Teemu - Title

Guh, I guess I haven’t posted anything since Chara-expo and even that one had a really narrow scope. It’s time to get you guys dated on what has happened. Please excuse the structure of this post, I’ll just write down whatever comes to my mind. Some happened events are from time prior to my last post and not everything will be chronologically accurate, especially given that I would rather talk about matters such as the project or food as a whole. Bear with it.

Project:

The Monday after my first post we got our final team member: the French designer. He’s a decent guy, though it’s a bit of a shame that the designed could only arrive after we had finished the basic design of the game. It’s not like he has no work to do, but I can imagine it wasn't really what he was looking for. In the same week all the final year teams (including us, obviously) had a quick presentation about their projects, and once we were done with it, we could finally start working for real. It felt really good to be in a team with proper project management for once. 

Afterwards the work has been fairly simple comparing to the previous chaos, we have a certain amount of tasks every week as well as larger milestones and it is our job to see those tasks done on time. I'm struggling quite a bit to keep up with my seniors. In fact, I sometimes have to ponder whether I am more trouble than worth, there’s not really a problem with my code working, rather than in how it fits the framework. I do technically know polymorphism and state machines, but I haven’t utilized them like this before as opposed to writing big lumps of individual code that manages to get the job done. Thus I have some catching up to do and I feel like I'm gradually starting to see at least how I should do things. Resulting from my stress and failures (and the nine-hour-long days) I can’t really say I have enjoyed the project and the school days but that, to me, is secondary. The important thing is that this is definitely useful which means the trip was worth it: I tend to value gaining useful experiences more than gaining fun ones.

Food:

Aside from school, food was probably what I was most excited about when I got here. In most parts it has lived up to my (rather high) expectations but there are some quite disappointing factors. I expected the local food to be hot. I've been warned that ordering spicy food abroad is close to dangerous. Apparently I've already eaten the spiciest dish available at food courts (with some added chili and wasabi) in the country and it wasn't really hotter than what I normally cook at home. I did also complete the task of eating ghost pepper wings. Based on their taste they may have indeed been touched with one. I recently heard some locals decided to get me some ghost peppers online after I completed their weird instant noodles flavoured with something quite nasty (I admit that was hot). I'm rather scared (as well as excited) of that, I have eaten naga morich before and it was not entirely pleasant experience… OK, I can get the food spicy if I add raw chili peppers to it or throw in a large spoonful of chili powder to the sauce (which almost makes it divine), but I’d sure like a genuinely well-made food that makes me sweat and gives me the burn that echoes in my throat, nose and ear canals.

I’m also getting a bit tired of rice and noodles, and while there are dishes with neither, avoiding both rather limits your courses. I have managed to find bread (it wasn't that hard as I thought), which is rather helpful in the evenings. Too bad it’s a far cry from Finnish jaw-breaking rye bread: This one is about as dense as cotton-candy, and due to the locals’ weird customs, probably has about the same amount of sugar in it too (a mild exaggeration.) Some of my favourites here have been: anything with curry, barbecue sets, Indian and Korean food.

I'm fairly confident there is no Pepsi Max in the entire nation; I have found Coca Cola light and Zero, as well as Pepsi light and twist, but the divine liquid is ever so absent. As for coffee, there IS good coffee available, but it’s pretty much only in cafeterias: The coffee in stores often has pre-added milk or sugar, though there are black versions available. We don’t have a coffee maker in our apartment, but coffeebags (like teabags, but with coffee), seem to be fairly popular here, and I occasionally make some for myself. It’s all right, though lacking. In school we have a wide variety of different poisons labelled as coffee available. At first I didn't even notice there was a simple black coffee available and had the misfortune of drinking coffee with milk and sugar, and one with sugar. I don’t know which one was more horrible: the one with milk tasted like cocoa a five-year-old kid with a stage 2 diabetes would like, the amount of sugar was atrocious. The black one tasted more like coffee, but I'm not sure if it was a good thing or not. The horribly sweet flavor made it very difficult to swallow down. Luckily I only had to try both once before I noticed the normal coffee that seemingly interested no one. The best part was that it only costs 40 cents per cup. It tasted like poison, but at least it was honest poison, delicious sticky dough that has been sitting still for hours. The only thing better than an honest horrible coffee is an excellent one. I drink two cups every day.

