More shopping, anyone?

I can't believe that as of tomorrow we will have been here in Singapore for a week. On one hand it feels like we just got here, but on the other I feel like we've done so much, and so much as happened that we've been here for at least a month. I think that as we get more and more settled, time will fly by faster than we can anticipate. Carpe Diem has never had as much meaning to me as it does right now.

Today our goal was to be tourists. We planned on going on a boat tour, but on our way to the marina, it got really cloudy and looked like it was going to do that torrential downpour thing that Singapore clouds like to do. So, we panicked, and decided it wouldn't be too desireable to be caught in that kind of weather on a little boat. We'll do the tour another day.

By the time we got to the marina (where we got to see the ocean here for the first time in daylight, and it's way blue-er than I thought it would be, it's beautiful!), we were hungry and looking for lunch. We found an amazing Japanese food place where we were able to satisfy all our cravings for sushi, gyozas, edamame, tenaki, and Danielle even got her salad. Life was good.

After lunch we ventured down to Chinatown to check it out. Janene and I got very lost earlier in the week, walking around downtown looking for a place to have breakfast, and thought that one of the places we passed through was China Town. Nope. We were wrong. Dead wrong. After seeing what we saw today, we definitely would have known for sure if we were in Chinatown. We walked through a strip of little shops, which took us over an hour just to get through one strip, and it turned out we had only walked a block! The amount of people there was insane. I know I've said the malls are bad, and there are tons of people everywhere, but this was ridiculous. Hundreds, upon hundreds of people were slowly shuffling through this one little area. It was definitely an interesting place to be, but after spending a few hours there, we decided to cancel our quest for a chinatown dinner, and head back to less crowded ground.

And so we hit the mall. Again. Surprised? I think there has only been one day our entire time here that we have not shopped in a mall. It's like an addiction. We were quite productive with our shopping today though, as we finally found shorts that fit us and that we liked. Also, we were able to find this store called "Fair Price Xtra", which is like a very hectic Walmart (busy Walmarts in North America have nothing on Fair Price Xtra......nothing), where we were able to buy things like more cereal (thank goodness), snacks for our dorm rooms, and laundry detergent.

We booked our hostels tonight for when we go to Thailand next week. The first three nights will be spent in Phuket, close to the beach, and our fourth night will be spent in Ko Phi Phi. We are taking our backpacks on the plane as carry-on, so not to go through the lost luggage chaos that we just went through. Danielle still doesn't have her suitcase full of her clothes, so hopefully that comes for her before we leave. She has most her essentials, just not clothes, so she's been borrowing from the four of us until hers arrive. Hopefully hers arrives, the airport still has no idea where it is........which would cause me to freak out, but she's surprisingly calm about the whole thing, and handling it very well.

As I mentioned in my last post, tomorrow we go to the zoo. Janene can harldy contain herself, she's so excited to see the penguins. Apparently her life-long dream is to pet a penguin. I'm hoping she gets a good fix of them tomorrow. After the zoo we are going to go to the Night Safari, where we get to see all the nocturnal animals, which is bound to be a cool experience.

Monday morning we start classes. I don't feel mentally prepared to start classes, because I've been on co-op for the past eight months, and have been in major unemployed/travel mode for the last little while. So, I'll have to actually go to lectures and study? In beautiful, hot Singapore? Really? Is there someone I can speak to about having this changed, because I'm really not in the mood............there must be some kind of mistake.

We have to go through the most-likely frustrating experience of attempting to change our class schedule around to meet our ideal travel needs. We're trying to build a schedule where we have class Mon-Wed, and then have Thurs-Sun to travel each week. I know, it sounds unrealistic, but we're hoping. Keeping our fingers crossed. We get access to attempt this manoever on Monday night, so it's going to be interesting.

Tonight Janene and I are finishing our work term reports for our co-ops that we just completed back home. A work term report is really the last thing that we want to be writing right now, but it needs to be done. Wish us luck at the zoo tomorrow, we might not be able to get Janene to leave.

xoxox

Hi, my name is...

Today we did a few pretty fun and interesting things.

The first fun thing was breakfast. A couple days ago we were in a super market, that just happened to be located in the middle of a mall, and we bought our favourite cereals from home. Today was the first day we were able to indulge, and it was incredible. I never realized how much I missed normal western breakfast food, and I'm not even really much of a breakfast person. The past week that we've been here, it's been surprisingly really difficult to find food that we would want to eat for breakfast, especially since there seems to be whole marinated ducks hanging in every restaurant and food stall that we walk by. Breakfast is too early for duck. Quite frankly, I'm starting to feel like dinner is even too early for duck. So, cereal this morning was pretty exciting.

