It’s been a while since the last update on this page. Two (mutually exclusive) things are to blame: school and vacation. School is getting hard work nowadays, with 4 midterms this week and 2 projects starting next week. Plus the usual deadlines of assignments and tutorials. I think I’m working harder in Singapore than in Holland, even though I’m taking less courses.

Luckily we had a break last week. Recess week lead me together with 5 of my friends I met here in Singapore, to go to Bali. A place Dutch people normally only visit during their honeymoon, but since it tickets were only around 70 euros and hotel/food/daily life in Indonesia costs really little, although you have to pay millions of Rupiahs (yay hyperinflation), we decided to go there. So after finishing one last proposal for a course on Friday, we went to Bali on Saturday.

Bali

We had a hotel with swimming pool and breakfast, for a whopping 7 USD a night. It’s situated in the most touristy place on Bali: Kuta. You couldn’t go out without random Indonesians yelling obscenities like “transport?”, “rent motorbike?”, “buy t-shirt?”, “buy another t-shirt?”, “braid your hair?” and stuff like that, which was quite annoying. At night, the t-shirts changes into weed that smells like oregano and the braided hair changes into boom-boom. A dodgy place is what it is!

[singlepic id=4 w=320 h=240 float=left]Since we left Singapore to avoid a crowd and overstimulation, the first days in Kuta weren’t really the way to go. We left for a monkey forest on the first day, which was nice. But the second day already, we left to the north part of the island to a town called Lovina. Being the heroes that we are, we rented two motorcycles (proper ones! Honda Tigers! 200cc, monocylinder, 16.7HP, full manual gearbox and fugly helmets) and a map and tried getting up north, where the other 4 went by car. The only thing we needed to do is lie about drivers licenses and sign some stuff about how we accepted full responsibility in case of a crash.

Lovina

[singlepic id=14 w=320 h=240 float=right]Since I don’t actually have a drivers license, only a couple of hours going back and forth deserted roads on my dad’s bike, I was quite nervous. Needless to say, the start wasn’t the best ever. I got separated from my bikebuddy after about 10k and from that point on got completely lost. I was scared, but getting more confident with the bike, so we decided to meet up at our hotel and go for the second attempt.

And from that point on the day was made out of pure awesomeness. Being at ease enough to look into my rear view mirrors, we managed to leave the ridiculous traffic between Kuta and the capital Den Pasar behind us without getting separated again. We took breaks quite a lot, because of dehydration and fatigue. And eventually, since we had to cross some mountains, just to take pictures and admire the view. It’s a bit ridiculous that I can rent a bike without a license and see the beauty of the Balinese mainland, where the girls are beautiful, the view is breathtaking and the food is delicious. So that was one of the best experiences that trip I think.

After meeting up with the 4 others, we of course had only stories of bravery to tell and confidently started calculating our average speed which ended up around 15km/h… And that’s where the bravery stopped. We enjoyed our stay in Lovina with the obligatory eating and drinking, listening to coverbands and drinking, hanging around in our hotel rooms and drinking and sleeping and not drinking. We rented a boat to watch the dolphins the morning after.

I don’t really like dolphins, but in fact, when you see them swimming around and jumping and floating and what not, they are actually majestic sea creatures. I hate myself for liking it, but the majesticness was awesome! I didn’t bring a camera, since the boats were a bit dodgy, but I should’ve. Better luck next time.

[singlepic id=18 w=320 h=240 float=left]Since we didn’t want to drive into Den Pasar in the dark, we left for Kuta quite early. One stop at the Gitgit waterfalls, which were nice, and of we were. Same trip, but about 3 times as fast. Not as many breaks, since this time we actually knew the road and a bit faster, since we had been practicing riding bikes. We had heard stories about corrupt police stopping and fining/forcing to be bribed by tourists, so we half conveniently mistook the stop signs they gave for waving and half missed the stop signs. We did have the fastest bikes on the island, so no police chases whatsoever. It was easier for them to stop tourists on slower bikes. Awesome! Illegal driving _and_ not being fined.

Surfing

[singlepic id=26 w=320 h=240 float=right]The rest of the days we spent in Kuta. A bit of surfing, a bit of tanning, a bit of eating, a bit of drinking and all good fun. Surfing was hard to start with, since I don’t really like water. But after inhaling bucketloads of salt water, you learn to appreciate wiping out and being drowningish. Plus actually getting up on a wave and riding to the beach on your 8ft longboard is an awesome sensation. Yep, once again I was getting my rocks of riding. No asphalt this time, but water. And hey, water is nothing but liquid snow, so it’s basically snowboarding isn’t it?

One of the people I met here is here on a Rotary scholarship, so she knows all kinds of fancy people. One of which being the owner of the Ripcurl surfschool, who offered us free lessons. We didn’t even consider going there in the first place, with their prices starting from 60USD, but this was an offer we couldn’t refuse. One downside on the story: we had to wear helmets that lessons. One upside on the story: “Mark Grams” (I think that’s me) has a certificate that he can use the words gnarly, ripped and stoked.

In total we surfed for around 4 halves of a day and I kind of got the hang of it. But I still prefer wearing Burton over Billabong.

Singapore vs Bali

[singlepic id=25 w=320 h=240 float=left]Bali is actually just as crowded as Singapore. Just imagine a climate a few degrees hotter, replace all Chinese people with Australians. Replace all Chinese food with Nasi Padang. Replace staring Indian people with Indonesian people that offer shit you don’t need. And that’s Bali for you. It’s been awesome since it wasn’t as uptight as Singapore though. As opposed to Singapore, drinking was cheaper than in Holland, there’s no rules on crossing the road and you can spit everywhere you want. So we all got our compensatory relaxing in and are now able to study again!

We had one night of partying, since we had to celebrate two birthdays. We started off with eating cake, proceeded to a joint as stripclub as you can get without being dodgy and from there on it went downhill. What happens on Bali, stays on Bali.

POLITIXZ

Corrupt police sucks!

School

After recess comes midterms. I had one horribly difficult midterm and one really easy. I have two more tomorrow, I think they will be easy. Furthermore, two projects started. One is going to be on predicting stock prices based on information on companies derived from annual reports (so not me…) and one has its proposal pending on stabilizing videos we shot on the bikes on Bali. Using the perception topic of optical flow to do stuff is more me. It’s both going to be hard work, but I think I’ll like it.

The rest of this semester will not really be a lot of traveling anymore. I need to watch my money a little bit, plus I need to spend more and more time on school. And on top of that, Mrs. Grams is coming to Singapore on the 5th of december (64 days, I’m counting them…) for a month, which will surely lead to a bit more of travelage.

_{I should’ve probably broken this up into two posts, but whatever…}

_{Wat is het met deze neusophalende mensen? ik word para van al die mensen die naast me schudden met hun been en om de 5 seconden hun neus ophalen en gestresst kuchen. Ik voel me ook niet tof op een tentamen, maar ga ik geluid maken? bah bah!}