Looking at NUS with Block B4 Eyes

Okay, Funkygrad’s latest online issue carries this article on “Sex in the University“. The article professes to help you “Stumble along as we bring you five most conducive spots to make out in NUS” and features the very obvious location of “Hall room”.

They rate the makeout spots on five scales. 1) Sweat-before-the-act, how hard is it is to physically get to the location, 2) Sex-tifaction Factor, 3) Climax-ability, 4) Caught with Pants Down Risk and 5) Mozzie Attack Probability.

This is the excerpt for Hall Rooms and the “Caught With Pants Down Risk” scale.

Caught With Pants Down Risk:
1/10
The risk of getting caught is almost zero, unless (1) you don’t like to draw the blinds and (2) you can’t keep your noise level down. There have been reports of live sex shows in PGP as well as “squealers” in Temasek Hall. You are advised to draw the blinds and lower the volume at all times.

How true is this? Well, I don’t know. Living at the edge of Temasek Hall kinda precludes you from hearing all kinds of activities. I’m not in “that” group as well. Go figure. But one things for sure: its incriminating Temasek Hall. But if its a known fact or an “open secret”, then there’s nothing much to incriminate.

Okay. People were supposed to check in on the 5th of January, and its already the 8th today. Yeah, I can tell people are in. Last night I heard the seniors playing football on the balcony making hell a lot of noise. Just now, the next room was playing some Indian music real loud too. Kenny and Raymond have finally moved back in, and I had the first hall committee meeting of the year.

Next week is going to be a busy one. From the Tech Crew meeting, there are going to be two events in hall. On the 12th of January (Thursday), there is going to be a pre-IHG Supper in the Hall and on the 13th (Friday) will be a in-hall concert, starring Kaira Gong, NUS’ very own singing sensation. I’ll be doing tech support for the latter since I’ll be busy with another committee meeting on Thursday. And everybody’s going to be attending their first lectures, juggling it with their sports and committees as well as a little bit of bidding for those who haven’t been allocated all their modules.

And we had our first hall dinner this semester! The caterers have been jumbled up, there’s this really nice guy service the vegetables now. I loathe actually describing such mundane things as food, but I had egg (finally) and lousy vegetables (crap). Reaction to the new caterers has been so-so. Quality is not radically different from the last caterers. My roommate’s opinion is that they are worse off than before. We’ll know by next week.

Oh, and I finally met the Eric guy who emailed me when he found this blog through Google. Here’s props to you.

Okay, since Chang asked about “how bad was band” anyway, might as well chip in my two cents on all of them.

Dance was commendable. Choreography and synchronization wasn’t too bad, quite immune from criticism. However, my issue with them is not with anything like that, my issue is with the influence of hip-hop. Coming from an arts perspective, I feel that its better that in any performance group, one finds his or her own style with influences from a certain genre of art, like Arabian, hip-hop, ballet, etc, especially with modern comtemporary dance in which technical and physical skill is not a huge prerequisite. Just embodying a certain genre of dance won’t separate one performance group from another.

Band was in my opinion quite bad. The first thing I noticed was that the music wasn’t gelling together like a band. It didn’t seem like a band, it was more like a few musical instruments and a singer playing in time with each other rather than “making music”. Robin’s guitar also went out of whack for a bit, causing him to put it down for one of his songs. His speaker cabinet was also placed too close to the drums, thus causing the drums to resonate, making a funny vibrating sound, whenever he played a low note. The female singer also sometimes missed a beat when coming in, but that’s excusable, I do that all the time myself, so I can’t criticize it. Robin was okay with the vocals, but at this stage of skill and practice I rather he’d either just play or just sing and not do both at the same time.

I can’t comment on Xinyao. I don’t know how to comment on Chinese singing because I’ve never really heard the original songs and all I can say is that the same songs get sung over and over again. I’ve heard the songs being sung today during the Xinyao performance or here and there. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.
Ken and Chiao Ru were okay.

I can’t comment on the Choir group either. It wasn’t exceptionally good, still had a few patches here and there but overall they are listenable and provided entertainment. Technically, sound support for group singing is very hard to manage because of the use of condenser microphones to capture the entire group singing on the speakers. Its hard to do because we have to keep the volume at low levels as feedback occurs easily. I’d prefer them to go without mics and use natural voice projection instead. Use deep breathing people!

I don’t know if I should comment on Miss Abigail who dragged me on stage as a source of humour with Kurien and Alvin. Whatever. I will not speculate on “her” true gender, or her singing ability, or her material. At least I didn’t get skewered in my neck.

Okay, a few days ago I said that I would report a bit on the International Conference on Education.

Okay, basically I’m doing tech support for these two events on the International Conference on Education: One for the reception event when the delegates (read: professors from all around the world) check in at the Television Lounge in Temasek Hall, and they get to “network” with each other. The other is for the farewell dinner, we have to give tech support for all the performers doing their thing on stage at one of the halls at the Guild Hall opposite Temasek Hall.

