They say "it never rains, it pours." I had barely recovered from all the paper work due to my trip to Sydney that I had to begin preparing for my second official tour in a month's time to Singapore. The fact that it would only be a 4 day stay was depressing me since that meant lesser time to do sightseeing. I was wondering if I'll enjoy moving around on my own there. Questions like how my first invited talk will fare and what kind of impression will I form on the scientists, professors and students belonging to my research field were making me anxious.
The journey however started on a good note and set the tone for the next few days to come. Due to some error a few multiple boarding passes allocating same seats to different people had been generated for my flight from Chennai to Singapore. I was one of them and would have complained but because the Economy Class was full, I was upgraded to Business Class! I got good food, nice treatment and a cozy and spacious seat during my journey. I arrived at Singapore on the night of 3 November so all I did after reaching my hotel
Madras Hotel Eminence was to go off to sleep.
The following day the symposium of my interest was to start after tea so I decided to spend the time before that by exploring a bit of Singapore. I first went to
Suntec City but unfortunately the Fountain of Wealth was not running at the time I reached there. So that was a let down. But I happily spent some 30 min in Toys-r-us at the mall there.
I walked through the Marina Square to come to a walkway from where I caught the first glance of the Esplanade. I could also see from a distance the Singapore
Flyer. Had I more time on hand I would have probably taken a ride on it though I must admit I was a bit scared to do it alone and would have liked to have some moral support.
On getting close to the Esplanade I took a number of pictures trying to capture its jack fruit like appearance. In my opinion while it didn't have the Sydney Opera House's beauty, it still had a grandeur about it. I had imagined the Esplanade Drive built over the Singapore river to be
humongous (influenced by the picture of Sydney Harbour Bridge still on my mind) and so was disappointed by what I saw. The good thing was I could reach within minutes perhaps what is Singapore's most clicked tourist attraction- The
Merlion. I was however more attracted by what was situated behind it: the Fullerton Hotel with the skyline in the background. I decided that this was a site to visit again to see how it looked after the night had descended.
In trying to find my way towards the Raffles Place
MRT I went past the
Cavenagh Bridge near which I saw the famous First Generation sculpture of young boys joyously jumping into the river. At the
MRT station I bought myself a S$ 24 three day Singapore Tourist Pass which proves very useful as it allows unlimited rides on the monorail irrespective of the line (purple, red or green) and buses.
I arrived at our conference venue
Biopolis some 10 minutes past three and ended up missing the registration. They however allowed me to make full use of the tea break which offered a good variety of munchies. Our symposium
on Material Issues on Hydrogen Storage began at 4 pm. There were two invited lectures which turned out be quite informative. At the end of the session I introduced myself to the conference organizer Prof
Feng of NUS, Singapore. I confessed to him that I was both nervous and excited to speak the next day. He told me that I needn't worry since the audience is very friendly. Indeed that's the way it was. When Dr G P
Das of
IACS,
Kolkata and also a member of the organizing committee introduced me to other senior professors as the replacement speaker for my boss, they all warmly welcomed me saying that "That is good as it is her own work after all." Honestly instead of soothing my nerves this got me more worried. Determined to do well the next day I decided to return to my hotel and practice.
To my great relief that for my way back I had company in the form of my boss's old student Chandra and his senior Dr
Ghosh both of whom by a coincidence were also booked in my hotel. On returning after a long day we thought of relaxing for a while and then meet up at 8.30 pm to go and have dinner outside. The latter turned out to be an almost impossible job to achieve with three people wanting three different things: pure vegetarian (Chandra); non-oily, cheese-less, and low cholesterol (Dr
Ghosh); and non-Indian, preferably non vegetarian (me).
We walked a fair distance to reach
McDonalds only to find French fries as the only veg dish available. We next entered a nearby food center but the strong smell was even too much for me. I don't know how but taking directions from people we ended up reaching from
Lavendar to Little India. We went past some Indian restaurants but nothing appealed to all three of us. We had just found a nice vegetarian eatery and sat down when I saw the
Mustafa Center right across. We next made the mistake of entering it. It was even more crowded than Delhi's
Sarojini Nagar Market or Old Railway Station area. It was terribly jam packed with hardly any walking space and that too at 9.30 pm! After that brush with
Mustafa Center and the thousands of Indian faces I could no longer believe that I really was in Singapore.
Almost drained of energy and unable to stay hungry any longer I decided to eat in the
Mustafa Cafe. I merrily ate a fish burger with lots of cheese, though not too merrily since my co-walkers couldn't join me. I however finished quickly not surprising famished as I was and reversed roles of being the spectator when their turn came to eat. Chandra and Dr
Ghosh finally ate a
thali and
masala dosa in an Indian restaurant just opposite the cafe.
We were all so tired that we wanted to take a taxi but couldn't fine one in sight that was not on hire. Eventually we ended up taking the
gyarah number ki bus (i.e. walk on foot) all the way to the hotel!
It was nearing 11 pm when I finished talking to Daddy on the phone and I hadn't practiced even once. I fought against sleep and kept awake for another 2 hours until I gained a bit of confidence that I will not be messing things up at 11.45 am on 5 November.