Next exciting event on our list was booking our first weekend trip. We have decided that we are going to check out Thailand first, leaving next Wednesday night and returning Sunday night. We will be spending four nights there, and we're super excited. Our round trip flight from Singapore to Phuket was $250 SGD, which isn't amazing, but isn't too bad either. We're looking forward to seeing the beaches there, it sounds pretty incredible.

At 2 pm this afternoon we had our exchange orientation, where about 200 exchange students from around the world attended an info and welcome session. We met a few people, and made plans to meet at the campus pub later on. So, this evening we hung out at the pub for about 3 hours, just meeting and chatting with exchange students. It was pretty fun.

At around 11pm, Janene, Heather, and Tia went downtown to check out a nightclub. However, like moths to a flame, they ended up on Orchard Road shopping at midnight. Pretty standard.

Danielle and I decided it was a good idea to use the 24/7 McDonalds delivery hotline called "McDelivery"........we couldn't resist......but probably should have. I had a double cheeseburger and Danielle had the chicken burger, and we both had curly fries......that's right, remember the curly fries that McD's had in Canada for like 6 months, about 10 years ago? Yup, they're in Singapore, and they call them their "new" fries.....pretty exciting. The overwhelming feeling of yuck that accompanied this poor meal decision was not so exciting though....I'd like to say I've learned my lesson, but I'll probably do it again. Naturally.

Tomorrow we're being super tourists and going on a 2.5 hour boat tour called the Fairwind Junk Tour......sounds weird, but apparently you see some cool stuff. On Sunday we're going to check out the Singapore Zoo and the night Safari. Janene is overwhelmingly excited about the penguins, and there is apparently some kind of penguin parade that takes place, so we're gonna go there to feed her penguin addiction.

Good news is I finally got my computer working! Yaaay!! Turns out I didn't need a converter at all, my computer accepts up to 240V of input, so I can just use an adapter to plug it into the wall! Too easy. Thanks everyone who sent me tips though...some of them were pretty creative.

Well, it's almost 2am here, so I'm off to bed. That's all for now
xoxoxo

I Made It!

Well, I'm here, I made it to Singapore! I've been here for five days, and am just now getting internet access....somewhat. I still can't use my computer, so I've borrowed Tia's for this much delayed blog post.

Where to begin? We've had a pretty eventful/frustrating/patience-testing couple of days. I knew that travelling would force me to become more of a flexible person, but I wasn't quite expecting so many bumps in the road. We're safe, and we're all together, so that's all that really matters, but it's been interesting thus far, that's for sure.

Our flights from Canada to Singapore were all delayed, which was to be expected because of the snow in Canada. However, after sitting in the plane on the tarmac in the Vancouver Airport for 2.5 hours, the captain came on the speaker to say "well folks, we're going to get going, but Air Canada was unable to get any luggage on this plane, so we're going to take off without your bags. You should receive them on the other side within 12-24 hours."

Perfect.

36 hours later, we got our bags. 36 hours is actually quite a long time to go without essentials like underwear, contact solution, face wash, etc. Especially when you arrive in Singapore when it's 34 degrees and humid, and you're wearing Lulu's, running shoes, and a hoodie. Needless to say, we hit the mall pretty quickly after arriving at our hotel. Thank goodness we were staying in a beautiful hotel (the Carlton), which was right in the heart of downtown and shopping.

We ended up staying in the hotel for an extra night (2 in total) so that we could be somewhere the airport could deliver our baggage to once it was finally located.

When I say "we" I am referring to myself, Janene, Danielle, Heather, and Tia. We are all in the UVic Business program, and travelled here together and are rooming together. It's nice to have so many familiar faces to hang out with.

We are attending Nanyang Technological University here in Singapore, and the campus is 500 acres of BEAUTIFUL. It's amazing. I mean, I thought the UVic campus was nice. This is amazing. It's massive, for one thing, and it backs onto a jungle, so there are so many trees, and greenery, and it feels kind of rainforesty. We're living in residence on campus and checked in a few days ago. We all got really lucky and got placed in the same building, which happens to have been built in 2005, and is one of only two res buildings on campus that has airconditioning. It's nice to be able to control the temperature of our room, and keep it comfortably cool. The rooms are small, but they're really clean. The first thing we did once we checked into our dorms was go to the Ikea here, and get things like bedspreads, hangers, laundry baskets, storage baskets, etc. So at least we've been able to personalize our rooms a bit, and pick out a colour scheme..........don't act like you're surprised about that.

