Immediately, a man walked up to me in a leather jacket from his car and asked me in rapid French where I needed to go. In broken French, I told him Le Hotel Cardinal in Aix Center. He smiled and said of course. Before I could protest he grabbed my bags put them in the back of his taxi. Only then did I realize that the symbol on the back of the taxi I was getting in was a high end Mercedes Benz. That’s when I knew that I might be getting myself into trouble, but I was stressed from the days experience so I got in. The driver hopped in and starting driving like every professional European driver, and that is fast with great precision. He whipped the wheel over hit the gas and we were on our way.

At that moment, I remembered the words of my Dad when I was much younger. Those words paraphrased were to watch out when getting into a taxi in an unknown city that the driver doesn’t take you on a very expensive tour of the city. Having only a basic tourist map I tried to follow the route on the map. Even if I realized that this driver was taking me the long way, what was I going to do? Yell at him in English? He really only spoke French so that was out of the picture. He was a nice kind of driver though and seemingly took me a direct way with some traffic as we exited the motorway. He told me along the way in basic French where we were as we sped along. I was watching the meter jumping 20 cents every 5 seconds that we drove on top of a flat 2 euros 30 cents. We got to the hotel, and I had to give over 40 euros for one short trip. Ugh I thought at that point. It was about to get a lot worse though.

I walked into the hotel and gave my name to the woman at the desk. She looked at the register and didn’t see me there which was odd because I was holding my confirmation email in my hand. Then she began to read off names trying to find me on a register that only had about 10 names on it. When we got to the end, she let out an exclaimation and looked over at a stack of papers and asked me if my name was Kurtz which I said was really Kurz. Then in very rapid French she spilled into a long narrative that could not be stopped my exclamations to please slow down. Luckily her French speaking son that was a few years older than I am came out and helped translate. The gist of the story was that I had said in my email that I would arrive at 6 PM and it was now close to 7 PM so the woman had given my room away to someone else. I was told with some smugness that I should have at least called if I was expecting to be late. For the record, I was not late of my own doing but rather the inconvenience of poor station location.

I was outraged at this because I was holding a confirmation email in my hand that showed me sending my credit card number to confirm the room. I explained to the son that I was on a train and my cellphone does not work in this country so I could not possibly call. The son proudly smirked and said oh well and the woman looked no more concerned than the son. In fact, she looked quite overjoyed at my discomfort with being told that I now had nowhere to stay at 7 PM in a remote city in Southern France. Luckily for me at that moment, a conversation that I tried to follow started with the woman and another couple. The gist was that they could not stay even though they had just checked in and were leaving free of charge. With reluctance I was given their room that was not recleaned before I got up there. At least the room was clean and had a bed and I managed to insist on a lower rate for the inconvenience they had put me in.

As soon as I settled in my room, I decided that the people of Aix are not nearly as pleasant or willing to help as Parisians. I had been told people outside of Paris were more pleasant than Parisians. I beg to differ. Further, the things that I had planned to do while in Aix would cost a lot of euros because they were not within close public transport as I had thought they were. At that moment, I decided that I was abandoning my plan to spend 4 days in the Aix region. I was heading to the city I really wanted to see, Avignon, and then back to Paris where the metro was readily available.

I found out from reading online in the evening (on Wifi that I had to pay extra for) that in reality the bus is very reasonable and easy to use. Only problem is that they don’t publish there maps anywhere accept online and at the bus station in the center of Aix. I took the bus the next day for a lovely 3.20 euros. It was great learning experience though because never again will I be so early to become stressed and take the more expensive route. I should have stepped back and thought more carefully about my circumstance. It was a stressful leg of my trip but very educational.

Lesson learned here when going to a remote region expect that the movement around the area without a car may take some real exploring with fluency in the language of the locals. I also learned that a confirmation or what is said to be true is not always the real truth so expect the worse and hope for the best.

Exploring Oaxaca

As of today, I have spent a full week in Oaxaca, Oaxaca. I must say that I am highly impressed with the culture, atmosphere, history, and overall experience in this Mexican state. The first few days I experienced a culture shock because everyone I interact with (from my home-stay family to the staff at the health clinic) speaks only Spanish. After a few days of feeling discouraged, I realized I have an option of continuing to pity my Spanish skills or to accept the challenge and go outside my comfort zone to learn as much as I can. I indeed chose to take on this challenge and my Spanish is getting better with each day.

The Mexican state of Oaxaca is nothing less than beautiful. The people here are extremely friendly and always have time for conversation with a stranger. In the city of Oaxaca, the streets are setup like a grid. This makes it easy to navigate around the city. I already explored various restaurants throughout the city and still have many more to go to. I live about 15 minutes from the Zocalo which a popular plaza located in the center of the city. What I like most about the Zocalo is that any day of the week you will find families and individuals sitting down enjoying the scene. It captures the very essence of the culture in which they take time to appreciate life for what it’s worth. In the United States we are often caught up in the hustle and bustle of trying to get to the top that we often forget to appreciate the beauty of the world around us. We neglect the simple things in life which sometimes hold the solutions to our problems.

