A pictures says more than a thousand words

And because of that, here are some impression of Singaporean life for an exchange student.

More coming up soon, because it takes a whole lot of patience to upload them and it is late already. No worries, I will do it soon soon soon!

Singapore - a few weeks gone by

And suddenly I have reactivated my key card already for the third time, which means the first three weeks are over. I can't believe how fast time goes by. At this point, student life has started, not only the social part, but also the more intensive part of studying.

At NTU a different system is employed to allocate courses among the students. Before the start of the academic year, you hand in a list of courses that you would like to follow. You have to do this on the basis of the course guide of last year, so that you don't know whether the courses are offered in the semester you are following. Right, so first tip to future NTU-goers: hand in as many courses as you can, you can always choose not to take it. The next step in the process is "confusion"; I must say this is not officially part of the process, but if you see all the exchange students at the International Office you would sure think so. The thing is that you have to get your courses approved first by the Schools, upon which the courses are preregistered for you if possible. Several problems pop up: no approved courses whatsoever, not registered - why not?? - or clashes in timetable. The idea is that you plan your timetable yourself in STARS-planner and subsequently add and drop courses during the add/drop period, if there are vacancies. Wow, the stories becomes a bit technical now. So punchline, it is all extremely confusing and coordinator Audrey has a tough job helping all the students with desperate looks on their faces. In the beginning it looked like I would not get any sociology courses at all, but you can get far with perseverance: I went to the division of sociology 4 times and finally I have all the courses that I wanted! On top of that, I have Thursday and Friday off which allows for an occasional weekend travelling during the semester. Couldn't be better!

Let me tell you something about my experiences so far.

Singapore is all about food and shopping. If you open your travel guide, the highlights will contain among other things: Little India (mainly shopping is advertised), Chinatown ('take a stroll along the shophouses), Orchard Road ('pay homage to the gods of retail'), hawker stalls ('food heaven under fluoro lights'), high dining. Of course, there is more to it: night safari, Sentosa and other parks and museums.

The people are really nice. Especially in the first weeks I noticed that whenever you look confused, within 1 minute someone will come up and ask you if he or she can help you. And as I got lost about 4 times on campus, the confused face reappears now and again. Also, from some exchange students I heard that the local people are not very approachable, but that is not what I have experienced so far; instead, people come up to me and ask questions about where I'm from and what I am doing here. Really nice! However, I do get where they are coming from: some people are not approachable at all or not understandable for that matter. Especially some of the people in the food stalls are talking in a kind of English that I cannot understand (if they even speak English at all): sometimes they get a Chinese person walking by to translate what I want to have for dinner. Hmm..

This brings me to my next topic: language. Besides the 4 official languages I talked about before, there is an additional language which can be found in Singapore: Singlish. It is a combination of all kinds of languages and I cannot really grasp the whole idea of it. I just know that they say 'lah' often, which doesn't really mean anything and I learnt sentences like: 'you bad lah' (which means something like 'that is not very nice of you'). So far not anything useful, but it does sound funny though.

As I am here to study, I will tell you something about my courses. I have 4 sociology courses in addition to my distance course about investor behaviour. I love my new field! Most of it is very interesting and a lot of discussion is going on (okay, maybe not as much as could be, but still). Especially my course 'sociology of gender' is interesting and the professor is great! She teaches well, her English is great and she creates an open discussion; even about topics of which it is sometimes a bit awkward to talk about. The teacher of another course speaks Chinese English, which makes it very difficult to understand, but luckily there is a book :). And the other two are also really nice: one about education and the other about inequality; the tutor of both courses is the same and she is really good!

Traveling is one of the main topics among exchange students. I seem to have surrounded myself with people who want to travel every weekend, which was not really my plan. The fitst trip has already been made, however, namely to Tioman, an island in Malaysia. That was a great holiday: lying on the beach, delicious food and fruit juices, snorkeling (I discovered a turtle) and cheap drinks at that beach bar. The best preparation for a busy semester.
Of course there is also recess week not too far from now and it is so hard to decide where to go since there are so many possibilities! I do know that we have to decide soon, as the ticket prices go up the closer you get to the date. I might go to Indonesia, to the place where my mum used to live, since now is the opportunity to visit the people again and otherwise it will take like another 2 or 3 years before I go there again. Yannick (my boyfriend) is visiting in November and we are planning to go to Bali, but of course I will show him around Singapore as well! I can't wait until he's here!

Good times. I have been so lucky with my roommate: her name is Dana and she is from Germany and we get along so well. We go out together, go the lunch and dinner and make (day) trips. The exchange community is great too, as everyone is very approachable and seeking to have a good time. I have to say, do not come to Singapore to drink, the alcohol prices are outrageous! Wednesday is Ladies Night, which is good for me of course, as it also includes free drinks. The guys have to pay for it though (that's where the clubs make their profit). Inequality, maybe?

I can't wait to discover more of Singapore and Singaporean life. Some visitors are also coming soon: Tobi (from LAS) is here this week and Iris and I will meet up with him and his girlfriend. And my brother and his girlfriend are flying home (after 10 months of traveling) via Singapore, so I get to spend a few days with them :). It will be great to see them again after such a long time.

Until the next blogpost, lah!

xxx Fleur