Life in Singapore 101

But I guess one of the things you're wondering the most about is what life is like in general (as it is on request as well).

Well, it's hot. How hot it is it? It's so hot I pour McDonalds coffee in my lap to cool down. Okay, maybe not but you will probably burn yourself pretty badly if trying to walk on asphalt or the basket courts here during a sunny day. But the heat might not be biggest problem, we have wicked humidity making you sweat rivers and which keeps my pillow (in our non-AC apartment) constantly moist. But how does the Singaporeans solve this? AC is the weapon-of-choice and after having adapted to the heat you now freeze on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) and in the lecture theaters. The funny thing is that staying in an AC room for a while will make water condense on your skin when you walk outside, it's a bit weird, kind of like sweat but not really. It's fake-sweat.

Random picture from campus, the Yunnan Garden:

Since Singapore is so close to the equator the night/day ratio is very close to 1, the sun goes up sometime between 6 and 7 in the morning and sets at about 19 in the evening. So parties start pretty early here in general (but it might also be due to the MRT and regular buses stop going at midnight).

I'm kind of an early bird since I like to maximize (t' = 0, t'' < 0) my days so I usually get up at around 6.15. Walking to the toilet I keep an eye out for wildlife (read cockroaches) in the kitchen, if I find any I launch a swift and decisive offensive with chemical weapons and remove all signs of them from the premises.

Having made sure that I belong to the dominant species in the apartment I sit down to eat my breakfast. My breakfast usually consists of expensive yoghurt (since it's the only available in Singapore, 30 SEK/L), cereals or müsli, wholegrain toast bread (since more proper bread costs about 20 SEK/7 slices) and on that I usually eat crab sticks now since it's the cheapest (taking quality into consideration) food I've found to put on my sandwiches. And sometimes if I'm feeling a bit luxurious I might add some fruit to that.

I then go to school (if I'm not free of course) by walking for just over 10 minutes, getting a sweaty back due to the backpack, and then taking bus 179 to campus. This is also one of the reasons I like to get up early, the bus goes from a bus interchange and between 7.45 and 10.00 the queue gets so long that multiple buses are filled before you're allowed to board, my record is two buses and me getting on the third.

Then it's like school, school, school until lunch. Mmm... lunch. In Singapore you almost always eat out (especially students) since it's so cheap, and I'm only allowed to do light cooking in the apartment. And when you eat you eat at food courts or hawker centers, the difference being that the first one is air-conditioned. There you can find tons of different food stalls where you can get what you feel for at the moment. The usual setup is that the stalls have a bunch of different small-dishes but I think I'll go more into the food in it's own future blog post but if you can't wait there's a sneak peek below of some vegetarian food.

Canteen B, the place where I usually eat:

Just to clarify, the food is NOT bought at the place above, it's at a food court in a shopping mall near where I live.

After the lunch school continues until about 17.30 at the longest for me and afterwards I either go home, meet up with friends or stay at school to study more (yeah, for real!) or because I have Wushu training at 19! I usually try to eat my dinner at school as well because it's cheaper in average compared to the food courts and hawker centers around where I live.

And after that long and hard day I take the bus home, go by Fairprice if I need to buy some groceries, and walk home with my book-filled backpack. I get in, throw the backpack off, spend a little time at the computer  (and hopefully making a blog post) and then I go to bed.