My Eclipse

Yes it's in silver, I really wanted black but it was out of stock. This particularly sweet looking coupe is the US-only Mitsubishi Eclipse 2007 model. Mitsubishi was having a 2007 clearance sale, and offered a factory rebate of $2k on the vehicle. On top of that, the dealer was eager to move units, so he also sold the vehicle at invoice price. And since he couldn't get me a black model, he threw in alloy wheel locks and an alloy fuel door for free.

Won't tell you how much I paid for it, but I love this car and it's really a car that I would never get to drive in Singapore. =)

Of course, there's all issues and concerns going around: Is it car thief target? Will your fellow students resent an Asian guy driving a coupe and vandalize it?

Frankly, I don't really care. I like this car, and I'm gonna keep driving it =)

There's something strange about coffee...

Today's blog will be on the wonderful world of coffee in America. Or more like, I don't understand why coffee prices are so weird here. For the record, I'm a serious coffee drinker, so the economics of coffee are important to me =)

Let's take a typical jar of Nescafe instant coffee, like the many many types of instant coffees you see in Singapore. Only in the US, instant coffee is considered a rarity; a luxury if you will. A 200g bottle of instant coffee costs a whopping $8... or about $12 SGD. Normal coffee prices for Nescafe deluxe in NTUC will only set you back $8 SGD.

In contrast, ground coffee, which is a rarity in Singapore, is the cheapest, most available coffee product in the US. I accidentally bought a 200g jug of ground coffee, for an amazing sum of $2.80 USD. Now, making coffee from ground coffee requires a fixed cost, which is the cost of the coffee machines, and they use drip coffee makers around these parts. An economical model will set you back about $18 USD.

Economically speaking, if you purchased a coffee machine and coffee grounds, you would potentially break even with the instant coffee option within 3 jars of instant coffee (3 months of consumption for me).

I would suppose that my research question would be: Why does instant coffee command a price premium in America? My suspicions are the cost of processing coffee in the US are much higher than those in South East Asia. Store space in the US is cheap as well, so manufacturers can offer big 500g tubs of ground coffee without significantly increasing the costs of stocking and displaying the product. (Approximately twice or three times the volume of ground coffee is required to produce the same amount of coffee as a teaspoon of instant).

What does this mean for the average lay coffee drinker in the US then? Buy a coffee machine, and buy coffee grounds. Instant is too expensive in the long run and not as tasty as freshly brewed coffee.

The Empty Room

Some folks have asked how my room looks like... so I'm posting the pictures I took when I first brought my stuff in (without any set up yet). Didn't do up my room much though. In terms of net floor area, the entire place is about the size of a HDB 5 room flat living area. My apartment is on the ground floor.

Without further ado, the toilet. The architect who put a full, waist high WINDOW on a ground floor TOILET is a genius.



Pic below is the bedroom:

Kitchen. The kitchen in on the right of the door and shares the same space as the living room:





Living Room, complete with dirty and dusty carpet. Same great crapet, I mean carpet in the bedroom. The stuff you see on the floor is a vacuum cleaner and the linen set.


Another funny thing about Americans is that all their vacuums are of the upright variety, whereas in Singapore we like ground units with a long hose. I suppose its because the upright variety supports carpet brushes better (my vacuum unit has a rotating carpet brush)

I couldn't car-less

Good morning all, it's Sunday morning in Ann Arbor, and I'm awake at 6am. Felt terribly sleepy at 10pm the night before, so I turned in to rest. The warm days of summer are coming to a close I think... it's about 23 degrees in the morning now, a drop from 25-26 a few nights before.

I'm also completely car-less now, having returned the rental to Hertz. My TT of funds from my Citibank account was only effected on Friday, which means I'll probably see the cash on Wednesday only.

I'm quite sure that I'll need a vehicle to get around the place, even if it's only a bicycle. The nearest serious grocery place is about 2 bus-stops away, but the bus comes once every 20min on weekends, AND I'll have to change buses once to get back to the apartment. That's potentially 40min of waiting for buses to do groceries. Bye bye frozen foods!

I suppose the apartment is more or less up and running. The main things which I lack now are a big floor rug, a couple of floor cushions and a TV, but these are hardly the essentials of life. At least I have it reasonably good. My MOH friends are holed up in a hotel that's a 10min walk to the nearest bus stop. Mine's just on the road in front of the apartment.

My only source of major concern now is that I can't find the instant coffees (or least I wasnt looking very hard). Most folks here use the drip percolators to make coffee, so everything is in coffee grounds. That's really unlike Singapore, where most coffee is sold as instants. Food for thought huh? I'm glad I packed a small bottle of boncafe along, but it's running out! The humanity!

Krispy Kreme Day

In true Singaporean tradition, I'll be showcasing some of the food I'm eating in Ann Arbor.

Today is about Krispy Kremes, the only true donut to queue up for. Donut Factory is very very pale imitation of what Krispy Kremes are about.