We got the chance to explore the history of Oaxaca. Last weekend I participated in a field trip to Monte Alban, an archaeological site that has history dating back to 500 BC. It was an amazing feeling to climb the stones of pyramids of one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica. The elevation of the site is about 6,400 feet making the air thinner and the sun hotter. This provided a great defense location for the Zapotec civilization, the indigenous occupants of the land.

I am looking forward to the adventures that lie ahead.

A different language is a different vision of life. ~Federico Fellini

Little Maconnais Goats (cheese) and Delicate Wines (June 15th, 2011)

Making wine is hard work and a serious commitment. We visited Jean-Christophe’s vineyard—Domaine Perroud, as an example of Burgundian vineyard and winery. The grapes grown in this region are primarily pinot noir and chardonnay. We learned about the impact of soil, climate, and each region’s terrain on the quality of the grape. In Burgundy, the soil is primarily limestone and each row of vines is covered with gravel in between the vines in order to get sugary grapes. The gravel helps absorb the heat for the cooler nights, and prevents a majority of other plants growing next to the grapes, so that the grapes can get maximum nutrients from the soil. From the soil, we learned about the harvest in August and how the grapes are juiced and destemmed mechanically using modern stainless steel equipment. Red wines differ from white wines because the skin [containing the pigment that gives the color] is fermented with the juice as opposed to only fermenting the juice for a white wine. Usually red wines are aged in oak barrels while whites are kept crisp in stainless steel vats. Temperature, pressure, and humidity are controlled as much as they can by the wine producer to make sure that that he/she gets the taste that he/she would like to sell the wine as. Different grapes can be mixed in various amounts to get the desired taste and the variables seem infinite. The parts of the grape such as stems and seeds are not just thrown away, but are actually used in the cosmetic industry. Additionally, grape seeds are used to make oil!
We also had a wine tasting at the same vineyard and learned to actually spit out the wine into a bucket (see picture below).
Our picnic was also at the same vineyard by the water. We had fresh baguettes, cheeses, meats, fruits, macarons, and savory wines. Look below at the pictures to appreciate the food! I will miss having casual 2-hour lunches when I leave France.
Following the picnic, we went to a local Maconnais cheesemaker where we met the goats, the kids, and finally the delicious cheese! Most cheese in France is made from raw milk unlike the US pasteurized milk. Unpasteurized cheese are safe to eat locally since they have the friendly LAB (lactic acid bacteria—same bacteria referred to as probiotic cultures) and outcompete pathogenic bacteria since the LAB are the dominant fermenters. We tasted fresh cheeses with tiny spots of Penicillium mold as well as older entirely moldy goat cheeses. I have to say that the Penicillium [naturally occurring fungus] offers the most flavors, and hence I love old stinky cheeses. The cheese was made by mixing morning and evening goat milk with a bit of old whey as the starter culture. Whey is the precipitated solution of water, lactose, bacteria, salts, and whey protein. Whey proteins and supplements are widely used as a health shake or protein powder. Cheese, similarly to wine, is able to be very efficient since all parts of the production can be put to more use.

Below are some pictures of goats and vineyards
This little goat thought my shirt was tasty:

The Maconnais Goat Cheese

The Cheese-molds

Cheese Tasting

Maconnais Vineyards and Wine Production (with our usual wine tasting of course)

Wine tasting and the bucket

Trying to Give Reason to Eat Way Too Much Bread and Cheese

I will have to write much more and include a large number of pictures about French food soon but in the time that I have allotted for writing tonight. I do what I can. The internet connection that is availble really is very slow here in Cluny, France. It is very similar to dial up which I have not used in years. I write this post while hearing fighter jets from Dijon shooting past overhead breaking the sound barrier from time to time or so it sounds.

Parisians are interesting because of the way that they get from place to place, which is unusual to an American. They appear to walk, take a scooter, or take the metro. You do not see many cars and those that you do are the equivalent of a Toyota Yaris or smaller. People seemed to always take the metro if they were going from anywhere within the city or the train if they were going anywhere more substantial. The amazing thing is that almost all the metro lines that I rode on were busy at any hour during the day. Even more people walk though if the weather is nice out. I used to see men and women in business casual walking through the parks that I visited or walking to the local sandwich shop.

It is hardly surprising that most people either walk or take the mass transit system when you look at the price of gasoline. A liter of gasoline was around 1.60 euros. When you convert euros to dollars that is 2.16 dollars to liter so a gallon is 3.75 liters thus a gallon of gasoline would cost 8.10 dollars. The price of taking the metro is less than 1 euro per trip if you buy per trip and if you buy a pass like the city residents do it costs less than 0.25 euros per trip. It is really quite remarkable how well organized the transportation system of Paris is to transport as many people as possible. The USA could learn something from the French in regards to how to reduce a dependence on gasoline-powered cars.

