The Iranian Dress Code

Just the other day, I stumbled upon an article by a female Iranian journalist on the strict dress code in Iran. I was curious to find out more and asked Elham more about this practice.

In the previous entry about Elham she talked about the dress code for ladies. It consists of a trenchcoat and pants or long skirts. Even with bottoms, if the length of the trenchcoat is too high above the knees, it is considered too short.

Although this dress code is strictly applied in the public, people are free to dress as they wish at home or at private functions. Elham showed me some photos taken from her uncle's wedding. The dresses worn at the wedding were indeed an eye-opener.

I have hidden the face of the bride to protect her identity.

Eirik and the Norwegian Life!

Eirik Mjelle Walle is a third year Business student from Norway. 26 year-old Eirik is studying a special program set together between NTU and BI Norwegian School of Management.


He likes playing the guitar together with others, back home he likes spending time on the sea, fishing and also do alot of diving! "We dive preferably in the wintertime, because that is when the sight is best, but it is also cold! Like 4 degrees celsius!" he told me.

He is also a huge fan of boats. "I have worked as an boatbuilder for almost three years before I started studying. So my dream is to one day build my own boat! Me and a couple of friends back home want to build a Longtail boat, like they have in Thailand," he said.

Eirik also performed some songs with local band Catsinthecradle, one of the finalists of Living the Dream at Orchard!

I asked to have some pictures of his home. Thanks to Eirik for sharing!

Thursdays with Elham

After all these sessions with Elham, I decided to unravel the mystery about her. This is Elham.



In the following video, she talks about her life in Iran, her religion and the dress code in Iran.

Hardcorrre!

Geoff, hardcore rock music enthusiast from the US. He tells me about his preferences for music and why.

Thursdays with Elham

Eli introduced me to some Iranian sweets. They were great!

This is called Louz (pronounced as 'lo0-ooze') . It's made of coconut, rose essence and sugar.

It is a dessert and is eaten with tea. The city where louz originated from is the city of Yazd, in which people often buy louz as a souvenir.

This is the box used to keep the Louz, and it has the picture of the founders of the company.

Notice the designs on the box. The six cornered stars that form the design of the box are common designs of Iranian packaging, Eli told me. Everytime she sees something like that, she knows it's Iranian. Everytime she throws her garbage out and sees something with this design, she knows another fellow Iranian has thrown something away just before she did. Haha.

Next up, Sohan Koosha! Sohan is the name of the sweet, and Koosha is the name of the company. I tried a biscuit and it really tastes like nothing I've ever eaten. There's this strange savoury aftertaste and I had to check the ingredients to find out what was in it. It tastes great, by the way.

Here's the secret recipe for Sohan!! According to what the box says...Sohan is made of saffron, flour, sugar, wheat sprout, butterm yolk, almond, pistachio and cardamom. Could it be cardamom? My guess is either that or the saffron.

And...

Elham even has cardamom!! She puts it in tea to flavour it...

I think this is it!

This is another form of Sohan on the left. It's called Sohan Asali and made of pistachio and almond coated in honey...Super delicious..

On the right (the white cubes stuck together) is made of saffron, sugar and water. Eli puts it in tea. Apparently saffron is good for tummyaches!

Yummmmmmmm.

The last sweet I tried was some sort of nougat. It's called Gaz. It's a little like those sticky white nougats, with pistachios in them.

Did I mention that I'm on a diet?

Peter: THE frisbee guy

Peter, diving for a frisbee in mid-air!

I just came back from a frisbee tossing session with Peter in an open space outside Canteen 13 in NTU. My hands are covered in bruises.

Peter, on the other hand, is really good though. He has been playing frisbee for 5 years now. Meet Peter Tung, an American Taiwanese student from the University of Maryland. He plays frisbee for a team back home called the Tenacious B. There isn't a frisbee team in NTU, so he plays for a local club.

Back home he's known as the guy who does all the dives. That's why his friend got a picture of him lunging in mid air, like Superman, he says.

I first heard about Peter through a common friend, Alex, who plays tennis on the school team. Apparently, Peter wasn't good enough to play for his school's tennis team, but got on the NTU tennis team instead. He plays pretty good too! Here are some pictures I got of him in action-and some while he was dying off court-because he was sick that day. Thanks, Peter for showing up to let me snap pictures of you despite the fact that you were so ill.

He was running a fever that day when he played, and so after the match, he was barely alive. (He usually plays better, I think.)

So, right in the middle of training we sit down and talk cock. By that, I mean Peter and I talking about random, not-so-important things.

He said he lost weight since he came to Singapore, because 'the food here is so much healthier'. He is so skinny, that when he told me he USED to be a fat kid, I had a little trouble trying to match his face to a fat body.

Then he tells me how unhealthy American freshmen get when they enter college. Click on the video below to find out.

I was curious about how his Asian identity would fit with the environment he lived in. After all, he told me that in high school, he was the only Asian in his class and for that entire grade there was only one other Asian student-a Korean girl-whom he said, people joked about wanting to see them together. "People ask me whether I face racism all the time here in Singapore, which is really surprising. I have NEVER been discriminated against," he told me. "It was also because I had really good friends."

"When I came to Singapore, I was like, wow, there are so many people here who look like me! That's where all the Asians are, they're on the other side of the world!" he said jokingly. "I don't see myself as Asian though,"he added. "I see myself as American."

I asked if he did drugs. Surprisingly, his answer was no. (He must have been a really good boy. Hehe.) When I was on exchange in Washington D.C, I realized that drugs are much more easily available in the US. This doesn't mean everyone and anyone in the US has tried it before, but they're probably easier to come into contact with.

"That's my blowjob face...no, actually it's my shock-absorber."

Another tip he gave me for losing weight-eat PAU.

