Disclaimer: I’ve slept about 6 of the last 48 hours. My brain feels fuzzy, every task I’ve completed so far related to research (including this post) is taking about twice as long as it should. As a traveler (and a person), I tend to “deal with it when I get there.” For example, someone advising me on the difficulties of a long travel day or plane ride does not phase me – well, I’ll just deal with it when I get to the airport. How bad can a 23 hour travel day really be, right? I’ll just tough it out.
Well, it was tough. I arrived on July 18 at 1am Singapore time, and the travel day(s) have done me in. Trying to overcome jet lag in one fell swoop, I also decided to try to stay awake for the entire 23 hour travel day, and succeeded, if that’s really a word one would use to describe such a feat. I have a new appreciation for Northwestern students from Singapore and other far away places. I had a layover in the Hong Kong airport, which itself was pretty beautiful and makes me want to visit there someday – it’s surrounded by mountains on one end and ocean on the other.
The heat and humidity have also been intense to say the least, another reality I decided to “deal with” here. I’m glad I was warned that the heat here can “hit you like a wall” as you walk out of air conditioned buildings, because that truly is the case. My glasses fog up every time I walk outside so I’ve been walking around campus in true nerd fashion.
Nonetheless, I have had an *awesome* first day here. I made my way over to the National University of Singapore in the morning, where I will be conducting the first half of my research project. First, I’ll be working with British Colonial Office Archives at the Central Library at NUS, and then I will also be working with materials from the Singapore/Malaysia Collection at NUS. I stopped by the library and requested my microfilm (yes – microfilm! That discarded technology that history professors curse) for tomorrow. I get to work with microfilm for the first time! I’ll be reading official British censorship documents of American film with titles like “Film Censorship in Singapore: Protests by First National Pictures.” Here’s the view from the library – I don’t think I’ll get sick of it.
I’m staying in a student dorm at Kent Ridge Hall, and I feel like a princess as compared to the Willard living I vaguely remember from my freshman year at Northwestern. My own bathroom, air conditioning, even! I was initially a little bit worried about staying here because it’s a little far from the UTown hub of campus, but I walked there in 15/20 minutes today. The receptionist at Kent Ridge clearly thought I was mistaken for requesting walking directions – the shuttles are so easy here, and it’s so hot to walk. Anyone who knows me, though, knows that I have an irrational dislike of shuttles (buses, fine, trains, fine, just not shuttles). And I think Central Library is even closer to me than the Utown housing, so that’s a plus!
On tomorrow’s agenda: seek, strive, excel, wake up early to go on a long walk and check out Kent Ridge Park, a couple miles away with a heritage trail and apparently a lot of WWII history in the nearby Bukit Chandu museum, strain my eyes with microfilm 9-5, uncover the secrets of British censorship of American cinema in the interwar period, leading to my eventual discovery of Singaporean perceptions. Stay tuned!