Thursday, March 22, 2007
- 1:22 AM
The deadline for university admissions is coming up real quick! I haven't really had time to sit down and really think what I want to get into. But lets face it, even if I had, I'd probably not know what I want to go into anyway. Always thought of aerospace since like 2 years ago, but on tuesday my father brought me to a few aerospace factories and we met a few mech students going to specialise in aerospace, and they advised us not to do aerospace but to do mechanical and specialize in 4th year. Hahah!! My father is so nice! He took leave for that day!The trip on tuesday(13/3) was quite fun. Jiaying came along too. First we went to GE, which was my father's previous company. He sure knows many many people in there, we kept getting sidetracked! The GE branch in Singapore is more of a repair and maintenance branch. We dint even get to see the full engine of the plane, much less the plane! All we got to see at GE was the turbine blades. Thats what they were doing repairs for. The shop floor looked quite interesting and we had to wear big safety goggles. Jiaying's favorite! At the end of the tour round GE, my father and Philip Tan (our 'guide') went up to the office level to say hi! And Jiaying and I were just standing around, and we happened to look into a toilet. And guess what we saw!!! Ladies having conferences!!! hahaha!
Then we went to Goodrich, which was opposite the road. This branch makes the emergencey slides. It was really cool. I've never seen the emergency slide before(hope i will never get to see it again) but there in the shop level, the slides were all blown up and lying on the floor. Those slides have to be checked every 3 years. So the factory blows up the slides and tests them for air retention. And the boss was ex-GE, my father's friend.
After that was lunch at the Changi Sailing Club. There was this waiter, worst than me ok!! First he split water on the table while refilling Jiaying's glass, then after that he dropped a whole scoop of icecream on Jiaying. He must hate her.
Then we went to the other part of Goodrich, where they did the Nacilles, which is the portion that goes round the engine. It was super cool. We saw the nacilles all in the shop level in different stages of repair. And there were other parts of the engine. And did you know, that the total cost of all 4 engines of the plane is about 80% of the cost of the whole plane!! So it was at Goodrich where we met the NTU students on industrial attachment and we talked to them. All of them advised us to take mech eng. argh!! And they said that aero eng is very tough, esp aerodynamics, where they almost failed.
Then we went over to Air Cruisers, where they also did emergency slides, but for the smaller planes. We dint really stay that long because I had work after that!!
On the previous day, we went to the ZOO!!!! Supposedly, Jiaying Susanna Hailing Remus and I were to go, but you know, it threatened to rain heavily in the morning and Hailing wanted to cancel, but Suzy JY and I decided to go on with it. And HL and Remus dint come after all. So it was left with us 3some. It was great fun though!
We went to see the polar bear feeding first, and there was this mei nu doing the presentation!!!! Then after that we went to the tree top trail for the feeding session, and we saw the zoo keeper feeding the saki monkeys and he was doing this whistle thing, which Suzy copied!! Man, he must have known we were spying on him. We then went for the elephant show and another mei nu was presenting!!! Woah! We were actually quite tired that day. I barely slept the previous night. But after that, later in the afternoon, I saw Sharmila, she was doing the pygmy hippos presentation. AND she knows the mei nu!! And she earns alot man! Working at the zoo is $8 per hour! Thats like ALOT!!! After that we went for the giraffe feeding session and the mei nu was there again. She does alot of presentations.. impressive memory skills.
It was alot of fun, although I was dead tired after the whole day. Next time!! Night safari! But the entrance fee is $20!!