Pulau Ubin

Our "Bum Boat" Captain

My first Friday lecture was cancelled and a few of us decided to travel to Pulau Ubin, an Island just off the northeastern tip of Singapore.  After recent trip to Sentosa Island, I had imagined a similar environment from Pulau Ubin.  I couldn’t have been more mistaken.  My travel book describes the Pulau Ubin as “Left behind by developments on the main island, Ubin was for a long time the last stronghold of old Singapore”. 

The journey involved a short bus ride to the MRT station, the Green Line MRT all the way across the country (approx 1 ½ hrs) then a second bus to the Changi Point Jetty.  What I can never get over with all methods of travel in Singapore is that the do not operate on a time schedule, busses get there when they get there (with or without you).  I was misled to believe we would be taking a ferry, instead we waited for 8 other people to show up (the boat doesn’t leave at a certain time, it leaves when it has 12 people ready to go), and then we were escorted down to the docks and began loading up the “bum boat” (NOT Ferry).  I still don’t understand exactly what defines a ferry vs. bumboat, but this definitely was a bumboat (I guess that is all you can expect from a $2.50 boat ride)!  

About fifteen minute later we arrived at Ubin, immediately we could see the entire town without really having to leave the dock.  There are less than 100 people who live on Pulau Ubin, it is just 5 miles across and 1 mile wide, and I can confidently say we saw EVERYTHING.  Since there wasn’t much to the town besides a convenience store, restaurant and a few religious establishments, we decided to rent mountain bikes and explore.  A 3-hour bike ride up hills and through jungle allowed us to see and experience all that is Pulau Ubin.   

Lunch: Ostrich

After the bike ride we ate at the local restaurant that served a combination of Asian food family style.  We thought we would get adventurous and ordered a dish of Ostrich.  Ostrich doesn’t taste as unusual as it sounds, it actually tastes similar to chicken but much more chewy.  After we returned the bikes and waited for the bumboat to fill up so we could head home.  

After a long successful mountain bike ride to the top of Pulau Ubin

    

Culture Puts a New Perspective In Organizational Behavior

Luckily one mediocre professor isn’t an indicator of the quality of teachers at NTU.  I have been very impressed with my Organizational Behavior professor.  He is a short, passionate, enthusiastic, Asian man who had foot surgery the day before our first seminar class, yet that didn’t prevent him from bouncing (realistically it was more like limping I suppose) around the classroom as he gathered class participation and encouraged opinions.  It wasn’t until I found myself literally LOL (laughing out loud) during this class did it occur to me how much of an influence one person can have on your entire outlook towards a subject.  I easily could have been in another organizational behavior (business management) classes attempting to stay awake as a teacher regurgitates terms from the textbook in the background.  What truly makes this professor standout from others is his ability to utilize the diverse backgrounds of his students as he looks for opinions and experiences that relate to the text.

 

Picture the classroom, approximately 4 round tables equally spaced around the rectangular shaped room, two tables consisting purely of students from Singapore.  A table made up of a student from India, Siberia (but she studies in Italy and is currently on exchange at NTU) Singapore and Germany.  Then the next table “Europe” as the professor refers to them (2 guys from the Netherlands, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Finland).  Finally there is my table (2 Malaysian friends and 1 Indonesian) and of course me (the ‘Western Influence’). I love how this professor has taught above and beyond what the text reads, he has taken every concept and puts it in context in terms of culture.  He frequently asks why/why not this would work for a company in Asia or the U.S. receiving answers in the form of students’ personal experiences.  This class alone has brought new meaning to the saying “you can’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.”  I left the first 4-hour class session of organizational behavior with a new appreciation for diversity and realization of how blessed I am to have this amazing opportunity and experience to spend half a year living and studying in Singapore!