Day 3 - Rainy Day

Day 3 - Jan 6, 2011

Singapore in January is filled with rain. Today I got drenched in rain trying to find the registrar's office...good thing I had a change of clothes and the inside of my bag stayed dry. Singapore has a very prominent drainage system with little gutters on the side of every path to help remove the rain water. NUS is no exception and during the heavy rain, the drainage system is put hard at work, looking like a waterfall:
Unfortunately I was drenched in rain because I got off the internal campus shuttle 2 stops too early and had to go through a maze of buildings to find the registrar's office. Here's some of the science buildings:
After finally arriving at the registrar's office, I was lucky enough to pick up my IPA letter since I technically arrived 15 minutes after their office hours. Then I proceeded to Yussof Ishak House which is like the SLC(student life center) of Waterloo. Here there was a exchange student welcome party. After picking up some freebies and talking to a bunch of people, I met Yahya. Another classmate has arrived! During this time, Tom found a giant snail which I also captured on camera:
There's no ruler in the picture for reference, but the bricks might be a good indicator. The snail shell is around 2 inches by 3 inches in size.


During the evening, Yahya, Irfan, Tom and I decided we wanted to eat some good food so we made plans to go to Harborfront MRT station and find food. Harborfront is the end station of the purple line and we figured there's probably food there. However, while on the bus we passed by multiple stretches of restaurants and due to hunger and impulse, we jumped off the bus while still very far from Harborfront. After looking at some of the restaurants, we were unable to find suitable dining and started walking toward the previous restaurants. Coming upon a sketchy food center, we decided to try and find food. This food center's sign only had the food and 'c' lit up in the dark. Upon arriving we found a food court-like establishment where all the owners would try and entice us to buy food from their stall. In the end we settled for 10 satay skewers of chicken, beef and mutton. We decided to quickly leave the area since we had neglected to eat from so many of the stalls. On the way out, Irfan and Yahya saw some cats in one stall which spooked them out...thus the food center is now known as the cat place.

The skewers warded off our hunger for a while and we decided to head back to campus. On the outside edge of campus, we saw Blooie's - a bar and restaurant with a Canadian owner. Here we decided to get our good food for the night. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera so no pictures but the food wasn't special. I had a caesar salad with grilled cajun chicken while everyone else had burgers and/or fish+chips. A bit expensive, but at least we all had a good meal!