Joanna's Singapore adventures

I’ve been in Singapore for a few days now. I’ve been busy with registration, orientation, settling in and shopping.

Hall is probably a bit too small of a term to describe where I am staying as the hall I was at last semester had around 80 people. With over 2500 people, small suburb would probably be a more apt description of where I am now. And that’s just my hall/residence- The university has several more (although most are much smaller). Underneath/between the buildings are 2 hawkers centres (that’s the local name for a type of food court), 2 cafes, a supermarket and assorted sporting facilities. I’ll write about the food sometime later. I’m guessing it is going to be somewhat of a different living environment to halls in Australia. Consuming alcohol on the premises and having someone of the opposite gender in your room with the door closed can both attract fines of several hundred dollars or termination of residence. I’m not bothered by ether rule because I don’t engage in ether activity. I bet it would freak out a lot of Australian students I know though given it would curtail some of their favourite activities!

While it is nice to get a change from winter, the climate here takes a bit of getting used to. It’s not so much that it is hot, since it gets hotter than this for days or weeks at a time in Australian summers. The bigger problem is the humidity which is quite high most of the time. While you can help with the temperature by turning on a fan, it doesn’t really help with the humidity. Thankfully some of the common areas are air-conditioned so there are places to go. In the evenings a lot of people bring their laptops down to the common rooms. In this kind of weather you can only get one or two wears out of a piece of clothing before you have to wash it again. It also makes exercise quite a bit harder, even if you are drinking lots of water.

Obviously given the heat, walking is not a practical way to go very far. The hills in some parts of the area don’t help much ether. Thankfully there are plenty of good transport options. Around the campus there are free air-conditioned buses with very comfortable seats that run every few minutes. For trips outside the campus there is cheap and efficient public busses and trains. Unlike Melbourne, they even manage to have a rechargeable cash-card system for ticketing. The mode of transport I have used the most so far is taxi. Here the taxis are very affordable. A trip of a few kilometres will often cost under S$6 (AU$5/US$4.15). When you are travelling with friends it is often not worth the effort to catch a bus at that price, especially given taxi ranks are everywhere. The downside to catching taxis and public buses is the “creative” interpretation of the road rules or of common sense I have seen on a number of occasions by drivers sharing the road with the vehicle I’m in. It seems that here no gap is too small to overtake or merge lanes in and that it is perfectly acceptable to drive fast while you have half a dozen people sitting unrestrained in the back of your ute.

I tend to prefer not be reminded of the animal my food came from. Seems my preference isn't shared. At the supermarket I visited today, you could not only get whole fish but LIVE fish. I suppose it puts a new spin on the claim of some supermarkets that they stock fresh food.











Singapore seems to have a lot of stray cats around, like this one I spotted. During the day, the stray cats seem to like sleeping in the shady space underneath housing blocks because while still warm it is much cooler than out in the sun.














It seems they have high expectations of their canned drinks. Genuine inner peace is a lot to ask

I'll type up some more later, but for the moment here is some photos of where i am staying

Normally people will tell you that Singapore’s Changi airport is wonderful and a great place to spend time. I am going to break that trend.

My flight came in at sometime around 3 AM into the budget terminal which was indeed rather budget style. However, despite being a budget terminal they were very quick at unloading all the bags and getting everyone though customs. Once through customs I took a shuttle bus round to one of the main terminals, planning to go to a premium lounge I had heard about. When I arrived at the terminal it was eerily empty, just a few stray passengers and some security guards with big weapons. I had no luck finding the lounge, and since the escalators were turned off the attempt became much harder with all my bags in tow. Finally after much wandering I found an open information desk where I was told to try in one of the other terminals. I headed off to that other terminal but there was no lounge in site and no one there to help me. Ditto the remaining terminal. From what I could see through the windows, there is some nice areas beyond ticket check/customs. Unfortunately before that, there is little in the way of comfy chairs. Nor could I even find a powerpoint to charge my laptop so I had to budget out my battery power by only using the laptop for short bursts and turning off some features so that I would still have power in case in needed it to contact people later in my time at the airport (my phone wasn’t working at the time). Being stuck alone in an almost empty airport in the middle of the night was like being stuck in the middle of a strange bad dream. Occasionally I would come across other tired and frustrated looking travellers in my wanderings. Some would try to sleep on the hard plastic seats but I decided against that. I did eventually find an open burger king store with reasonably comfortable seats and a copy of the Australian news paper left behind by someone else. I stayed there for a few hours until morning sipping on a sprite, reading the newspaper and feeling sorry for myself. I decided to head for my hotel several hours before I was meant to check in because I couldn’t stand the airport anymore!

Unlike many previous attempts, I actually managed to pack quite light. I was well under the weight limit for both my checked baggage and hand luggage, although the hand luggage only went under because they don’t count laptops towards the weight limit. If they had I would have had a problem on my hands because my laptop is ridiculously heavy. Packing lighter than I could have proved to be an advantage in my adventures at Singapore airport which I will tell you about later. It also means I have more room to bring back stuff I buy here.

I flew with Tiger airlines who fall firmly in the no-frills budget category. At most airports (even in Singapore) they still make you walk across the tarmac and up the stairs to get to the plane. Almost got blown away trying to get up the stairs in Melbourne. I got an aisle seat on both flights which I am thankful for because the seats were packed in pretty tightly. I tried to use my laptop, which was technically possible. It just required only having it partially open, sitting it on its spine and having the touch pad up somewhere near my chin. My little netbook was much easier, although still a bit of a tight fit. Can’t really complain though because the tickets were very cheap. Both flights were pretty uneventful, although we did get a bit of turbulence on the Perth-Singapore flight.

I’ll post more later about my experience at Singapore airport.

Only one week until I take the first flight of my trip. How time flies! It is hard to believe it really is so close.

I'll have to start packing in the next few days. Not sure how I am going to go with remembering everything I need and fitting it into my baggage allowance. Annoyingly Asian clothing sizes don't tend to fit me so I have to pack all the clothes I will need rather than buying them there. Then there is remembering all the right paperwork- passport, visa, banking, enrollment, accommodation, insurance.....It is amazing how much paperwork is needed!

I have been trying to brush up on my Asian language skills. It would be over two and a half years since I have used any significant amount of Indonesian or Malay. I only ever took classes in Indonesian but due to the similarity of Indonesian to Malay, I can understand some Malay too. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I do still remember. Can't say the same about my Mandarin Chinese skills. It is only 7 or 8 months since I've finished lessons but my skills have slipped badly. I look at characters and know I once learned them but have no recollection of what they mean. That is really frustrating. It is such a difficult language for an English speaker to learn!