Zouk, HDB, MOS, and Drift

After visiting the Buddhist temple and getting some food at a new hawker center as well as a new drink: soursop, we headed back for afternoon classes and then got ready to go out to Zouk, a world recognized club where on Wednesdays they do "mambo night", a Singapore dance style that consists of acting out the lyrics of the music which is being played. Not having been into clubbing, it was quite the experience and the amount of people and all the crazy lights were an impressive sight. Thursday and Friday Consisted of morning classes again with a continued focus on Burma in our UNC prof's class and a Singapore focus in our NUS prof's. On Thursday afternoon we went to the Housing and Development Board HQs in the newly renovated area of Toa Payoh. The area is beautiful and it serves as the showroom for public housing in Singapore. The presentation was, as most official presentations have been, government gratifying and particularly biased. Nevertheless getting to see how citizens register to get public housing as well as the HDB museum and show flats provided better insight into the process, which seems to work almost flawlessly and provide for all of the population without expendable sums of money to invest in private housing. Particularly neat was a pin elevated skyline (as seen in the picture) on display. The board currently makes 4 types of flats: 2,3,4, and 5 bedroom flats which they sell to families on a scale based on income. ONe of the neatest parts of the system is that they incorporate all sizes of flats in the same building and even the same storey, but on the outside appear to be equal. Another interesting position is a compulsory quota system and subsequent resale guideline that requires quotas of each of the three main ethnicities for individual buildings. It is a large issue on contention in Singapore because it forces in many cases each ethnicity to sell only to buyers of the same ethnicity thereby discriminating against the minority ethnicities. Thursday night we went out to another nightspot called Ministry of Sound, a famous chain out of the UK, for hip hop night. We got into the club as members which allowed us to access private member rooms which basically were just super nice lounges with a much chiller atmosphere. Overall another good night. However, even getting 6 hours of sleep each and a 2 hour nap i woke up on Friday not feeling so well and after a 4 hour nap on Friday afernoon I took some meds to feel better. I was okay to go to the Singapore Arts Festival performance which the program bought us tickets to go to and I really enjoyed attending. The performance was at the Drama center the National Library of Singapore and was a mandarin play w/ subtitles about Singaporean identity. It was very artistically intensive, had a lot of amazing background film accompaniment and centered around a cast member who stood 8 feet in the air on a platform for the entire play, never moving, never speaking, yet constantly present.