Something you probably didn’t know about NTU

When I first thought of studying at an university back in high school, I had envisioned something like this in mind.

Huge old buildings of historical significance with lush green sweeping gardens and a lake for students to relax around and with preferably a river running through the university for water sports. What comes to mind is the typical and rather cliched photo where several students are relaxing under a tree and discussing something.

Well, I didn’t end up in a school with a history of several hundred years with castles and lakes and forests as surroundings. I eventually went to NTU, a school with a history of 50 plus years and with a garden campus to boot. (Or atleast that’s what the prospectus said).

Not that I’m complaining, life has been interesting for the past one year.

Some claim that NTU is a ‘dead’ place with ‘no life’. As compared to high school, ’school spirit’ is definitedly lacking as well. So most people just go thru life in NTU without finding more about the history of the school or even exploring its huge campus.

To digress a bit, I kind of like to look back at the history of the schools I’ve been to. Not too sure if this is prevalent in most people, but I think people want to relate to something great. It is like imagining that your grand-dad was a big shot general back in WW2 or you descended from a line of a great figure in history. Cool eh?

But back to the point. The reason of this post was because of a ’structure’ I stumbled across in a not so private place. Meaning it was placed in quite a prominent place, but most people have no idea what it is or really bother about it.

I guess only NTU students can actually apply to the rest of the post.

How many of you guys have actually walked to the Student Service Centre? At least once for everyone.

Now the question is: How many actually noticed the sundial there? Yes, haha, there is actually a sundial right in the middle of the carpark.

Looks familiar? Yup it is actually a sundial. And a working one too.

This is the front, which gives some infomation of the location of the sundial and the inscription reads “when the shadow is line with the North-South axis and it happens to be full moon, the sundial will open up to give access to the Chamber of Secrets and release the monsters hidden in the depth of Nanyang University. Erected on May 27 1969, 13th Anniversary of Nanyang University.

And this is the back. Giving more infomation about the sundial and stating it was built “in commemoration of the 150th year of the founding of Singapore”. I guess the english words are below the chinese characters due to Nanyang University being a chinese-medium school back then.

I took this picture around 7.15am. Since the inscription asked to make a addition of 35mins to the scale, it is pretty accurate. When I tried googling for more infomation, just couldn’t find anything at all.

So I might write about more ‘interesting structures’ I notice around NTU, but til then, let me continue my search for the Chamber of Secrets which houses the serpent which roams around Nanyang Lake.