My great Arventure: Virus is down... and blog is up!!!!

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Virus is down... and blog is up!!!!

WELL!!!!! Firstly, let me apologize for the MAJOR delay in blog entries. As some of you may (or may not) know I had a virus attack my computer as soon as I arrived in Singapore. As a result of that most of the time I've spent on my computer has been trying to clean up my computer without having to resort to formatting the harddrive. Luckily I have ALMOST cleaned everything and my laptop is (nearly) running at its normal pace again. So, without any further delay my Arventures in Sinapore!!!

So the journey started on Tuesday January 4th, 2005 @ Pearson Int'l Airport in Toronto.

With my two partners in crime, Julia (left) and Kiran (right), with me I was ready to start my Arventure.

We flew by Cathay Pacific

(bad photo, but if you squint hard, tilt your head to the left by 38.5degrees... I said left, not right... and stare away from the screen you can just make out the turbine and wing of a big bird)

Let me say, I have never had better service on a flight before. The flight attendants on CP were fantastic!!!! Anything that Kiran, Jules or I asked for we got.. and almost immediately too!!! Props to Cathay for excellent service!!!

Our flight to Singapore was via Anchorage (for a quick fuelling and cabin crew change) and Hong Kong. We couldn't disembark in Anchorage, because it was only a re-fuelling stop but in HK we had to switch planes. HK has quite a nice airport.

Big, bright and lots of shopping. Unfortunately we only had an hour and had to cross through security so we couldn't see much. Nonetheless, I still took a pic to prove I was there. Avid readers of this blog will find that I tend to take alot of these "self" photos. I'm going to make a coffee table book titled, "Portraits of a Brown Man: Same face, different backgrounds".

Here's the Brown Man in the Hong Kong Airport after a 20 hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong.
(side note: for all follower's of Rohit's blog I tried looking for HK Movie Star but couldn't seem to find him. He must be filming)

After a relaxing (and nearly empty) 3hr plane ride from HK we arrived in Singapore's Changi Airport!!!!!!!!

It seemed a little small but there were LOTS of plants there. Turns out the rest of Singapore is like that as well!!!!

The above picture was taken outside University Hall (an administrative building) on the NUS campus. My god, you can't imagine how green and beautiful this campus is. So much vegetation everywhere. I love it!!! It really brightens the mood and enriches the character of a campus. In the photo alone there is probably more vegetation than all of Waterloo campus!!!!

NUS is a really big campus. Lucky for lazy ppl like me there is a free Internal Shuttle Bus that runs around campus quite frequently. Again let me remind you... it is free!!! You know what that means... lots of snooze button action :P

So, back to the arrival day. After Kiran, Jules and I (now known as KJ&I) checked into our rooms we wandered around campus taking care of some logistical things like student fees, registration, etc. The three of us were pretty tired though so we went to bed around 8pm local time (7am EST).

The next day was a fun one. There was an orientation session for the exchange students. The presentation was a couple of hours long and afterwards a 45min. meet and greet with other exchange students. I've never met so many new ppl in such a short time span. There are people here from all over the world... USA, Germany, Sweden, China, India, England. Lots of ppl, lots of places.

Afterwards, KJ&I went to Suntec City, which is a Southeast Asia's largest Convention & Exhibtion Centre, and also houses Singapore's Largest mall (in terms of number of retailers).

We found a couple of neat things there, like the Fountain of Wealth.

And the Best Ribs in America!!!

Later in the evening we went to a small BBQ for exchange students, which was actually kind of boring except for the chance to meet some more people. They were taking over an hour to cook hotdogs!!! A group of us left and went to a 24hr prantha shop instead. Sooo greasy.... sooo good!!!

Saturday the task @ hand for KJ&I was to get a cell phone. Our friend from Iowa, Mark, tagged along 'cuz he needed a cell phone as well. Our searching landed us on Orchard Road, which is a major shopping/tourist street in Singapore.

There are tons of malls, designer stores and little shops set up for probably 3km (or so).

Kiran and I decided that between the two of us we could probably just share a phone. So after some time-consuming searching and some hard bargaining we found one that we liked for the right price. The number is 8142-8553. If anybody wants to send me a txt msg (which i receive for free!!!) just go to this site, http://websms.starhub.com/websms/sendSMS/index.jsp, and enter the # (without the hyphen though).

So lots that happened the first few days. I didn't take many pics though because I wasn't in much of a picture mood, and know that I'll go to the same places later on in the semester.

Anyways, that's it for this blog entry. No worries though because in 5mins I'll add the next blog entry!!!!