long night, lazy dayy

yesterday marked what i consider to be the official beginning of the academic festivities on campus. all the exchange students had to go to a registration session where they basically just made sure you werent retarded and could read the instructions on the packet they sent to everyone...good to know they trust us so much. on top of this, tomorrow theres an orientation session where they'll tell us god knows what..hopefully it'll be useful, because its at 10AM...not a friendly time, i'd say.

during the three hour wait until our number was up, me and bieu decided to roam campus a little bit...and its beautiful. theres greenery everywhere! beautiful trees and grass all over the place...easily more green than uconn, which is interesting because uconn's on a farm. the student center there is also quite nice...they've got a food court with a lot of asian food, naturally, and then a subway...great placement, though it does seem to get a lot of business lol. inside, they have another couple sit down restaurants, including a bar on the top floor. this place is getting better and better as time goes on! the buildings all look so new and modern, and the insides are pristine...i gotta give it to these people, they know how to make people comfortable. the sports and recreation center is less than stellar, but then again, the singaporeans arent really known to be world class athletes either lol. its certainly adequate, and the nice thing is that part of the "recreation" is a spanish sports bar -- "Hermanos" -- where i'll end up time and again during the semester, im sure.


then, at night,we decided to go out on the town for a little bit...meeting people was so easy! a lot of people, we met at registration and about 15 of us or so decided to go to a place down by the river called Clark Quey, basically just a center with lots of restaurants, bars, and clubs. wednesday nights are "ladies night" all over singapore where girls get in and drink free almost EVERYWHERE...and theres a min $20 cover for guys along with $14 pints. damn pricey, if you ask me. the girls decided to go off elsewhere, but me and a few other guys decided to find a bar and play some pool for a little while, which was preferable for me. later we joined up and roamed around for a while, then headed home. it was good to just experience what it was like, and im sure that we'll be out again soon...next week, i'll be out with the "natives" hopefully, and they'll actually be able to show me around, which'd be nice.


you've never seen rain unless you've seen it rain here. living in new england our whole lives, we've all seen downpours, but this is about as crazy as they come here. it took literally 30 seconds for it to go from on rain at all to rain falling so hard, the huge raindrops might hurt if you went outside. and the thunder? as loud as a sonic boom, resonating through my entire body--it was frighteningly loud. now it makes sense why they have gutters and little ruts running all over campus--just in case it rains (which it does quite often these times of year). at the bottom of the hill behind my building, they have a drainage trench collect all the rainwater and send it away, and it was like a grand rapid in the heat of the downpour.

in conclusion, i found this above the door on a bus, censored for your viewing pleasure. enjoy.