Activities:

It’s been a while since this happened, and Sami has already touched on the subject briefly, but we got a change to playtest some games from local start-ups. It was obviously highly confidential since they weren’t announced or released yet so I won’t be talking about the games themselves, but I can touch the experience. Basically we got three days off school to do eight-to-ten hours of testing out all sorts of games for various platforms and filling out forms. Most of the games weren’t really targeted for us but some felt genuinely exciting, one was abruptly mortifying. Aside from the atrocious two hours we spent playing the abruptly mortifying one, we had a pretty good time: the developers were cool people, one bunch even bought us drinks after the day. Aside from playing, it was a good experience to see how the startup dev-scene looks like here in Singapore. They had a pretty cool system where the startups shared a building/environment called game solution centre, which provides them with software and mentoring and is actually managed by NYP (our school here.)

My apologies to the people who couldn't care less about magic: the gathering or otherwise have no idea about the following content: feel free to skip the rest.

The week after Chara-expo we participated (not in the main event) in mtg Grand-Prix held here in Singapore. It was actually the first official magic: the gathering event I ever attended, as Kajaani and much less Pieksämäki never hosted fnm. Needless to say, the place was crowded with people. The day passed quickly as we enjoyed the event and participated in a team-sealed with Sami and Toni. We got pretty trashed in it though Sami did quite well. I might have gotten my ass kicked in the Grand-Prix team-sealed, but I regained my honor as a limited player last Friday. The three of us (Sami, Toni, myself) went to a local game-store that held Magic origins prerelease. I somehow beat everybody with a rather mediocre deck by what seemed to have been blunt willpower and some dumb luck, thus winning the event. I will probably start going there on Fridays to play some modern now that I've gotten some upgrades from the grand-prix. I’ll let you know how I do, probably.

Expo

Lo and behold our joined post. Images you shall find below the texts.

Teemu's quest for geekdom

Sami will have a wall of text regarding the expo so I’ll try not to drag on subjects for too long. I have actually never been in a convention before, not sure why. This would be big so I wanted to get the most out of it. I firmly decided to not regret anything and thus I didn't: it’s that easy.

The place was crowded. I knew it would be yet I was still astonished by the enormous mob of geeks slobbering for the contents of their Mecca. I also wanted to get myself some keepsakes of the event but I didn't really know what I was looking for. It would have been fine if I could carefully check out every booth and decide what to get but thanks to our local friend I got warned that the merchandise sells out really fast, especially the popular ones. As I hadn't got the time to search for what I wanted the most I had to secure at least something in the way before it was too late: needless to say, the method wasn't the healthiest possible for my wallet, but I had already decided to have no regrets.

I've never really cared too much about figurines, but they were the first things that came to my mind and the first ones to sell out so I started looking for some depicting characters from shows I really liked as I didn't really want to use a lot of money for a character I cannot connect to. My obvious target was Haruhi, but to my surprise there didn't seem to be almost any merchandise from the series. I settled for a figurine that I liked but wasn't super excited about it. Afterwards I could search for more with at least some insurance. Eventually I did find one (1) figurine, or indeed any kind of merchandise, of Haruhi; too bad it was mediocre at best. I bought it anyway, praise the fandom!

For the rest of the day I roamed the booths and places looking for something interesting as well as simply enjoying the event. There was a lot of cosplay and it did nothing but escalate as the day grew longer. After we came back from lunch everybody with a costume that takes preparation had finished them and the sight of all of it was breathtaking. Sami had taken my phone for the sake of actually getting more than, like, four photos of the event. As a result I had him take pictures of pretty much every time I got moderately interested in something (read, often), maybe I should have become a producer after all.

