Past weeks

Here is pictures of my trips to Universal Studios, Pulau Ubin and Singapore Zoo!

There has happened quite a lot after the trip to Hong Kong and Macau. First of all, as I already realized after Bali, that I'm a bit late with my school work, I've been studying some long ten hour days filled with couple of hours of exercise at the gym or by the pool.

I was also visited by my good friend back from Finland who is an exchange student in Bali at the moment, and whom I met previously in Bali. He was accompanied by his villa-mate, a Finnish girl also as an exchange student. I shared our flat to them to couch surf for the duration of their trip. It was nice to have more life in the apartment and my roommates didn't mind at all, thank you guys!

With them and some other friends from Singapore, I also visited the acclaimed world tallest rooftop bar, the 1 Altitude on top of the One Raffles building. They enjoyed Singapore and we had some good times, even though I had to do some studying too at the same time.

After their visit, the trip to Penang was up, it was amazing, nice gathering of good friends I've made here in Singapore.

I also visited the Singapore Universal Studios, and to say, it was actually pretty amazing. I liked the roller coaster rides of Battlestar Galactica, the spooky trails under the pyramids filled with mummy's, gazed upon the varieties of dinos in Jurassic Park, enjoyed a full fledged Waterworld show with watery chases and explosions, saved the princess Fiona with Shrek in 4D, danced and sung with the Ass, stepped upon a 5level hurricane hitting Manhattan with Steven Spielberg and listened the Monster rock musical just to mention a few... We spent around 9hours there, it was worth the money!

At school it has been quite a work, I would really much like to tell what I've been up to with my studies but I haven't had the time or concentration to do it. Just to sum it up quickly... As a group project, we composed a video lecture of Chinese remainder theorem. I held two presentations about Context-Sensitive Program Analysis as Database Queries and one presentation on topic of Analysis and Usage of Fuzzy Logic for Optimized Evaluation of Database Queries. As a pair project we implemented three algorithms on Hadoop, the algorithms were PageRank, Shortest Path and K-Means Clustering and returned a 25 pages report on it. On another module we are at the moment finishing our 35 pages survey on Software Outsourcing.

I've noticed that for me to be efficient, I need to work out, that is one of the reasons I started to go to the gym or / and to the pool four to five times per week. I also started running again a while back, whit my roommate we circled through the university's inner route which spanned over 5.5 kilometers in around 40 minutes.

Over the past week on November 10th, I received my Student Pass. Now I'm legally finally legally in Singapore after my first three days in July. As you might know, tourist visa is a single entry 90 days, but I've been abusing that fact... Now I can travel safely for the rest of my stay before handing the Student Pass back before departing back to Finland.

I also got a Finnish visitor arriving from New Zealand, where he had spent the past ten months as an exchange student. After four nights, actually just yesterday, he continued his journey to Germany.

At the moment I've been visited by my good friend back from Finland! I consider myself lucky to have visited by so many friends here. Just this Monday, 14th of November, we visited the close by island Pulaud Ubin, which is a part of north east Singapore, located between the countries Malaysia and Singapore.

I had visited the Pulau Ubin already past year, but my two Finnish friend had not. The ride to the ferry terminal took around 1h30min with MRT and bus. The actual bum boat ride from the Changi Point Jetty Terminal to the Pulau Ubin took only around 10 minutes.

While visiting the island, you can experience the Singapore 20-30 years in the past. Fishing village with roaming wildlife and uprising civilization. The Pulau Ubin can be seen in half a day riding a mountain bikes. We actually saw over three meter long Komodo Dragon and some fishes wiht lime green glowing eyes while cycling through the jungle and mountain bike trails.

We also visited the Singapore Zoo, it had quite a lot to show us, actually we both recalled that last time we had been in a Zoo was back in preliminary school in Korkeasaari or Ähtärin Eläinpuisto.

Now I'm facing my final project deadline on Friday and one and only upcoming exam Saturday morning. Hope to cope them through!

To celebrate the end of the school, we are having a beach party on Saturday, it is actually managed and organized by a business student from Germany who asked me to promote the event too. The party is called Rapture of the deep - Berlin meets Singapore!