As an exercise physiology major who is interested in nutrition, I thought that it was really interesting that Parisians are for the most part thin but eat a lot. Many of the things that they eat are very high in fat with a large amount of alcohol. To counter this very heavily fat diet that appears to the common viewer as a terrible diet that is opposite what most dieticians prescribe, the Parisians eat a very high quality diet. Every meal was prepared with a salad on the side and the constituents of the meal were very apparent. Nowhere, except the American food chain restaurants, did you see a food that would likely have more calories than it appeared. The steaks disclosed the exact weight in grams and the pasta dishes came on plates that were appropriate to their calorie content.

I was happy to find that the Twinkie is not a usual part of the diet but rather a croissant made with real butter is the common indulgence. I bought a bag of sables (a type of cookie) from a store and the ingredient list was 5 ingredients long and not one was artificial. The label went butter, wheat flour, sugar, ground almonds, and almond extract. Food is simple, untouched, and delicious with the ingredients being the focus point. You do not scoff down food because it is a source of calories but savor the flavor.

What a relaxing life it is to sit back and really think about the food that is front of you. You find yourself eating less and eating better than in America. Food is undoubtly more expensive but it is really worth it. When you combine the life style of the Parisians with the food that they eat, it is not surprising that you never see a really obese individual. For that matter, you don’t really ever see an overweight person unless they are from another country, like America.

The "Clunysois"

The third day of class, June 15th was a field trip out into the countryside surrounding Cluny, known as the "Clunysois". So, in the morning after some baguette, jam and coffee we hopped on our "Voyage Clunysois" bus and rode through the countryside. I can't begin to describe how beautiful the countryside was in words so instead I'll just put some pictures that I took at the end of this post. The wine country here with its large expanses of vineyards, old chateaux and countryside homes is beautiful beyond any description that I could give it. I hope that at some point in your life you can make it out here because just looking through the pictures that I took makes me want to stay here forever.

One landmark we visited in the Clunysois, La Roche De Solutre, is a large rock formation in the middle of the countryside with an amazing view. I took a video from up there that shows just a couple seconds of the wonderful view we had (it's at the bottom of this post after the pictures) and I'll let you judge for yourself how it was. After that scenic stop we were off to the "Domaine Perraud", a vineyard and winery close by. Many of the wineries here are named "Domaine x, y, z" as domaine translates to "estate" in English. The winery itself was of a good size and was designed in such a way that you could tell that these people knew what they were doing. According to the owner, the winery was a small operation by French standards, but to me it seemed very respectable.

Since I've worked at a winery since I was 12 or 13 I recognized most of the equipment in the winery, and it was definitely quality stuff. Equipment that would easily cost upwards of $10,000 in New Jersey was only 4000 euro according to the owner, which is roughly $5,700. The equipment is much cheaper here because most of it is manufactured in Europe, and obviously the price increases drastically if you have to ship a huge metal tank overseas. But, the equipment wasn't the only thing that impressed me at this winery. There were several things in use there that I had never even seen before and was very interested in the roles that they played. The operation at Domaine Perraud was definitely one created to optimally produce good wine and I even learned a thing or two there that I hope we can use at my family's winery.

After our visit, we had a picnic next to a lake in the vineyards of Domaine Perraud. The day before we collectively bought an assortment of breads, meats, cheeses, fruits and desserts and brought them with us on our trip. It's a much cheaper way of eating, and definitely just as good as you can get at a restaurant if not better. We all ate very well, and I'd say it was the best picnic I've ever had, hands down. The view that we had at our picnic site was amazing and the food stuffs that we all bought were delicious. I even got to talk to an older frenchman who was fishing at the lake at the time and we talked about fishing in the states for a short time, but eventually I ran out of vocab words and had to say goodbye.

Next up was a trip to a goat farm in the Clunysois that produced fresh goat cheeses from their own goats. This farm was operated by just two people, a husband and wife of about 50 or 60 years of age, but still full of energy. We saw the goats and the milking operation and then went in to see the cheese production area, which was small, but still producing a relatively large amount of cheese for its size. And then, the fun part, the cheese tasting! We were served the same cheese of different ages, 24 hours old, 48 hours old, and several days old accompanied with a white wine of the region, which is customary for goat cheese tastings. I don't have to tell you that the cheeses were all superb, and after we were all incredibly stuffed. By this point we were all starting to feel the fatigue of all this venturing through the French countryside and we were very thankful to be on our way home, but no need to pity us, hahah.

On the way back to Cluny we saw several enormous chateaux that were gorgeous and with the picturesque countryside in the background it was like something from a post card. But then again, most of the things I've seen on this trip could have easily been post cards. So, I guess it was just another normal day in the Clunysois, but it was an extraordinary day for a Jersey farm boy.