Geographers and their (cyber)space

Last Sunday, we had a small grad party at Liang Court Party World to regale in the wonderful singing talents of our fellow grad students with a end of semester KTV party. Seven of us were in attendance with a repertoire of english, mandarin, hindi and japanese songs! To round off the evening was a nice dinner at a japanese restaurant in the quasi japanese enclave.

Pardon the grainy photos but taken with a poor camera phone, that was the best I could come up with! Anybody with nicer photos are most welcome to contribute! Thanks!

One of our PhD graduate students, Sarah Moser, who has recently completed her dissertation and who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in USA, sends us some post-US election photos. Granted this post is rather belated as she sent them a month ago after the Nov 4, 2008 election where President Elect Obama won the elections.

She wrote:

The elections were very exciting here… people went nuts when Obama won. Here are some photos of our evening after the results were announced:
http://picasaweb.google.com/michaelhendricks73/ElectionNight2008

Sarah is currently doing a postdoc at MIT, specifically examining the trend of ‘Islamicization’ in Malaysia and Indonesia and how it is manifested in new cities there (e.g. Putrajaya and Senggarang in Riau Islands). While it’s different from her Ph.D. research, it also draws on some of the same themes such as the construction of national identity in Southeast Asia.

Thanks Sarah! Hope you’re surviving the North American winter well after all these years in tropical southeast asia!

Media images of terrorists at Mumbai as captured off security cameras at the Mumbai Railway. Source: dotcompals

Our PhD graduate student from India, Kanchan Gandhi, offers her thoughts on the recent tragedy in her homeland.

I have been glued to my TV for the last two days following the news of the Mumbai attacks. It is very shocking and painful to see my country bleeding regularly due to terrorist attacks. Two and a half months ago when I was in India – a bomb blast occurred near my house in Delhi on September the 13th. I think continuously – “Who are these people? What do they want? Why do they kill innocent people? Why doesn’t the supreme power punish them? Why does there have to be so much violence and bloodshed?”

It makes me think of Chris Philo’s 2005 article on the “Geographies that wound” where he emphasises on the “interconnected geographies (and histories) through which vectors of blame might be traced, but also on questions arising about how to ‘treat’ the wounds of the vulnerable” (Philo, 2005:441). Every time a communal riot or a terrorist attack takes place in the region – the wounds of the 1947 partition are torn open. Are we still paying the price of our colonisers’ infamous “divide and rule” policy or the price of the decisions of political leaders from the past and the present? Why does this wound not get healed? What is the larger context of the non- healing of this wound? Philo further posits that while some wounds are treated, others are left unattended to fester. Indeed the repeated attacks in India are examples of untreated wounds that open afresh with every terror attack.

A National Geographic Store will open in Vivo City end of the year.
It is supposed to be a really stylish thing….

Does anybody have more information about this?

One of our part-time master student and full-time NUS High geography teacher, Madeline Chen, tied the knot this weekend (15 Nov) with her new hubby, Julian. A few geographers were present to witness the happy occasion.

Congratulations Madeline!

Today, one of our newly completed PhD postgrad, Shurong, popped by the office with cakes in celebration of her new baby’s first month in this world. Congratulations Shurong for the baby boy, Minghe! Hope to see him in the geography corridors soon!

If you are looking for traveling companions and roommates, well this list should help! A quick search on the AAG website shows the following names from NUS:

Faculty

Post-Doctoral Fellow

PhD Candidates

Master Candidates

If you have been worried that nobody was going, think again. It’s still not too late to join us in Las Vegas since the deadline has now been postponed to 13 Nov 2008.

Congratulations to Abdel, our PhD student from Sudan, and his new wife, Shaimaa who got married recently back home in Sudan.