September 2013

It's been such a busy week, but I'm so glad to have more or less settled on accommodations here at Karlsruhe! The original Weißwurstfrühstück (vhyss-vurst-froo-shtuck) was organized by the orientation (O-phase) committee at KIT, but luckily we have awesome tutors in charge of our group who organized a special private Weißwurstfrühstück just for our orientation group at Jonas' place! Kind of a pre-breakfast breakfast if you can call it that. Weißwurstfrühstück (directly translated to white sausage breakfast) consists of the Weißwurst, of course, a pretzel and special mustard for the sausage! I learnt that we had to peel the skin off the Weißwurst and only eat the inside. You actually can just eat it with the skin on, but German tradition mandates to take it off! Probably because in the past the skin was not so clean and didn't taste so good?

And of course my adorable tutors were all dressed up in their traditional German clothing dirndl and lederhosen to make this breakfast even more bona fide. Beer was cracked out, and more or less we were all drunk before noon. Cause when you're in Germany, you have to do as the Germans do! You can consider this full cultural immersion, hahaha. The funniest part would be when certain German songs are played, everyone will jump up and start dancing with full choreography, and Tanja would be so kind to explain the funny lyrics to me, in which I'd tell her that everything sounds so much more profound when sang in German (when in actual fact they are actually singing about being as tall as a giraffe)!

So yes, it's been a pretty fulfilling Orientation week here in Germany, and now I need to bugger off from Karlsruhe until mid-October when my apartment is ready for moving in. Off I go again!

Hi! Been to busy to take many nice pictures in Karlsruhe so i shall post up some old photos first of the last brunch Justin and I had before I left at... Grub at Bishan Park! We've been planning to go for quite some time but always put it off. So anyway, after summing up our strength to wake up earlier, and headed down to Bishan Park for some good food!


One of Grub's value offerings is that the brunch is so, so, so affordable! Everything is below $15.00, and Justin says it's because Bishan Park is a public park, and hence NParks requires the restaurants here to serve food that is affordable for the general public, which makes Grub great value with it's bright and airy restaurant that makes my photos look even better. Yum!



Food arrives! The restaurant is really crowded but their ops seem up to par and we get our stuff real fast. I don't eat the Beef and Guiness Pie ($12.00++), but I do try the mash, and it's really good stuff! It's best when you dip it in the sauce, which is really rich and tasty. This isn't really typical brunch stuff (like most of the stuff on their breakfast menu), but it's not overly rich for the morning :) Eat this one quickly before it gets soggy!



To compensate for the lower price, the burgers are a little on the smaller side, but I don't have an issue with it because I don't eat a lot in the morning anyway. This Crispy Fish Burger ($12.00++) was what I was looking forward to! More than just a fish burger, I love how it is presented. It is also, as the name suggests, really crispy! My only issue was that the fish used was very flaky, and would disintegrate all over the place when I try to cut it. I have a feeling you were suppose to just pick it up and eat it and not cut it haha.

Grub has 2 other burgers, Beef and Pork, and unfortunately the pork one was sold out (to Justin's detriment), so he got the Pulled Beef Burger ($11.00++). He says it's good! And apparently the beef is suppose to be responsible meat as another one of Grub's offerings is providing food that is both natural and sustainable. Also like the fish burger, it's a small sized burger, so not overly filling!

Hey guys, I'm no fashion insider so these are just some of my personal opinions of how Slightly Scarlet 2013 went down! For those of you who don't know, this is the 3rd year that Slightly Scarlet is running. I still remember that day when I was sitting at a meeting with my marketing team and we were brainstorming names for the show, and it's funny how the name Slightly Scarlet has stuck even after 3 years (the prefix was suppose to be "Bondue Night", but Scarlet just stuck). While this year's one is really well planned in terms of the use of space, much cooler music than last year and flow of programs, there were slight short comings too of course in terms of styling and cohesiveness of many of the collections and the slightly dubious (if not amusing) choice of front row attendees (haha).

Also, I once again question the purpose of having Scarlet for the SMU Business community - what value does it add for our Business students, really? Other than parading beautiful people down the runway and providing people the opportunity to dress up. Yes, it's for charity, but we learnt in school  that the best form of CSR is one that is relevant to the businesses' core values.  I've had this concept since Year One that perhaps there is a need to move the focus from the models, and instead, bring the limelight to the many small and medium online fashion businesses that are owned by current or former SMU Students.

Why not celebrate our business students who actually run businesses? Sure, I understand the need to bring in big brands for the sponsorship, but wouldn't it be more meaningful to create a platform for our very own students to boost their publicity and launch their businesses to greater heights? Wouldn't it be more cohesive with our image as a Business Society for the Business School if we really wanted to be true to our core values?

Of course with every new event introduced to the school there are always trial periods the first couple of years to get it right, hence, I'm looking forward to seeing Scarlet rise to even greater heights in the next few years, and it's nice to see the current committee again, they are such sweet hearts and I seriously hope they enjoyed their year in Bondue!