The Grass Is Not Always Greener on the Other Side

It is the week of registration in the university and we have to attend quite a number of induction lectures regarding the use of the library, lab safety, IchemE talk, blar blar blar... We also need to register for our modules which we faced tremendous problems. One of the module, biotechnology, which I'm supposed to take is now offered in sem 2. They just decided to change it to sem 2 recently and until now they haven't updated the module website, which states it's offered in sem 1 (now you can imagine how efficient is their adminstration). Eventually, we spoke to the lecturer who allows us to do a self study on the module and she will set a final paper just for me and Yusen. There were also lots of timetable clashes but Ming managed to sort it out for us (thank God). Now, we are taking modules from year 2 to year 4.

We had been in England for almost a week and the conversion of pounds to sing dollars really hits us hard. The cheapest lunch you can is to grab a sandwhich in Greggs which costs ard 1.75 pds, which is equivalent to 5.25 sing dollars (amazing izzit??). We got sick of eating costly sandwiches which is not really that spectacular. So, we decided to get our own bread, ham and cheese to make our own sandwiches for lunch. In fact, it is very common for foreign students to pack their own lunch.

Washing clothes in England is also very expensive. Unlike in Raffles Hall, we can use the washing machines as and when we want because they are free. Over here, using the washing machine each time costs 1.60 pds while the dryer costs 20p. It's really really expensive to wash clothes here so we decided to wash once every week (no more than that). We also came up with our own way to dry our clothes without the dryer, i.e to hang them in front of the heater.

The English people are generally very friendly but they tend to drink alot and go clubbing almost every night. So, it's very common to see a drunkard struggling to walk in a straight line along the streets at 1, 2 am. However, the thing that amazes me is that they are still able to wake up early the next morning to go to work or school and not suffer from hang-overs.