Yesterday was New Year's Eve for us here, as Singapore is 16 hours ahead of Victoria, and we celebrated by going to Sentosa Island. It was pretty much the most hectic situation I've ever put myself in. It felt like there were 2 million people going to the same place, and the lines were MASSIVE. We stood in the most cramped, sweaty line just to get in for literally something like 40 minutes......and I'm not normally a claustrophobic person, but this one really pushed my tolerance of having people pushed up right against me on all sides. Once we got through the lines, we had fun. There was a big dance party on the beach, with a pretty good DJ, and a foam dance party. We finally were able to snag a cab and got back to our dorms around 4am. We were exHAUSted, but it was a fun way to ring in 2009.

Today we're just taking it easy and exploring the campus a bit, since it's so huge and there's a lot to see.

Singapore's more expensive than I thought it would be. The thing that blows my mind the most is the cost of drinks. To get anything, like a martini, or long island iced tea: $16!! Even after the conversion, that's still like $14 CDN! Needless to say, we haven't ordered any drinks out yet. I guess there are very few alcoholics in Singapore, because it's too expensive. For example, even going to a liquor store, a 2-6 of Bacardi rum is $55!!! The same thing sells for like $22 at home, and we can't figure out why it's so ridiculously overpriced here.

We had our first rainfall today since we've arrived. We noticed there were some rain clouds outside, and thought it might rain sometime today. 5 minutes later we hear a loud noise, and it's POURING outside. Like torrential downpour, all of a sudden. The rain was so warm, so Janene and Danielle put their bathing suits on and went outside to play in it. Then about 7 minutes later, it stopped as fast as it started. Pretty crazy. Also, the other night there was lightening, but no thunder, no rain, no storm, just lightening for a while. Weird.

One thing I'm having a hard time getting used to is the amount that I get STARED at. It's insane. It's mostly the men, which makes it creepy, and they just literally sit there and stare. Everyone says it's because they aren't used to seeing white blonde people here.....but if someone of minority comes to Canada, we don't sit and stare at them...it's rude! I'm not quite understanding why they think it's okay....I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it's throwing me off a bit for now.

It's nice to be in such warm weather, and we're already starting to get used to it. It helps that our room isn't a sauna, so we can cool off when we want to.

The fruit here is amazing, I'm eating lots of pineapple, kiwi, mango, and watermelon. It's pretty cheap to get big chunks of each at our canteen (cafeteria). Thankfully our cafeteria food is pretty cheap. Actually it's really cheap. For lunch today I ordered a big piece of watermelon, pineapple, and a kiwi, and a plate of rice, chicken of some sort, and some green steamed veggie I'd never had before, and it all came to $3.50 SGD, so that's like $3 CDN. For a whole meal. Crazy. Very different from downtown. We went out for breakfast one of the mornings that we stayed at the hotel, and I paid $14 SGD for a croissant, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of tea. Yikes. I guess it just depends on where in the country we are.

I've got a yucky headcold that I picked up on the plane on the way over that took a few days to get full blown. I sound pretty manly today, and I'm all congested, which is not that fun in the humidity, but I'm doing alright. Thankfully they sell decongestants here.

I'm having problems with my adapter and converter that I bought in Canada to allow me to use my electronics here. The adapter plugs into the wall and the converter plugs into the adapter (to convert the voltage so I don't blow things up). I then plug my stuff (camera chargers, cell phone charger, computer power cord, etc.) into the converter. Only problem is the converter only accepts two-pronged plugs, and my computer power cord is a three prong. Janene's having the same problem. So, we went to several different places and finally found a plug adapter that accepts three prongs. Perfect. The only problem now is that I am scared to use my converter with my laptop power cord, because last night I was blowdrying my hair, with my blowdryer plugged into the converter, and was blowdrying it on the "cold" setting, because that's all that would work, and all of a sudden it started making noises like a plane about to take off, the inside coils all got bright orange, it started sparking, and then there was a loud "POP" noise and it shut off, and my converter had smoke coming from it. So, I'm nervous to have it damage my computer........what if it overheats or something? I don't want to risk it. What's the point of having a voltage converter, if it still blows stuff up? I also tried to plug in my straightening iron the other day, and one of the ceramic slabs literally lifted from the plastic which melted. Janene's starting smoking and smelling like burning rubber. Universal Converter? Pfffffft. Right. Anyone else been in this kind of situation? Tips? I'm confused......and really frustrated. I just want to be able to use my computer.........

I have a feeling I've just written a novel, so I should sign off. I can't post any pictures yet, because I need to do that with my computer, which I can't use yet. Bah. Hopefully soon.

Anyways, we're all safe and getting settled. We start classes next week, so hopefully we can get a schedule that will allow some good travel time. We're thinking of going to Malaysia next next weekend. Looks fun.

Happy New Year!!

xoxoxoxo