life

Assuming you guys wanna know, life here is different, very different. =)

Hostel life is bearable lar. It's really new, only 2 years old i think. It's quite nice everything's quite high tech. There's a lady's voice in the elevator that says "going up, storey 6" etc. Haha, and there's this access card we have to tap to go in and out of anywhere at all. =P Even to get food!

Talking bout food, food here SUCKS. Chicken soup smells like rotten fish. Breakfast is really scary. "Don't kill yourself!", they all say, "just take bread la". Well you can take bread to school, some even take 6-7 pieces to school. Oh but you have to be smart, avoid the ever watchful eyes of the canteen auntie. During dinner time, if the canteen auntie's the one serving you, expect no more than 1 piece of tofu, don't even ask. But of course, my hostel mates say, there's a trick, just call her 'da jie' before you ask for more. Or call her 'leng lui' -- if you dare. That's one thing Oliver Twist never could think of ;) No wonder he went hungry.

And there’s also the laundry service. Let’s just say…Clothes that you send for washing will never be the same again. But I’m too lazy to care =P

Well a typical day starts at 6am, there's breakfast and a chartered bus that leaves at 6.40am. ON THE DOT! Then there's school, lectures, tutorials and stuff.

There's PE here too! Gone were the days where PE was fun. Now it's PE training 2 times a week. Run 2 rounds round the track, do 2 sets of 12 sit ups, push ups, then run again, then it's dips. Wow, just today i ran 10 rounds, did situps, pushups, dips, crunches, jumps, stepups etc. People here take this really seriously because there's a compulsory phsycial test to pass.

Then back at the hostel, if you're lucky you get back before dinner and if you're really really lucky (like me) you get to bathe before dinner!

After dinner it's compulsory study time from 8:00-9:30pm. You have to be in your room studying and doing nothing else, they do check on you. The trick is to know when to sleep, and when to really study. I've been told to be a good girl for the first few weeks i was here. And it works! They don't check on you that often ;)

Then of course there's roll call at 10, just to check that no one has snuck out somewhere. Then it's lights off at 11pm.

Yep that's life.

But there comes the glorious weekend that starts on Friday night! Yeah! We get to go out but we have to be back by 11pm or you will be grounded. (Hourly report they call it). But it's really good enough. Our hostel is really close to orchard road so... =) In the short 3 weeks i've been here, i've already been to Esplanade, orchard road, china town and the various shopping malls here. But there's only so much to do in Singapore. There's no night life. By 9:30 everything's as well as closed =S The nearest mamak is really really far away from here. We went there for roti prata (hostel cluster outing). Turns out roti prata IS roti canai. Weird Singaporeans.

Oh yeah, more often than not, you find yourself broke. So what what do you do on weekends? Thank God for the common room and the heavenly flat screen tv. The dvd player's quite sucky but we get dvd's from everyone and sometimes we get to borrow from the hostel. We watch them together, tucked under our blankets and pillows and everything we bring from our rooms. What's movie without food?! Well unfortunately there's no food allowed in the common room but .... =) Hehehe. Movie sessions are real fun coz we get to squeal when some cute guy comes on screen without any guys having to roll their eyes. Haha, and it's especially funny when we're watching horror movies. Like when we were watching THE GRUDGE everyone kept screaming, even for no reason. But it's real fun =)

And then Sunday comes and it's church time! I'm so fortunate to have found New Creation Church here, it's located on top of a shopping complex and the number of people attending it is crazy. There are FOUR services and you have to get tickets (free though they are) to book you good seats or you have to line up to go in later. But it's worth it =) Pastor's real good, music's good.. but most importantly you have to go with a sincere heart =)

As for friends here, i'm staying with scholars mostly from malaysia, but there are lots from china, india, thailand, laos and all the ASEAN countries. They're quite nice. And not quite nerdy as you might think. =) Well that's all i can think of for now. Sorry if I bored you guys out! =P