I’ve got a few things for free from helping out at this event. I got a free dinner for the tech support at the dinner, and a few cups of free Tiger beer. Yeah, they get beer at BOTH the events, for what reason I don’t know. They hired some guy to set up a cooling device for gas-powered kegs of beer. I got two plastic cups (which was a mistake, taking two after not taking any liquid beforehand kinda screwed up my complexion and made me go real red in the face. I was better today during the dinner because had lots of water and liquid. A lot of the other boarders from Temasek Hall got something to drink anyway. Anyway, learnt my lesson, shouldn’t drink on duty. Food was better than most hawker crap there is out there anyway.

Somehow all the same people get the same jobs. At the dinner, Austen got the MC job, Xinyao performed, Band performed (although not too well, in my humble opinion), Choir performed, Danced performed and they hired some outside drag comedian to run around singing badly and to harass the audience (poor old me) with her bad jokes.

Oh, and the hall master actually got to know my name. He asked my name at the reception, and today after the dinner he was walking his Schnauzer, he greeted me by name. Seemed to me quite a nice chap, if we could look at each other at the same level. Friendly, nonetheless. They showed the “Master’s Video” at the dinner anyway, the video about his invention of the Smart Jacket which could detect falls and hard impacts then electronically send messages to hospital monitors.

I didn’t actually get to meet any of the visiting professors though, but it would be interesting to. But I get the feeling that they’ll just condescend and not talk about their work or anything like that.

Next up, the AIESEC conference. Yesterday I was just chillin’ in my room when an old buddy Sze Fei just popped by to say hi and that he was staying for a few days in Temasek Hall for an AIESEC conference. Registration booths were open the whole, and they had their orientation games today until late night. Saw many unknown faces. Waiting for them to finish so that I can go prata with Greg (who is also with AIESEC) and Sze Fei. I like it when people that completely don’t know each other get together. Its just better that way because people are more open to make friends.

Walking around looking for Sze Fei’s room, I saw Greg trying to crossdress another guy for the AIESEC thing. Bloody bugger.

And I guess that Temasek Hall isn’t really dead at the moment. There are enough of important people to make activities happen. Many of the seniors on my floor have got holiday stay rooms. Sports trainings are still going on, and people are coming back to make them happen.

And the gym is up. I saw one of my blockmates working out on it. Its just a small carpeted area, with mirrors installed at the walls. Gotta ask a gym partner to work out with me. I’m too scrawny.

Here are some photos I took of Temasek Hall, because its such a dry period right now.

On a small note, the General Office of Temasek Hall sent emails out to confirm that everybody who has applied for Hall stay has been approved. However, in the letter, I haven’t got an idea how much I’m supposed to pay for a double room (that’s not so good). I think it should be S$200.

People living in single rooms get to stay in their own rooms, which means its going to get lonely. People who have double rooms might have to prepare to move, which means a lot of work needs to be done.

From the letter:
Please ensure the following things are carried out before you leave the Hall or shift to your allocated room. Your room and key deposit of $60 will be forfeited for any missing and/or damaged items in your room.

(a) If you have a telephone line in your room or your friend is having a telephone line applied under your name, please arrange with your tele-service provider to have it terminated. This is to prevent unauthorised person(s) from using your phone and charging the calls to your account and any inconvenience caused to the new occupant of your room who is not allowed to apply for a telephone line.

For those who will be returning to the Hall for Semester 2, you can reinstate your telephone line after the vacation.

(b)To switch off fans and lights in room and lock door before leaving.

(c)Check all fixtures, furniture, mattress, mattress cover and items provided in your room to make sure that they are not missing or damaged. You are to make good any loss or damage before you leave.

(d) If you stick any poster on the door, wardrobe or walls inside and outside your room, be sure to remove them along with the ‘blu-tack’ without damaging the surface. Curtain or carpet put up by you should also be removed.

(e) Remove and dispose off all unwanted belongings and rubbish from your room into garbage bags and leave them at the ground floor of your block or the main bin centre behind the Hall Kitchen.

(f) Furniture that does not belong to your room but taken from other parts of the Hall will have to be returned to their original locations.

(g) Transponder with room number tag must be returned to the Hall Office. For double room occupants, please indicate your name. If you are checking out after office hours, please drop the transponder into the “KEYBOX” at the bottom left hand corner of the office counter.

Right.

Yesterday night, rooms received some welfare packs:

One packet - instant milk tea
one packet - instant milk coffee
one packet - crushed Apollo wafers

I don’t think the Apollo wafers are edible anymore, unless you’re willing to make something like a Farley’s Rusk with them. The welfare packs were one per boarder, so my room received two since I have a roommate. They were just left on the doorstep.

We also received a large green plastic bag from Collin who was so kind to go around distributing it to rooms. It was for putting paper and anything paper-based that you wanted to recycle in. Leave it outside the door when you leave and it will be collected on the 7th of Dec. And apparently the bag doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to SembVISY recycling.

Good stuff.

Talked in passing to another fellow boarder down in B2 at the kitchenette while I was making some noodles. His exams start tomorrow, then he has another paper the next day, and two more the following day. His last paper will be on the 25th, and he said it was an easy paper.

