The End of the First Week in Singapore

Week one in Singapore has come to an end. And what a week. Singapore is, in essence, a big concrete jungle. Composed of many places to shop, buy things, and eat. Although I am not a huge shopper I do love the food. Food is also very cheap, if you buy it at hauker centers, I am sure I spelt that incredibly wrong. You can get chinese, japanese, indian, korean, malasian, and many other foods of origin I am unsure. 

What unnerves me about singapore is the "too perfectness" of many areas of the city. For example, yesterday, I went, with 3 other exchange students, to Sentosa, a man made island/beach in Singapore. It was really creapy and wierd, everything was so "perfect" and unnatural, it was like I was in The Truman Show or something. I went for a swim and there was seaweed though, so thats kinda exciting! And there was a warning about "sea stingers" although none were encountered. Another place that is a little too perfect: NTU campus. Its too pretty, soo many green spaces, flowers, trees. And all so perfectly manicured. I always see the workers (who are always Indian, I wonder why...) out taking care of the greenery!

I love the diversity of Singapore, not to say that its equal among all races, not in the least, but there are people of all races here. I guess if you switched the whites in canada with asian, the indians with white, and the asians with indians then you would get singapore, did you follow that?! haha its pretty diverse, I notice this the most when taking the MRT, which by the way is also very interesting(to be mentioned later), on my way to "the City".

Just some of the food I have tried so far:

green tea pumpkin seeds(eating now...)

Chinese peanut soup with glutinous rice balls

Glutinous rice covered in crushed peanuts (they love glutinous rice, and so do I!)

Barley Juice (not a huge fan)

Cocanut Water (love!)

wierd clear fruit that kinda tastes like grapefruit but is small balls...

Roti with tofu and mixed veggis (malasian dish)

Indian food(naan, veggi rice, channa masala, dal, mixed veggis, etc.) off of a banana leaf

Carrot cake (NOT western carrot cake, its a meal dish, with cooked diced white carrots)

Crazy mountain of flavoured ice with mango sauce and red bean, jellies, and fruit hidden inside the mound

Chinese stuffed buns, assorted

Bean curd

Etc. I'll stop there, you get the point! And that was only one week!

Some interesting points, observations, randomness about singapore:

1. They use a crap-load of cards (for keys, for the mrt(mass rail transit), etc.)

2. $500 fine for eating or DRINKING on the mrt

3. The fact that you pay per distance when riding the mrt and buses here

4. How much people eat, but how tiny they all are...

5. All the crazy herbal canned drinks

6. How cold it actually is here during the evening and night (ever night I get cold!)

7. All the sheltered walk ways on NTU campus

8. how loud students are during lectures, seems so rude to me...

9. the fabulous hawker centers

10. I don't like distance education courses

11. People go to sleep really late here (ie. 2am and later)

I'm going to go to bed now, although I am living in Singapore, I am not a 2am local, and thus need my sweet sweet sleep! This weekend was pretty busy, except for today, the good part is that I was able to hang out with a bunch of local malasians, which really is much more amazing then exchange students, not that the other exchangers arn't amazing, but the locals just actually know what they are doing, where to take me, what to feed me, and have much more interesting stories I can hear!

Good morning to all of you, and good night to me!