The more interesting events in the expo consisted of Japanese show-wrestling and a huge trading card game tournament area. The wrestling was amusing in its own over-the-top way but it was far too scripted for my liking. I was hoping to get to play some Magic in the card-game-area, but wasn't surprised by the fact that mtg had little place in a place like this. Instead the game of the day was Cardfight!! Vanguard, the trading card game. I am NOT going to take up another tcg, so I didn't really delve into it, but the tcg-focus was seen in the booths as well, for there were a lot of card sleeves, playmats etc. that work just as fine in Magic.

Wallpapers/art/whatever-you-want-to-call-them had probably the best quality- price ratio in the event. This was especially true in the second day when artists were more desperate to sell them off and they were really affordable. Aside from the figurines, mtg-related stuff and art, I looted random accessories, a canvas and a shirt that radiates manliness.

As for what the future holds, I haven’t eaten the ghost pepper wings yet. Also our next weekend will be quite a blast as well, I am sure, as we participate (not in the main event) in Grand-Prix. Hype!

Sami - Awakened

The slight exhaustion brought by the three day marathon of video games didn't make it's way through a good nights sleep. I prepared myself for the upcoming journey with a luxurious breakfast of noodle soup made using our brand new electric kettle. CharaExpo would be located quite a ways away and we would be meeting our flatmate engineer's colleague at the expo station. We walked in the warm dawn through the campus of our school, heading towards the metro station on the commonly traversed path in the beautiful city adorned with it's common, seemingly exotic trees planted all round the busy streets and roads.

I had prepared myself for the upcoming event, being my first time in such an environment, not to mention this particular adventure takes place on the edge of the globe. I was sure to spend money, and to possibly regret my spending later on.

We made way for dozens of minutes standing in the hollow, bleeping rail caterpillar filled to the brim with people, transferring to ever more colourful groups along the way. Finally arriving to our destination four of us, that's two engineers, Yours Truly and Teemu, now waiting for our local friend. Contrary to our broken sweat about us being late, he was there over half an hour later than us, apologizing the timing of his arrival.

We now made way to the Expo hall, where we'd pay eight Singaporean Uncles for entry. The warm air made my large body sweat further surely making me a stereotypical sight later on, but once the gates were passed, the cool air within this new contained hub refreshed my mind. A huge mass of people going about the many organized booths, women and men dressed up as familiar characters all round and electronic music with exotic languages filled the hall decorated with a card game tournament area as well as a professional wrestling ring, I felt the need to seek something I had forgotten before.

I started my quest for simple figurines, settling myself in line that went around a section of booths just to grab myself something that I may never find in my homeland. Names of characters filled my mind as I looked at the models on display. The laws on certain content in Singapore seemed illusive as many of the dolls shown creep towards that border and perhaps beyond, but still there they were.

I fell victim to the expenses, but I was prepared with my shameful European bank-borrowed wealth. I decided to borrow a better phone since Teemu didn't have a habit of taking photos, and I tried to document our day the best I could. I didn't take photos of myself or the group I was with however, partially due to my dislike of photos taken of me and mostly due my own stupidity, Batman had convinced me otherwise at one point. After my first purchase and my first dozen photos, not to mention after the few series of anime I've watched recently, something awakened in me and I felt the thirst for more merchandise as the slippery bills tried to crawl out of their safe lodging in my pocket. Throughout the day I went by many booths and spent a lot of time in the creators corner hoarding artwork, figurines and other small merchandise. A lot of things that I didn't even know the origin of, at least yet. As I browsed through trading card sleeves trying to find ones decorated with amusingly lewd images, a character popped in my head and began my quest to find anything of this character from the event. I grasped a few sleeves and started to go around different booths asking for items referring to this character sadly to no avail. However, a friendly man behind a counter mentioned that they may have the thing I'm looking for at their store, but didn't bring any to the event. I started a bombardment of inquiries if he'd be here the next day and if he'd pass through their store after sundown or before dawn, he said he'll see what he can do and gave me his business card. I had hope for tomorrow.

