Today was an interesting day. I guess I am stating the obvious all the time :)
My notional supervisor is sick and won't be available for the next month. So he sent my information on to an assistant professor, who contacted me already on Monday. We set up lunch for today. When I turned up at her office, Julia suggested we invite two more people. In sum, I had lunch with three assistant professors today. Julia, originally from Taiwan, PhD from the University of Georgia, Tianshu, from China, PhD from the University of Michigan, and Asad, from the UK, PhD from the Cranfield School of Management.
We have also gone to a canteen other than my usual one. It was very different, fewer stalls, different kinds of food (e.g. Korean, I'll have to go back to try it once) but a larger selection at each stall. It was fairly busy, but I was told, this was nothing, undergraduate teaching would only start next week! So just like in the Netherlands, staff eating time is at 11.30, otherwise NTU canteens are too crowded. I ate Chinese for the first time, eggplant and okra/bamia/ladies finger (and some meat and rice).
The afternoon milestone is that I can now print. I have set up the printer two days ago, but something still had to be arranged for the actual printer to recognize me. But today I have manage to print my Stata outputs! I print one page for S$0.04, i.e. 4 Singapore Dollar cents. And I pay for it with the same card I use to pay the bus fare. I wonder how I am going to reclaim money for this :)
Yesterday I have left for home at around 5.30 to be able to do some skyping, but today I was still there at 5.45, when my PhD student friends came around to ask if I wanted to go and have dinner. I love (international) people here! They are all Chinese, and I don't even know their names, shame on me (only one, Lin). Except Lin and one of the girls, they find it difficult to talk in English :(, but they are appreciative of my stories and jokes (me a jokester!, everything is possible in Singapore!), or at least pretend to be :) And we went to a different canteen. This one, you'll be very surprised to learn, was very different from the others :) I ate Chinese again, I have tried some green seaweed (I liked it) and some vegetable that looks like brown seaweed, but as I was told grows on a tree and is like a mushroom (I liked it).
When I finally started home, at the campus loop bus stop, waiting for the bus to take me to the stop for bus 199, a girl has asked me a question about the bus schedule. It is very funny that I, the newcomer, am asked for advice :) But it turns out she was an even "newer comer", because she arrived on Monday. We started talking and then I ended up visiting the third canteen today :) and this way I have managed to quadruple the number of canteens I have been to so far, in just one day! (Very different :), the first place where I saw an actual halal food stand, because so far only the tray return areas were separated into halal and non-halal. And I drank some tea, but it was tasteless and very sweet :) I should really give up trying.) My new friend is from Indonesia, more specifically from Yokyakarta in Java. Her name is Siwanta, or Wanta. And she is doing her Masters prior to doing her PhD in mathematics! She has applied to 18 schools in Europe (including in Finland, a few in the Netherlands: Utrecht, Leiden, Amsterdam, and two in Hungary!: ELTE and Pecs), but she was not accepted, while all of her friends were accepted in Europe. She also told me that as an international student, one semester costs her S$10,000 at NTU. We have shared our experiences about how Singapore is very organized, but NTU is not, how Singapore has wonderful signposting but NTU does not, and how Singapore is very united and tolerant (think of the many religions coexisting peacefully, for example), but NTU not so much: She told me that she studies at NIE (National Institute of Education), which is part of NTU, but at the same time is not. When she wanted to register at the same place I had to on Monday (International Student Centre registration), she was told to go away, because she is NIE (?) and she could not buy tickets for the same events for international students that I am going to... Anyway we'll keep in touch.
It was already dark when I got home, but I think I actually like it this way: it is cooler :) Having said that, I find that it was really only Monday that was intolerable for me as far as the temperature goes. I am now not sure anymore that it was really that hot on Monday. Perhaps it was only me who was hassled with/by poor maps, bad signposting, getting lost, bureaucracy, etc. and getting in and out of buildings too many times. I am now wearing long trousers and lose fitting but long sleeved shirts to go to school, and I am fine, thank you very much!
Tomorrow I am going on an evening tour organized for international students and will be back late. On Saturday I am going on another tour, also organized for international students. So no post tomorrow. But do expect a post about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow soon!
