03-01-2009

From what I have seen so far, Singapore is very aesthetically appealing. It is very clean and clear that appearance is a high priority here. The NTU campus itself is beautiful; I believe this is one of my favorite aspects of studying here. I will give more descriptions when I have taken some pictures.

It turns out my roommate is a fellow RPI student. I had thought it would be nice to have an exchange student from another country like Europe but I think this will be good. My roommate Sam seems very friendly and he is also extremely generous. I am already 180 dollars in debt. Apparently no one here accepts traveler's checks, despite our adviser's recommendation to bring large quantities of money in traveler's check form. Later today I am going with a few RPI mates to an HSBC bank where they will supposedly accept them.

The other night I went with a dozen other exchange students to Little India. This is essentially the entire country of India squeezed into maybe one square mile. I've never actually been to India so I can't directly compare but I guess they have a lot of shops there. India's economy must consist entirely of a complex, chaotic, giant conglomerate of shops. I forgot to bring my camera so I took this picture from the Internet to give a general idea.There was a very unique smell that I would associate with body odor, but according to a website I read on little India it was actually the heady scent of spices and jasmine garlands. Besides the shops there were also some incredibly ornate Hindu monuments. I say monuments because I have no idea what they were or what purpose they served. The larger one we saw was impressive: very colorful, arches covered with countless tiny sculptures, and people inside kneeling and doing their thing.

I still need to buy toothpaste and an alarm clock among other things.