The structure of time seemed to change as I indulged myself in the many joys of the event: watching wrestlers do their rehearsed exotic dances, hearing out creators of shows talk about things while the seemingly afraid security asked me not to take photographs in this area, watching different card games play out and finding many characters both unknown and familiar and both alive and sculpted. Doppelgängers in the many forms of Hatsune Miku was a common sight. Our group shattered and reformed many times as each of us walked about finding our own cup of tea.

At some point in time, in some point of space we gathered together and decided to go for a meal, the meal I showed you earlier in my case. We got out of the hall and ventured a little on the public transportation to have a new food court shown to us. Albeit very typical of the courts seen before, this also had a charm of it's own. Many small kitchens in a tightly packed space serving many different dishes for many different tastes, as was the norm. It wasn't crowded, but there were some people. Then again it is one or the other everywhere in here. I decided to obliterate a bird's walking mechanism while others settled for other dishes. Our local friend introduced us to some additional treats, salmon with soy and wasabi. We returned this favour by handing him our precious ammonium chloride flavoured treats, salmiak. The reaction was mixed I'd say, as his eyebrows wiggled in a rapid frequency as he chewed down these questionable black diamonds.

Once we would return home with full hands and spacier pockets, we had already separated from our local guide. With a tired body and mind I drifted towards our home-for-now and settled to rest and prepare for tomorrow, while an engineer succumbed to temporal madness much to the confusion of myself and a few others. Such is the way of the Eastern winds.

The next day was bittersweet. I managed to grab more artwork, but while the friendly merchant was located in the same booth as the day before, he hadn't gone back to bring the goods I had desired. He spotted me from a distance and was already distraught realizing I kept my word, and his apology seemed sincere when I said he'd know what I was going to ask. Thus I have two quests: Turtle soup and this merchant's store. Seems it is in a convenient place with potential for pleasant photos, so that is fine by me. It also was definitely a business scheme by him, whether his words were sincere or not. All in all the day was more calm. There was less people around, cheaper prices and we stuck our ground for a shorter time. We had to make a re-entry due to my own thoughtlessness how ever, as I had left an important blueprint to a booth. Luckily the people there were kind enough to hold on to it in case I would return and the recovery was successful with an exchange of a few words.

As the day turned to dusk, new schemes were created for next weekend as we'd head for Grand Prix. And as of this writing, I do not regret my spending as much as I had anticipated. In fact, I feel I should have grabbed a few more items that I passed. Perhaps the merchant has some irresistible items among his wares, and I do not doubt this.

Images

Note: These images are not meant for commercial use. All characters and products under copyright belong to their rightful owners. The only intellectual property held by the Author of this blog is of the photos themselves. If you feel a photo should be removed from the blog, please contact us.
These photos are few of many. The rest of the photos may be viewed in a compilation that I will share on this post later.

Booths and general view:

Activities;

Cosplay:

Figurine examples:

Loot:

Teemu – Finally posts something

Our sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that there is another guy writing this blog and I think it is past time I make an appearance.  I am Teemu, I study game-programming at KUAS. Having finished my first year I fled to Singapore for more studies in terror of upcoming vacation (who wants to not be at school?) I figured I should as well make everything out of exchanging so I applied (and got accepted) to NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in Netherlands for half a year. Only recently did I realize that the exchange period of NHTV was actually a full year, which took me aback for a moment but I can’t complain: looks like a 13 months of invaluable experience for me. Coincidentally, my schedule matches with Sami, so we decided to co-write this blog with him, thus people will hopefully know what to expect should they ponder the possibilities beyond KUAS and so our relatives won’t have to pester us with constant messages for they can read how we are doing. Unfortunately I fell sick right after arriving at Singapore so I write a little late. I will, however, try to scribble down something every week.

