eat, drink, travel

Friday, January 26, 2007

25th January – Induction
Whoa, it’s really tough to navigate around the school, given how clueless I am when it comes to map-reading. We had to sit through a series of talks for 3 hours in the lecture theatre with NO HEATER. We were all freezing and I was even wearing my gloves!

With the other Singaporean girls – Michelle from NUS Chem Eng and Michelia from NTU.

Lunch was provided – the food was pretty good and we got to meet some other people. We made friends with Derek (heh, same name as my brother-in-law), who’s actually from Hongkong but studying at San Francisco. Dawen had tagged along for the orientation and was happily conversing with Derek in Cantonese (show-off). Hur. And to our delight, Derek and I realized that we were classified under the Combined Studies Programme and we set off to register our modules.

Modules – a real headache. Apparently, if you’re a 3rd year student, you can only perhaps take about 3 modules per semester! I had a real headache over modules and finally decided to just take 4. Boy, I’m going to suffer for my final year in NUS. Sigh.

Library tour followed, its similar to how NUS operates, except the RBR system allows you to borrow for up to 4 hours. Finally registered at as a student at the university and managed to access the internet at the library. Caught up with my parents on the phone (really sorry I called around 12mn) and with huiyu on msn. I miss everyone. :(

The library was quite stuffy, and dawen and I both felt a little unwell (at this point dawen’s cheeks were really red). We had to leave Derek behind and give the pub crawl a miss. A helpful librarian pointed us towards the direction of restaurants and after walking past a really beautiful church and City Hall, we managed to find this place called Texas-Paris (I think). I had carbonara while dawen had marina and it was the best pasta that I’ve ever tasted – dawen’s mussels were really ‘meaty’, different from what we usually have in Singapore! It amounted to 8.5 pounds for dinner.

We were feeling a little bit stronger and warmed up after dinner so we walked around the huge M&S (jie, the chocolate chip cookies you always buy for me only cost 66pence here), dropped by more phone shops and I got myself 2 pairs of wool blend socks for 3 pounds.

Enough of all the eating out though – its time to start cooking and save money! :)

And I miss Singapore a lot – I miss the weather, I miss my mommy’s delicious cooking, and I miss the efficiency of NUS, I would rather do CORS than go through the cumbersome registration of modules over here.

26 January
mr chiew and paulene, i've proved both of you wrong, i managed to update all my backdated posts. haha. anyway, dawen and i went around campus today trying to settle my internet connection and modules. also, he made me learn how to navigate around campus. it's not too bad now, the school's about the size of NUS, a little more run-down but a lot more beautiful!

the church that i will pass by almost everyday.

us walking around the streets of the city center.

recognize this? apparently its the hottest thing in the Shenton Way now, and of course, it comes from the UK.

during lunch, i managed to talk to my sister and my parents. was really happy to talk to them, i really really miss home (haven't i said this enough already haha).

dawen and i did some grocery shopping at Morrison's, the supermarket near St Mary's College and i made use of his muscles to carry the food back. really appreciate all that he has done to settle me into Newcastle, at his own monetary expense.

classes start next monday, and i'm visiting one of the largest leisure centres in UK tomorrow - paulene, i'll tell you if the shopping's good. :)

8:59 PM

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leaving the sunny island of Singapore for exchange at Newcastle for six months, to explore what life has to offer on the other side of the world and excite the senses.

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