Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

To congratulate myself for obtaining the use of the Nikon D40 DSLR, I shot a few random pictures which should prove interesting to those interested in how an anime blogger lives life. So it’s like, you know, a slice of my life! Haha! I’ve always enjoyed sneaking a peek into the lives of animebloggers from other countries, where the vastly different cultures make even the most mundane of pictures interesting. For example, like how JPMeyer and Hinano ate at this sushi restaurant in New York that was a branch of a Singaporean chain.

But seriously, my desktop computer died last month no thanks to the constant power outages caused by the faulty clothes iron. So I’ve been using my laptop since, being too lazy to haul the big machine down for repairs. And we all know laptops are not conducive for gaming/anime viewing/idling on IRC and my activities in the above areas have thus been scaled down significantly. Also, to the guy who won the romantic otaku contest, I lost your email and mailing address so do send it to me again! The other guy has gotten his prize already. As for the demotivational posters award, they are all in my old computer as well. Of course, I could always dig out its hard disk but nah. Wait till the big machine revives!

I would like to talk about anime but anime sucks except for the rare few like Major season 4 (the one show I look most forward to each week now), Gintama, Kaiji etc. Clannad has turned to crap since Kyou got shafted, and Gundam 00 is entertaining.

This camera is borrowed from my uncle, who realised that SLRs are way too unwieldy for a n00blet. No pictures though but I bought a set of the Twister game and 5 large pirated Super Soakers because I felt like having water battles. The following pictures are completely unedited, not even for brightness, sans resizing. 18-55 mm freebie lens too.

If you’re sharp, you would recognise this as where I have been taking some of my figure review shoots. This is a typical middle class condominium neighbourhood in Singapore though 80 percent of the country’s housing actually consists of government high-rise flats. Bike paths are not typical, but as this area is adjacent to a nature reserve, you see quite a bit of joggers and cyclists. Note how Singapore has greenery everywhere, which is a good thing I suppose.

This is a typical road. We hate congestion so all our roads are four-lanes wide. Seriously. Also, all our cars are white or silver because we are fans of the Silver Surfer.

"Surely you jest?" I hear you say. Fair enough, this is the expressway adjacent to my school. HOW DID I GET THESE PICTURES? I CAN FLY??

Americans drive on the opposite side of the road because they are gay. One fact of interest is that the vast majority of cars here are below 3 years of age. This is unlike other countries where 30 year old cars are not uncommon. Why? Singapore has this Certificate of Entitlement system where you need to pay for the right to have your car on the road. This COE thingy is like, tens of thousands and not the same as road tax, which you still have to pay for. Vehicles also devalue faster than a hentai anime girl starts spewing juices after their 3rd year, so most vehicle owners strive to get a new car before then. So where do all these newish cars go? We round them up and send them to Russia. Really!

The little shelter on the right is a bus stop. It is where large rectangular vehicles stop and fill their bellies with human flesh. There are only 2 public bus companies in Singapore - the Singapore Bus Service and SMRT. The latter is seen here, they are the yellow ones which serve mainly the northern regions, including my neighbourhood, which has only yellow buses. Busfares are relatively cheap compared to other developing countries, at approximately 0.6-2 dollars per ride depending on distance. By the way, we also have a train system called the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and it’s not bad, costing about the same or slightly more than a bus ride. Far cheaper than the Japanese railways for sure.

This is my university, the National University of Singapore. There are only 3 universities here (4 if you include the sort of open to all Singapore Institute of Management). Because there are so few universities and so everyone gets to enter, locals don’t really find them prestigious at all which is a shame because all 3 are probably better than 95 % of the world’s colleges. Pictured here is the University Hall, which serves a mysteriously unknown function. No student has ever set foot in it and survived to tell the tale, despite it being smack in the middle of campus and one of the poshest buildings. NUS is constantly under construction and upgrading, so you see a huge difference in the design and aesthetics of the various faculty campuses.

This is the Science faculty, which is incredibly dull and dreary. The cool part is that you can walk along the parapets as shortcuts and risk falling to your death. There are 4500 undergrads in this faculty. I’m one of them but part of the really tiny Food Science and Technology department, which is sort of under Applied Chemistry. Other majors include Life Sciences, Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Pharmacy etc.The thing about Singaporean universities is that the majors are quite mainstream - you don’t get random useless shit that don’t really apply to careers here. Which is a shame if you really want to major in Ninjutsu. The most useless major I can think of is probably Japanese studies, and that was theoretically aimed at trying to emulate the economic success (then) of Japan. Now the students just do cosplay. Allegedly.