About our project

I am not going to reveal much about the actual contents of our project, but I can still tell how we are doing. First of all, we have no courses except the project-course so we are doing it five days a week for twelve weeks. Our school days are rather tiresome: they start at 09.00 and go on until the clock finally ticks 18.00. We have a one hour lunch-break so our days are technically eight hours. In the west we usually calculate the lunch/hour into the working hours. I guess that shows the difference between Asian and European work-culture.

Surprisingly, I got into the same project with Sami and Eero making it three Finns in the project. The rest of the Finns are pretty well separated. We have a total eight members in our team, one of which hasn’t arrived yet. That is a decently large number, certainly greater than any I have worked in Finland. Thus the scope of the project is also quite large, which makes me stress out quite a bit. I am also rather stressed because my co-programmers have studied for two years longer than me, not to mention they’re Asian. It’s not a question for me who is the scrub. Well, truth be told I don’t really care how we do here, what is important is what I can learn in the process. This should be a good boot-camp for NHTV.

About life

The nine Finns that arrived in Singapore were separated into two buildings. I and Sami got four engineers with us, and the six of us now live in one building. Aside from the shortage of personal space living here is pretty nice. Every day is full of the engineers’ lame jokes and we usually spend our evenings doing something together. More often than not, we find ourselves going to the nearby district for more food and groceries after school and after that (usually around 20.00) we are tired as balls. As for weekends, I was sick the first one so that was pretty much me sleeping the whole time.  This weekend we didn’t really do anything exciting: we’re Finns and nerds so we like to hang out indoors after all. That being said, I think we’ll tour the city more later on.

About Singapore

We have been deep into the city once when we got our student passes. We were also given train cards, which can be used for the local trains in Singapore that take you to wherever you want to go in the city, like the underground of Helsinki. The city looks rather beautiful, it is clean and there are gorgeous trees everywhere. That being said, we are practically at the equator so it is hot! It’s 30 degrees Celsius day and night and the air is really humid. What always blows my mind is the fact that it is hot and dark at the same time after the Sun sets around 19.00.

Our campus is quite large and it has pretty much everything we need: Four (I think) “canteens” aka places filled with food courts. There are gyms, swimming pools and courts for tennis/basketball/whatever for those sportier than me. We have also found a grocery shop although it is more like a large kiosk than an actual shop. It seems normal stores are a delicacy here in Singapore, we usually go shopping in the nearby district and have managed to find one grocery store there and even it doesn’t sell, for example, bread. I’d sell my soul for some rye bread.

About food

The food here is cheap. At school we usually get whatever at around 2 euros, and that isn’t cheaper for students like in Finland, it’s like the actual price for the food that is pretty much cooked for you on the spot. Singapore doesn’t have its own traditional food, instead they have a collection of pretty much every county nearby: there’s a lot of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indian food. Chicken rice and its many variations is perhaps the most commonly seen meal. Other common sights are ramen-esque soups or actual ramen and barbeque dishes. In almost all cases, there’s either noodles or rice. As for meat, chicken is very popular, “normal meat” exists too and seafood is largely present with a lot more variety than in Finland: squids are not at all uncommon. Of course I don’t always even know what I am eating. The food is really good, though I was expecting it to be spicier. Maybe I just haven’t looked from the right place.

Then the sad part: There is no Pepsi Max, I have to stick with Coke zero for two more months, I don’t know how I will look when I will return. Bread seems to be a delicacy here, I can’t seem to find it anywhere (let alone rye bread, hah), which means that I am often hungry at the apartment. Everything seems to be covered with sugar like it would automatically make stuff taste better (guh).

About future

I have three things planned out for the future. One: the NHTV exchange in the Netherlands, two: Chara expo, a large video game/anime event held next weekend here in Singapore (I’ll blog about it, don’t worry) and eating ghost pepper wings. That’s all, have a nice day!