I don’t know whether to call him lucky or in hell of trouble. Suffice to say if one slacks off too much, its very likely that one will screw up four exams in a row. Unlike him, I’ve got spaced out exams all the way from the 18th to the 1st of december.

While walking out of my room, trusted camera in hand, I chanced upon some filming going on in Temasek Hall. A filming crew of 3 people, with an ANN sticker on the camera, were filming some of the C3 girls just frolicking in their room on the bed. Possibly its stock footage for some story that ANN is doing. This calls for more investigative action.

Temasek Hall has this thing called Thursday family night. What it does is that people get to gather at the communal hall and watch a movie or some performance by their hall mates after dinner. One time they were showing the Making Of Dirty Laundry, a feature length film produced by Temasekians a few years back. Quite a number of years back already, such that none of the people involved are still here.

Family night usually starts sometime in the middle of dinner, which is about correct for this one. This week’s family night is special: it is the last family night of the semester before the exams, (there are none after the exams, anyway) and that it is a dance performance probably by the the Temasek Hall dance group. Its called Atomic Dance and has a pretty innovative poster, despite being only black and white.

Personally, I haven’t went to many family nights. Just got stuff to do in my room (which proves that I am an utter loser anyway). I don’t get to do tech crew support anyway because my duty day is Tuesday. The only time was that I was there for a while to watch Luc Besson’s Taxi which was quite a blast to watch.

Some new things going on in Hall recently.

First thing are hall jackets. My friend came around yesterday, and today too, asking if I wanted to place an order for the hall jacket, which is coloured black and white. Its S$24 for a blank, unpersonalised jacket, and S$30 for a personalized one with your name or some weird word.

I thought I wanted a jacket with a really crazy word printed behind, like, “Truth” or “Democracy” or “Cogito Ergo Sum”. But I don’t want a Temasek Hall jacket if I don’t stay next year. I’ll get one next year instead IF I do get to remain in hall.

Outside the communal hall today was a display saying that there was Free Milo on Tuesdays and Thursdays at certain blocks. They got this giant Milo cardboard banner, then cut out a window out of it to make a sort-of cantilever where they put cute paper cups with brown-coloured paper to represent Milo cups. One friend was quite excited about it — but another tells me its not here yet.

Some other bit of related news is the “Exam Supper”. Since its the exam period, they’ve put buns in the kitchennette. I haven’t seen them, but its supposed to be there.

Oh, since its Tuesday, the Temasek Hall Varsity Christian Fellowship met in the Block B lounge today. Probably anybody walking around the block could hear the praise and worship music. Walking around, could see some people not very pleased with the noise.

Tonight’s tech crew meeting was revealing to certain things happening in Temasek Hall in the next few months.

As (Asian) prudence dominates, hall activities are beginning to see signs of slowing down to make way for the exam period. This last tech crew meeting was supposed to be the last but a lot of plans are being made for the holidays.

For instance, the Temasek Hall tech crew has been requsitioned by the Hall Master to facilitate the public announcement requirements for an international level conference directly after the exams. Naturally, as I was staying back there I had to put my hand up. That will be about 7-8 December.

Then, news has it that Interhall Games are being held earlier this year. Instead of starting on Week 1 or so, some games will start on negative weeks i.e. in December, especially football which will commence in the last week of December. Handball will start on Week 0.

Also, the tech crew are supposed to be done editing the songs we have recorded for the live recording sessions we have done with various Temasekians performing their songs of choice. The edits should be out by the first week next semester.

Finally, the Temasek Hall Band and Xinyao are also producing their own records in the December period. That means the tech crew members which have been designated band recording liasons will have to be around the Hall.

Boy, this is surely no holiday.

In the wake of the theft incident a few days back, the Hall Office has taken measures to remind students to take measures against theft.

First was the email circular sent out to all our NUSmail accounts. It gives an account of the nightwatchmen patrolling hours, their descriptions and photos to familiarize students with the measures taken. It also gave the students the number of Campus Security, which is 6516-1616.

Extract from the email
If you encounter any unfamiliar person who claims as the security guard for TH, or the relief security guard or the trainee attached, you have the right to check his ID. If a culprit intends to escape, you should not try to detain the person physically unless you are absolutely certain that it is safe for yourself. In difficult situation you should shout and scream very loud for help unless you are life threatened to do so.

The second step was to reiterate the emails by placing notices around the toilets introducing the nightwatchmen, which is more or less identical to the emails.

Is this enough? You decide for yourself. My old hostel used to have security cameras installed at strategic locations, especially at the only one staircase, which monitored all visitors coming and going. Indeed its quite an invasion of privacy, having a camera look at you everytime you step out of the room, but I could leave my room unlocked for some time. (Then again, a secondary school hostel is quite a non-target, filled with poor Chinese, Malaysian and Otherethnicity scholars whom own nothing of value.)

It seems that yesterday, there was a thief who was prowling Temasek Hall. The rumours going say that he was Malay, about 1.70m tall, and was dressed like a security guard.

The thief went around opening unlocked room doors and then lifting valuables inside. It seems that also he entered a room with occupants, giving the excuse that he was a security guard. A police report was made.

Block heads then gave out notices telling residents to always keep doors locked when they leave the room, even for a while.