January 14, 2019
QUICK VIEW
- Budget your money for the duration of the stay
- Keep all receipts from purchases
- Be open to trying new foods you aren’t used to
After exploring my dorm building a little, I realized there was no kitchen. I became frustrated because I was kind of expecting to cook. I asked around if any other buildings had kitchens that I could maybe visit, but the answer was no.
I went to the NTU website and it was true, the website said there were no kitchens but that the school campus had many food courts and canteens with reasonable prices, exactly for students. The prices for these meals are very reasonable, around $3-5 SGD. But, buying food everyday 2 or 3 times a day will quickly add up.
Since I got here I have been eating from different parts of campus. I have had Indian, Korean and Chinese food. The food here is very diverse and it is also very good. For the prices, they certainly give nice portions and you will not be hungry for a while.
In search for some breakfast food from home, I found a Korean spot that sold omelettes. I decided to get one because I really wanted some of that type of breakfast food and not rice or noodles. I ordered an omelette with chicken and waited. When I got it, I started to cut open the omelette only to find out that rice was inside…….. I would have never expected rice to be inside an omelette. It was very surprising to me and I felt betrayed haha.
I wanted to get some snacks for my room and other things that I needed as well, so I decided to go to a mall nearby called Jurong Point. The mall was so big and so crowded. I forgot that people walk on the opposite of the passageway and for the longest time I was walking on my right. People would continue looking at me and not move when I was walking towards them and I just assumed they were rude…turns out I was the rude one….awkward.
Another observation that I made in the mall was that it seemed as though everyone was looking down on their phones. A couple of people passed me doing the same and I saw that they were playing Pokemon Go on their phones. I didn’t think much of it until I saw more and more people doing the same thing. It was crazy, I had never seen so many people doing that. In fact, I would see people with 3 phones on a book or something flat, walking around collecting Pokemon as they were walking along, on all 3 phones. I was surprised because I saw people of all ages doing it. Young children, teens, mothers and fathers. Pokemon Go was also very popular in the United States but it isn’t anymore, but that is not the case here.
The mall had all kinds of stores; high end clothes, jewelry, groceries, luggage, stationary, etc. It was everything you needed all in one place which was very useful to me. After a while though, I began to get an intense headache. I’m not sure if it was because I have not been sleeping or if it was because there were way too many people, but I decided to leave a little earlier than I had planned and would come back another day.