Now, I can't get fresh KKs in AA, but these are the next best thing: Half-dozen (that's 6 to you non-Americans) KKs for $2.99 ($3 say $3 lah... $2.99 for what?). What's even better is a DOZEN KKs for $4! ($3.99). In the interests of calorie control, I have elected to pass on the dozen.

Room update: Finally set up most of the things I wanted to do. I'm really glad that I planned for a 3 day car rental because the $200 bought me lots of convenience: Managed to purchase my mattress and have it delivered, bought linens and pillows and visited IKEA in a nearby township all in a single day. As a result, most of my necessary furnishings were in the apartment by Wed. Bought a vacuum to clean up the place as well, but it's terribly loud and noisy.

There's some outstanding matters I have left to do: Check in with the International Students center to complete my visa and immigration procedures, and to check that the money from my SG Citibank account has been successfully TTed (wired) to my US bank account.

The weather here is remarkably like Singapore: about 30-31 degrees in the day with huge sunshine, and 24-25 degrees at night (office aircon levels). It even rains here on a daily basis: short, intense bursts of rain.

After 28 hours journey, I'm finally there

It's been a real tough 28+ hours to arrive at Ann Arbor, but I'm finally there.

Following up from the Narita post, I flew ANA from Tokyo to Chicago, on an absolutely packed flight, with me seated on the aisle next to a big sized whiny China guy and his flabby mother. I can tell you, 12 hours of that isn't exactly the most comfortable experience around.

Chicago O'Hare airport is probably the most run down airport I've seen so far, with carpeting full of stains and crumbs and the ceiling cladding rusting in many places as well. You would expect more from an airport near one of the major financial centers and cities of the USA, amirite? Strangely, Detroit Metropolitan was newer, more intelligently laid out and has more facilities as well.

Rented a car from Hertz. Including Loss Waiver clause, a 72 hr rental ended costing me about $200 USD, which is about $100 a day. Horrendously overpriced, and thats already with the 20% citibank discount. But it's a definite must to have.

Because to my totally expected horror, 1696 Cram Circle Apt 11 is a really dusty place with dirty carpets and an absolute minimum of lighting. Such as none in the living area (though theres an overhead light in the adjacent kitchen area) and none whatsoever in the bedroom. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Looks like the priority of purchase now is a vacuum cleaner, a mattress, more than a few stand lights and a desk and chair to work from.

As at this moment, I've gone about 36 hours with 5 hours of sleep. Will most probably turn in early tonight and attempt to reset my body clock. Ann Arbor is still amazingly bright at 8pm in the evening... looks like 645pm Singapore time. Oh well, it'll be dark much earlier in the winter.

And yes, driving on the right side of the road is a major pain. Especially since the stick controls are switched around (i.e your signal switch is swopped with your wiper controls). Gotta mug up on the Ann Arbor Basic Theory, cos I have no idea whether I'm allowed to u-turn on certain streets.

Will post up some pictures when the digital camera is fully charged. Tomorrow is gonna be a full day of buying and cleaning. I might even have to stay a second night at the motel. We'll see... some costs are hard to avoid.

Greetings from Narita!

Greetings from Narita Tokyo! Time here is 835am and I'm now resting from from 45min tour looking at kawaii nihon sales staff. I'm stopping over in Narita for a 2 hr transit before heading off to Chicago on NH12. Expecting to arrive on 21 Aug 9am. Which is pretty weird cos that's supposed to be 25min from now. Oh well, the wonders of modern technology. What's even more annoying than weird now is that my entire blogger page is in japanese (the hyperlinks at least). "Smart" technology shouldn't assume I'm a japanese speaker just because I log in from a Japan IP.

I'm also paying 500 yen just for 2 hours of internet access (well, actually the password is for 1 day). Now I completely appreciate why Changi is so traveller friendly: The entire airport back home is a wireless hotspot free of all charges.

All the cafes here sell stuff in japanese yen, and I don't feel like blowing my USD on crappy exchange rates for overpriced coffees, so I'll wait till the flight to get tanked up on caffeine. Didn't sleep much on the singapore-narita leg, since spiderman 3 was on (didn't watch that yet), and the ANA stewardesses felt it was necessary to grace each "fasten seat belts" event with an announcement. I swear that on more than one occasion, the pilot must have accidentally bumped the button on the way to the gents.

Anyway, my Canon camera ran flat on batteries and the charger's in the checked in luggage, so I have to rely on my trusty (and crappy) Palm Treo camera to take shots of the Narita International Departure area. It's dull and boring, lacking in character. Thank goodness I could find a nice power point to sponge off some power for the laptop.

Alright, I'll post back in again when I reach the USA. Might be Chicago where I'll lay over for 3 hours. We'll see. =)

Edit: A shot of Narita from where I'm sitting now:

Congratulations Glenn & Collette!