"When I first came here, I ate pau every meal! For breakfast I would have a charsiew pau and a cup of tea, just like everyone else does," he proclaimed with pride. "Then for lunch I get a cai pau (vegetable pau), a da rou pau (meat pau), and a dousha pau (sweet red bean paste pau)-and I think to myself, I have my meat, vegetables and dessert as well, it's a complete and balanced meal!" he says, chuckling to himself.

"Now I'm so sick of pau, just hearing people say the word 'pau' makes me wanna puke."

He also loves doing Singlish impersonations. Yeah, we Singaporeans just love to hear other people trying to speak our language. Singlish is a lifestyle, ok! Not easy to learn hor. Dun pray pray...

Some other random stuff we talked about after training...

Why are you called Peter? And his answer is...

Kenta and his French Fries...

This guy is awesome! Kenta is an exchange student from Japan. He is studying Economics at Soka University at Tokyo, and is now taking modules in Chinese and English in Singapore.

Yup, this is him.

A secret ambition to become superman?

"I love eating spicy food..."he says. Just to prove that, he takes two packets of chilli to go with his chicken rice...and then chokes on it.

Wah!! That's like, a loooot of chilli lah! Siao.

And he chokes.

After that bad choke, I asked Kenta to introduce himself in English, Chinese, and Japanese! This time, he choked twice as hard!

Hahaha..he's so cute.

Kenta talks about his favourite food!

Kenta talks about how he plans to backpack around Southeast Asia and China in 43 days.

Below are the podcasts for Kenta's introduction of himself in Chinese, Japanese and also why he is studying Chinese! Enjoy!

Thursdays with Elham

Meet Elham!! (she's on the right).



Elham is an Iranian student who is doing her post-graduate in EEE (Electrical and Electronical Engineering) straight onto PHD here. I've been talking to her regularly now, and last Thursday, I visited her home in Boon Lay, a HDB flat that is a hostel to foreign students.

Art in Simpler Terms with Geoff

Geoff is an exchange student from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. He loves art, and is a hardcore rock music enthusiast. In particular, he enjoys post-modern rock such as Mogwai punk. We went for a tour in the NUS Museum, where the Southeast Asian art exhibition was being featured. Geoff has been to a couple of museums, in the US, Europe and Hong Kong. He talks about the type of art he enjoys, in relation to what he has experienced so far.

Click on the video below to find out!

Glassmaker.

Brenton Huras, an exchange student from Canada doing courses at the school of Art Design and Media (ADM) tells us about his newest programme, called the Glassmaker, that transforms sounds into different textures and layers. This programme was created through sheer hard work, sleepless nights and a software called Max MSP.

Find out what the Glassmaker is about, and how you can learn more about it.

Here's what inspired Brent to do it...check out the podcast below!

What's in Your Room?

Thomas in his cosy room:)

Ah, aren't we all curious to find out what people have in their rooms...

Having been on a few exchange programmes myself, I understand what it's like to move your entire collection of prized valuables to another country, whilst adding on to that collection during your stay there! So when I met Thomas Luff, a fellow student at Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in NTU, I asked to take a peek of his room!

Thomas is from Miltion Keynes in the UK and does linguistics back home, but is doing modules at WKWSCI, and is interested in sports journalism. I found out that he lived in the same hostel as I do, and he was kind enough to let me visit him. So, to all you hungry voyeurs out there, Thomas has agreed to give up some privacy for y'all.

Beware of the girl who sneaks into boys' rooms...hehehe...

As I stepped into the room I felt like I was enveloped in a combination of humidity and heat. It was crazy. And I'll tell you why. I never expected a non-local student to be able to take the heat! I had expected the door to be open, the windows too, and fans blasting away at maximum speed! However, the place was enclosed, and quiet. Of course, he did have a huge fan right infront of him, but it just didnt feel right, and I couldn't explain why. As I stood there thinking, I realized there was very little, almost minimal ventilation. I mean, for us Singaporeans to live in such conditions is okay because we're so used to the heat, (and sometimes even I cannot stand it that way), but for someone who lives at a place with cold seasons, it was totally unexpected and UNBELIEVABLE!

I could tell Thomas was amazed at how amazed I was. That aside, I must say Thomas has a very interesting room to share.

A DESKTOP GIRLFRIEND! His father gave him this figurine. What a cool dad!

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."A short note written by his girlfriend of a year, Rachel, to him. :) A small passport size photo of her is just beside.

A good luck card sealed with a kiss. "My girlfriend gave the picture to my mom and asked if she would make me a card before I came to Singapore." The words "Good Luck" are written by his mom, a calligrapher as well as an art designer.

In the midst of all this blogging hype, nothing feels as personable as diary, in physical form. Thomas keeps a diary that was designed and bound by his mother. His room mate was like, "What! You keep a diary!! My goodness." To which my reply was, "I bet you didn't know so much about your roommate until today."

"Never, never, never give up." -Winston Churchill

Rachel gave him: A cow figurine, a dice that says 'Yes', 'No', and 'Maybe', and a puppy. "My girlfriend likes cows...and she says I look like a puppy," Thomas said with amusement. As for the dice, it's because he's a very indecisive person.

West Ham United cup. No explanation needed. No haters, please.

Some of his favourite books...

Maps to help him get around

A basketball for the ocassional game here.

Thomas used to play the basketball competitively back at home.

A silver pen given to him by his grandparents before he came to Singapore for exchange.

Looks like a hairdryer but it's actually a webcam.

Creams for his skin. "I have very sensitive skin and so I bring with me creams around to curb the rashes," says Thomas.

"I stopped eating this halfway...I don't know, these things just don't taste the same here as they do back home. Like chocolate? It just doesn't taste the same here...I don't know why."

When chocolate doesn't taste the same...it means you're homesick.