Another week, another flight itinerary. On Sunday the outreach team gathered at the Taipei airport to see off Jinaya, Savanna, and Steve before heading off to Kuching via Kuala Lumpur. Jinaya and Savanna were somehow bumped to an earlier flight than Steve. The plane carrying the rest of the outreach team was late, delaying our connecting flight. Ultimately everyone ended up in the correct country; Steve, Jinaya and Savanna made it home safe and sound while the remaining outreach team collapsed gratefully into their hotel in Kuching, Sarawak.
The differences between Taipei and Kuching are striking. Kuching is tiny in comparison to Taiwan’s tech giant mega-capital, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in flamboyant character. The city’s name is a homophone for the Malay word for cat “kucing”, although history is hay on whether or not this is a coincidence. Regardless, the city has embraced the soundalike, and is adorned with vast statues, murals, ornaments and shrines to its furry denizens.
The Otago Chemistry Outreach team and the Otago Optics Chapter pose in front of one of Kuching’s many cat statues
The city is bisected by the Sarawak river, where locals and tourists alike gather to eat under a rainbow of LED adorned vendors in view of the flora-form parliament building. The rest of the city is a wild mix of Indian, Chinese, Muslim, and colonial English architecture with infrastructure to match. The footpaths rise and dip between store fronts, morphing between tiles and concrete, and sometimes disappearing completely. To call it a city of contrasts would be to imply stark differences; Kuching is the city equivalent of a spilled bucket of lego, in the best possible way.
Kuching’s parliamentary building viewed across the river Sarawak
Cats and laksa vendors aside, Kuching also holds some people very dear to our heart: Matt, Petra, and Bianca of Otago’s Optics chapter. The optics chapter is a student run society that also participates in outreach, as well as community engagement and professional development. They will be joining us for two busy weeks in Malaysia as we meet with local schools and teachers’ colleges (“IPG’s”) to continue an international education outreach relationship that is entering its fourth year. You can learn more about the Optics Otago team at the following video: https://youtu.be/yXYng-MqgW0
This blog will be updated periodically as the trip progresses, but you can also keep up with the team on facebook, twitter, youtube, and Instagram at the following URLs
Otago chemistry outreach page: https://www.facebook.com/chemotago/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvEnYDv1AdrA016_E86Fj0w
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chemotago
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chemotago/
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