A big congratulations to my brother Glenn and his wife Collette, for today they celebrate their wedding after 9 years of courtship =)

On another note, I almost couldn't make it to the wedding. Was battling a serious bout of gastric flu on Friday morning, with a raging fever in tow on Friday night. I thank God for His grace in allowing me a speedy recovery (only ~18 hrs of sickyness) so that I can attend Glenn's big day. =)

While we are on the topic of thanksgiving, I also thank God that:

1) I tend to get one big bout of gastric flu a year or so, so I prefer to get it before I fly off to the US
2) This gatric flu has significantly depressed my appetite, which has been growing with all the send-off/farewell lunch/dinners I've been having.

There's always a silver lining somewhere haha! =)

STICKY DATE PUDDING RAWR!!!

It is my greatest honor to introduce the pleasures of sticky date pudding to my dear readers. My greatest thanks to Jean Ng (national netballer mind you) for introducing this brilliant dessert to me =)

Sticky Date Pudding is a traditional English type pudding (that means it's a sticky cake, not your mushy mango pudding type), sliced in half with a mountain of vanilla ice cream sandwiched in the middle. The pudding is then smothered in the ultra-sweet freshly made butterscotch sauce. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.....

Available from Cafe B******* (uhhhh cant remember the name haha) at Tanglin Mall or Paragon (5th floor or so I'm told)

1 week to Fly Day! (which is on a Monday)

With much anticipation and a tinge of nerves, the fly off date is now 1 week away. Just bought a spanking new suitcase from Carrefour (28 inches I think) and I'm now looking for a value priced notebook backpack that I can take along as hand-carry/cabin luggage. While I do have a smaller trolley bag, I'll look like a total arse if I try to pull 2 trolley bags at the airport. Much better to have a small duffel bag to stuff the clothes in while the electronics and documents go into the notebook backpack.

Speaking of flying, I must look in askance at my IRAS colleagues for what I feel must go down in my history book as an example of Public Service Anal-itis. Since Personnel Branch was swamped with work in the early-May period, I took it on myself to source out my airline tickets to the US. There are several flight routes to get there on the various airlines, and, being the responsible employee that I am, opted for a decent carrier with one of the lowest (if not THE lowest airfare). I'll fly ANA to Chicago and then switch to a domestic to Detroit. The cost of the ANA flight was $1840.

So, I put forward my claim to PB and here's the what happened:
1) IRAS tells me that I should have gone through them for a ticket. According to PSC policy, public service organizations should favour SIA as a carrier. BUT, the SIA route is more expensive

2) Then, IRAS says that it's agent quoted only $1780 for the ANA ticket, so it won't reimburse me the full $1840.

So, I've saved IRAS some cash by NOT flying SIA, and IRAS still wants to cheap me of $60? I'm grateful for the scholarship and all, but this just completely stinks of bureaucracy and rules-lawyering.

A Masters degree and Me

For the gentle readers who don't know where Chris is heading off to for the next year or so, I'll be doing a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Michigan for about a year or so. (Actually 10 months)

Why a Masters, and in the US at that? I needed an opportunity to recharge my thinking and my intellect. One of the risks of working long term in the public sector is the slow evolution (or devolution) of the individual thinking process into the organization's thinking process. Moreover, my work (in IRIN) over the past 3 years was solutioning towards my division's business needs. When your parameters are so clearly defined, it's difficult to explore new horizons of thinking.

I guess I could say that I felt stupider as the years went by and needed a change. I'm not interested in a certificate or putting the alphabet soup on the business card. I find the whole business of promoting people based on their certificates to be mildly offensive, to say the least. I want to do a Masters in the US because the people there think differently. Their (and I mean students and professors) values are not our values, and I want to know how and why the different peoples of the world think they do. And I want to be challenged in the way I think, in the ideas and values I hold dear. That, to me, is the most important aspect of a graduate education. Comments from the floor are welcome =)

The second question: Why Public Admin? will be answered in a subsequent post. It's a little more involved than this one, so I'd like the time to formulate it.

Oh, and if you need my MSN contact details, it's wulfheim at hotmail dot com. Just a little precaution against the email farming bots.

What's a Niebelung

Non WoW-ies might be asking who or what is a Niebelung (!?). The horror! Niebelung is my persona in the World of Warcraft game.

Yes, I play a cow for entertainment. Moo.

Countdown: 2.5 weeks before I fly off

Thought I'd get started on my blog before I fly off... =)

Preparations are going rather smoothly I think. Although I haven't really packed up the things I want to bring over to Ann Arbor, I'm not planning to bring over much. Maybe about 2 weeks of clothing, shoes, workout and swimming gear and the usual bunch of electronics that I feel lost without.

Also, I bought a bluetooth GPS module from DeLorme (www.delorme.com). Comes loaded with the 2008 US street maps, and should be very useful in my furniture and car hunting expeditions in the first 2 weeks there.

Gonna bring some shirts to the tailor for alteration today.