Friday, January 6, 2012

The blur of Singapore

I just returned from a semester studying at the National University of Singapore. It's a vibrant place, with tonnes of activities, motivated students, and funky British spelling. Perhaps the things I'll remember the most are my frustration at the multilevel, bus-linked, maze-like campus and my amazement at the subsidized textbooks and food. I had had high hopes for my classes, because of the global stature of the university and its breadth in research. A school that has a sizable computational biology department and a world-class Centre for Quantum Technologies must do a pretty good job training its undergrads, I thought. As it turned out, my lecturers left a whole lot to be desired, and my best experiences on campus were extracurricular cultural activities I signed up for — archery lessons, exploration of buddhist texts with a former monk, an inter-faculty ping-pong tournament, being in a short video shoot with a pair of amateur filmmakers, and meeting undergraduates from Delhi to Denmark.

After the break, a few photos that give an overview of the semester.

New-to-you blog!

In a mad rush of motivation, I have re-designed my blog, deleted my few old posts, and subscribed to a smattering of scientific feeds. My goal is to use my blog to learn more about computational biology, as well as another interest of mine, the gender inequality in computer science. With luck, I can make some improvements to my scientific writing in the process!