Singapore, December 6-7

Thursday we started at the National University, Singapore (NUS) where we met Avi's host and old friend Miklos. We had a nice lunch and lively conversations with 2 other faculty in the alumni club. So it was quite an international event - an Indian CS professor who has been here for 10 years, a young Singaporean CS professor, Miklos who is a Hungarian who has lived in Paris for many years and now shares his time between Paris and Singapore and we. This seems to be very common here - the university is full of people from all over and many of them seem to have settled here for good.

After lunch I took a cab back to town and went to replenish my dwindling book collection. As I got out of the store it started pouring so all the plans I had for exploring dissolved and I was lucky to find a taxi and get dry back to the hotel.

It cleared up by the time we all met for dinner. This time it was with Miklos, an Indian postdoc and an Indian visitor. We ate at the waterfront and struggled valiantly with large crabs - not clear who won but we at least are alive to tell the story. (They were tasty but so much work...)

Thursday Avi went off to the University where he gave the talk which was the purpose of this trip. The poster for this event is the scariest I have ever seen! 

I walked around most of the day. This time I walked towards Marina Bay - a very nice walk along the water and the density of malls is slightly lower there, but not much. There were fantastic views of the skyline and lots more unusual architecture - in particular the helix bridge which "is the first bridge in the shape of a DNA molecule"!

From the Marina Bay mall I took a bridge to the Sands hotel (amazing - 3 towers with a boat-like structure connecting them on top - apparently there is a promenade and swimming pool up there in the sky), and another bridge to the Gardens by the bay. This is a huge area of gardens of many styles and in between there are man-made "super trees" - tree like structures which like most other architecture here is over the top. They even have a skywalk between 2 of the trees which is a lot of fun.

Next I took a river cruise. The boat kind of retraced my steps from the morning with narration which was as silly as these things always are but the trip was lovely. I alighted (here people seem to alight from any moving object - trains, boats, taxis - a very favorite word) by the Singapore Merlion  - Singapore's mascot. I had seen him from different angles but never noticed his younger self close by. Cute.

After a shower I took a taxi to NUS to the post-talks reception. We did not stay very long as we had decided we have to visit the 70th floor of our hotel - it is the tallest building in Singapore. The night was very clear and the view completely breath-taking. We had the most expensive appetizer and drink ever but it was well worth it! Too bad the photos cannot do justice to this so I won't put any here!

We will soon meet Miklos for another day of tourism (some of it will be a repeat of yesterday but I don't mind). And then we will have to get up before 4am and start the long trek home. Hopefully we won't have a long lay-over similar to the one we had on the way over!

Yesterday's and today's photos: 

https://plus.google.com/photos/115788154995936631095/albums/5819213723050890881?authkey=CPaE0M-GutLKUg

https://plus.google.com/photos/115788154995936631095/albums/5819212928441221585?authkey=CNaJmaKX1NPC2AE