NUS is a pretty ugly campus, especially compared to the likes of those set in beautiful landscapes. To get around it, there are lots of shuttle buses. I should take pictures of the food next time.

Not the most useful picture, but this is an organic chemistry laboratory. In a lab, we have to always don a lab coat to protect ourselves against chemicals and to look like scientists. The chemistry department is the most poorly funded one and hence has the worst facilities. This lab is little more than rows and rows of fume cabinets. Fume cabinets are where we do the experiments, it’s sort of like a sealed up kitchen which sucks the poisonous evil cancer-causing organic compounds up before we inhale it and die.

Chemistry labs are extremely hot places and we have to wash our own glass ware. Compare this to Life Sciences labs where everything is air-conditioned, sterile and pre-washed… ugh. Thankfully, Food Science is a mixture of both so I get to enjoy the perks of biology students too. One of the modules, Human Anatomy, lets you play with the genitals of real dead people! Though I didn’t take that module.

Another view of the Science faculty. The cool building at the back is a huge Genetics research centre, if I recall. Singapore has awesomely lax ethics and laws with regards to genetics research, unlike the US. This is on purpose, to attract scientists to head over here. I’m pretty sure you can create flying winged zombie cow clones here and people’ll give you a good pat on the back for a job well done.

You have to apply for a locker. If you don’t, like me, then you get no locker. But lockers are always stuck in annoyingly inconvenient areas and the locks are all rusty. This sucks. When I was in secondary school, everyone had their own lockers. My class was a famous gambling location and every break, people’ll join tables and play bridge, hearts and other games. This attracted even players from other classes and since the canteen was far away, people had no access to food or drink and got really hungry. I stocked up my locker with tonnes of snacks and drinks bought in bulk and sold them at at least 500% markup. FOOLS.

Those were the days when I was hard up for cash (still am now though) as I was a mad Yuugioh player. I think I was probably top 3 in the whole country and when I went to Japan for 3 weeks, I slaughtered all the Japanese players I came across. Heh, awesome! Too bad Konami screwed up the game by reprinting cards I spent lots of money on as cheap commons and I quit.

Singapore prides itself on being multi-cultural, so stuff are either in English or in the four languages. Chinese, Malay and Tamil being the other 3. Signs near tourist attractions are also in Japanese, to aid the poor Nihonjin.

I drew this cute heart for my lovely girlfriend. She was very impressed by my l33y camera artistry. I’m sure those of you who have even the slightest interest in photography would know this, but for those who don’t, you can achieve this effect by setting a long shutter time and a bright spot.

I have quite a lot of unreviewed figurines actually. Airi here from Queen’s Blade is one of them. They’ve mostly had their pictures taken, it’s just a matter of me posting them up. Preview: Airi has nipples. It seems that the only figures I buy these days are those of females with weaponry.

Saber, Airi and Sheena from Shining Tears. They can all interchange their weapons! Saber can hold Sheena’s rapier perfectly or even Airi’s scythe. I’ve actually been slowing down the figure collecting. I no longer feel any desire for impulse buys and I’ll just collect pre-orders when they arrive. Speaking of which, I’m selling off quite a few of my older ones. Will post up the list soon.

It’s a frog made of plaster. I painted it when I was 6 or so. There was this really cool store called the "Plaster Fun House" where they had all these cool designs of plaster figures and you just bought them and painted and lacquered it there. I probably spent like half of my childhood in that place before it closed down. I wonder if there’re any such shops around still? Nowadays, I have my own airbrush and compressor set which is supposed to be used on Gundams. Yet the only one I’ve done is Master Grade Freedom.

This golden piggy is where my dad dumps all the loose change in his wallet daily. The pig weighs at least 40 kg.

I bought the famous IKEA glass display shelf in the hope that it would keep out dust. So, so wrong. The lower shelves have huge amounts of dust still. There’s the one and only painted Gundam, Freedom. Also, Skywarp the Transformer and Danbooru from Yotsuba.

As a mecha, Danbo has a really nice minimalist feel. Did I mention that I hate articulation? Because too many permutations lead to headaches and pose selection dilemmas. So I’m not too hot on the Revoltech series actually.

I’ve never transformed my SV-51 into Battroid mode ever. Gerwalk mode is the best and coolest. This is my most expensive toy.

Finally, a picture of the flowers I gave for the girlfriend on Valentines’. It was a bouquet of sunflowers but I did the drying wrongly and they rotted. So I threw them away and just kept the accessory flowers. As for why I have the flowers when it should’ve been given away, she ordered me to dry them so they’ll last forever.

I hope you liked these pictures and the info tidbits!