(nederlandse versie onder)

So I can finally write a blogpost. Typing larger amounts on an eee keyboard just isn’t really worth it. So now I just returned from Sim Lim Square (aka electronics madness) and am in my room typing all of this.
It’s weird to realize I was wii-ing at my parents’ place with my family just three days ago and now am wii-ing something like 12000 km (someone correct me please, I need to know how far I am) away from that place.

Travelling

This whole foreign experience started with nothing short of a journey of great epicness. I flew from Dusseldorf to Zurich (where apparently ‘change happenz‘, which was easy. Then from Zurich to Bangkok for a technical stop, which was easy too. No inflight entertainment equals awesome nightrest if you’re as ill disciplined and easily bored as me. But at Bangkok some huge Chinese sat down next to me. Snoring, smacking, depositing phleghm in his barfbag… I felt maybe Singapore wasn’t the place to go to. He was very friendly though, grabbing my plate and handing it to the stewardesses. Just that spitting… man…
After the airplane comes the MRT. I gave Aaron (the guy in whose apartment I’m renting a room) a call and stepped on the train for a one hour sit. When I got out at my stop, Aaron was there to pick me up and help me end my tour du monde.

Housing

[singlepic id=165 w=320 h=240 float=left]Thanks to my girlfriend Hoi-Ying, I got into contact with Aaron after being rejected for all campus residences I applied for (which has nothing to do with my person, they are completely overbooked and I applied quite late). Aaron is a teaching assistent at National University of Singapore (NUS) at the department of Communications and New Media and probably the most hospitable guy I’ve ever met. He offered me to rent a room at his place right away and even offered me to come pick me up at Changi. I don’t think most people would do so after receiving only one e-mail from someone who is the boyfriend of a friend of a friend of theirs.
The house is great. 15th floor of a huge block in the far West of Singapore. 5 bus stops from the train station and eating places in walking distance. The only drawback (which I will probably get used to) is the fact that it’s surrounded by huge apartment blocks everywhere. Luckily, the view isn’t impeded by these blocks at all.

NUS

Aaron’s incredible hospitality is followed by his likewise incredible helpfulness. The first full day I was here, he took me around town helping me out with getting a local phone number (+65 84208766 if you wan’t to call) and a local back account and registering for NUS.
All the ease of opening a bank account were a pretty bad preparation for the registration. I wrote about the immigrations office ICA before and this registration thing was the same hell all over. Go from one queue to a counter, where they take a number of papers from your immense pile and give you a number of papers to put in your immense pile and send you to another counter, where the same thing happens again… ad infinitum. But (infinitely) long story short, I’m registered now and from 11th of August, I’ll start attending lectures in order to learn something on simple forms of AI, which hopefully will be helpful once I start graduating.

NUS and related stuff

[singlepic id=159 w=320 h=240 float=right]Yesterday, the last student from TU/e who’s studying at NUS too arrived. And the same evening there was a small meeting up drink thing in a park for all NUS exchange students. Only a (ridiculously high) number showed up and by filling up something like 4 busses, we went to a park quite close to NUS. There people drank the drinks they bought, sat on the benches they found and had forced talks with the people they met. I’m not trying to be antisocial, but these meetings are horrible. “What’s your name? Where are you from? What are you studying?” … NEXT!
At least I met the fellow TU/e guys (see their and others latest posts on the colleagues page) and we decided to go to the beach today. Considering I’m writing this blogpost now, I’m not at the beach… so our appointments aren’t rock solid yet. But they probably will be in due time.

Ah well. That about sums up some of the things I’ve been doing. I don’t know if I’ll be updating this weblog that often, since I can’t tell how much time I will have to kill later on in my stay (no, blogging is not one of my top priorities _{Although I already have a draft called ‘Singapore, from an environmental psychology point of view’.}). But do check out my photoblog which is more regularly updated.

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Ik ben aangekomen en alles rustig… en omdat ik denk dat het grootste deel van de bezoekers Engelstalig is, doe ik het ook gewoon in het Engels. Maar dat betekent niet dat ik niet aan jullie denk .

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Everyday, Singapore Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.