Aerospace Launch Program

We headed to Nanyang Executive Centre after our lab session on friday for the Official Aerospace Launch Program which many of the professionals in the aerospace industry attended. The Minister of Trade and Industry also came over and gave a speech on the history of flight and aerospace, etc.

I was one of the 5 members who were presenting an experiment and we had to talk to the professionals and describe what we did for the experiment and explain the application of the experiments to real life examples.


The cutting of a huge cake by the Minister to celebrate our degree's launch.

We were all wearing formal clothes and every male student had to put on a tie. I think the last time i put on a tie was during JC which was more than 3 years ago. After manning at the station for my experiment, we had our late but satisfying lunch as there was a huge spread of food and desserts.

After the professionals left, we promptly packed up all the equipments and wrapped them properly to prevent damage or scratches when transporting them back to our aerospace lab. The whole activity ended at around 5.30 pm and i had to leave for the Chinese Society CNY steamboat dinner.

I met Fuli, Liyuan and Sheanwei at Hall 12 and were seated at the multi purpose hall for the steamboat dinner. From the spread of food at the side of the hall, we thought that there wasn't a lot to eat but we were wrong. We were given fried rice/noodles, chicken wings and fried dumplings before the steamboat started and we were already half-full. The steamboat started and we were given plates and plates of meat, fishballs, crabsticks, pig liver, eggs and vegetables. The fire wasn't hot enough as we had to wait for around 5-10 minutes each time we put food into the steamboat. There were performances on stage as well and we were entertained while having our dinner.

While we were happily eating, one of the foreign students from China who shared the table with us dropped an egg into the soup. Guess what, they did not crack the egg and just popped it in. We were initiately quite stunned as we thought that he was going to crack the egg instead of putting the entire egg inside. Too late, the egg was already in the soup and there is nothing we can do about it. He dropped another 3 eggs into the soup. Doesn't he know that eggshells can be very dirty? My appetite went from high to nil in an instant.

Never mind, at least there were people dancing, singing or playing some stupid games on stage to lift my mood back up. We were mostly watching the show that the organisers had put up as the 4 of us had stopped eating while the 5 foreign students from China continued their feast.

Seeing the 5 of them still eating, i thought maybe the boiling water would have killed all the germs by now. So i proceeded to take a few pieces of tofu from the soup. As they were very hot, i had to bring them closer to my mouth to blow on them and i detected an odour from the tofu. On further smelling, i confirmed the tofu smelt like eggshells! Luckily i had not eaten them yet.

We had already cleared more than half of the food on the table before the egg incident and the 4 of us were mainly rather full so the damage inflicted was not too great. Left for home at 10 pm.


A picture of the 4 of us at the stage