5 Cs

The 5 Cs of Singapore!

"Nearly one in every six households has more than $1 million in assets, making it the densest population of wealthy households in the world."

Cash. Singapore Dollar. 1 SGD = 0.6 EURO. You need cash in this city. Often times you can't pay with debit card and it's essential in every day life. In Holland I don't use much cash, but here I find myself going to the machine quite often.

Car. Cars cost twice the amount as in Europe, because you have to pay an initial fee of around $50K to have the right to drive a car in Singapore. Import taxes are very high as well so a lot of Singaporeans choose not to drive. Then on the other end of the spectrum you have the people with too much money. I live in a area where I see Ferraris, Lambos, and other gorgeous cars drive by on a daily basis.

Credit Card. You earn the money, you spend it on the same day. It's very important to showcase a cushy lifestyle and enjoy life. A lot of people do fall into the credit card trap, even as early as in university (just like US loans) so I often wonder whether the "rich" have the actual money/liquidity or are buying everything on credit.

Condominium. Near Orchard Road, where all the gorgeous high buildings are, you need to pay around $5K a month and then you have a small condo, but one in a prestigious building! Most Singaporeans live in government-sponsored HDB flats which are the same size as condos, but half the price. Only as a Singaporean resident may you apply for such housing.

Country Club. Only after you have obtained the previous four status symbols, may you enter the fifth circle of wealth aka the country club with its exclusive privileges. My Swiss friend tried to convince me that the Swiss Country Club in Singapore owns the most land, but I haven't been able to verify this statement.


Not surprisingly...

"With this wealthy population comes a relatively high cost of living. In a 2010 cost-of-living survey of 214 cities by consulting firm Mercer, Singapore is the 11th most expensive city in the world for expatriates, on a par with Oslo and more expensive than New York City."

Nature

I went on a hike with Ivo in the Bukit Timah Reserve. This climb involved the highest mountain in Singapore; we started at 30 m above sea level and walked up to 163.63 m above sea level. It didn't feel like we were in Singapore anymore, but in a real forest.

Monkeys! About 3-4 m away from us a family of monkeys was jumping from tree to tree. One of them was carrying a baby monkey which was really cute. Though at one point they came a bit too close and I decided to continue walking b/c the prescribed distance between humans and monkeys is 2-3 m.

Gorgeous views.

Fishies

I did yet another activity from my bucket list; I went to a fish reflexology spa. Basically the fish are somehow (magically) attracted to your feet and eat the dead skin cells. Afterwards your feet are supposed to feel very soft and the best result is achieved after 3 hours.

It tickles!!!

Let's say 10 minutes in the fish spa was enough ;)

SMU

At the Singapore Management University (SMU) I am following 5 courses. Normally exchange students take 3 courses, regular students take 4, and only those who really need 5 will do 5.*

1. Shipping Business

This course is taught by a Captain, a shipbroker, and a shipping business professional. I am learning all about ships, what kind of cargo is traded, what routes the ships are able to travel, restrictions, and a huge load of information surrounding the subject. It is quite interesting and there is a big exam at the end of the course (worth 50%).

2. Enterprise Development

A Korean professor is teaching us all about how to create a business plan and become a successful entrepreneur. We study data and apply that to real world cases in order to learn more about all the things you have to consider when creating a new business. Thankfully there's no exam; instead, the grade depends on a big group project.

3. Singapore Society

This course is taught by a retired Chinese philosphy ex-NUS professor who is specialized in Chinese philosophy and sociology. He is quite old and talks very slowly. The course material is interesting, but I feel like it needs more in-depth analysis to fully keep us awake during class. He mostly lectures to us about philosophy (this is a sociology course) and can't really keep up with a discussion. It's funny, because he asks the Singaporeans quite a few questions, but those students are shy and he mostly ends up getting international views from the exchange students. I have no clue what to expect for the exam, because there's hardly any reading material and the course comes across as a bit vague.

4. Intercultural Communication

Probably this is my favourite course so far. It's a very interactive course that doesn't require too much class preparation. During every class, 2 students give a presentation regarding a communication/cultural difference topic and great discussions ensue. It feels like a safe place to share ideas and it's great to learn about different cultures. For some reason I'm learning a lot about Indian culture! Very intriguing. (Their prata and naan is amazing haha)

5. Introduction to Psychology

Reading. Reading. Reading. This class requires a lot of reading and I have to teach my teammates parts of the chapter (and they teach me a part in return) and at the end of each lesson there's a quiz. The workload is very big and I'm not only reading, but also writing reflections, creating presentations, and doing experiments (mandatory). The content is interesting and I haven't fallen asleep while reading the huge book...yet.



Most of my classmates are very nice. Every 1 out of 6 students is an exchange student so I'm surrounded by internationals, but also do group projects with local Singaporeans. They give me advice on where to eat, what to do, and what to avoid (also important!). In general, Singaporeans are really nice. In real life they come across as very focused and sometimes they almost run me over in the MRT, because they are in such a hurry to live their hectic lifestyle!



*At Tilburg University students get 7.5 ECTS for the same course I take, but I only get 5 ECTS. :(

Altitude 1

I went to the highest open air bar in Singapore the other day with my friend Sofie. It was absolutely gorgeous - it felt like we were in the sky. The bar was located on the 63rd floor and had good drinks, great seats, and a view of Singapore at night that I'll never forget.

View from our table of Esplanade and the Singapore flyer (this one is bigger than the London Eye!)

Singapore at night.

Marina Bay Sands hotel. Singaporeans are really proud of this building, actually.

Me enjoying a glass of Merlot.

Sofie and I sitting on top of the world!

Tioman Diving Trip Part II

In total we did 5 dives. We descended at this site (called Renggis) and saw Nemo fish, cuttle fish, large fish, a fish that changed colour, and ... a turtle!!

Saturday night after 3 dives we were very tired, but I made a beach walk to fully enjoy the sunset.

We stayed at the Berjaya resort and the food buffet was amazing. The room was nice and there were great dive sites all around the island.

In this picture I'm wearing a wetsuit as we were on our way to our next dive. I really enjoyed diving. Sadly, I had some problems equalizing (=unblocking your ears), because I had the flu and it really hurts your ears when you descend. Once you got to the ocean floor it was all right and you just had to make sure your knees didn't scrape corral and you kept finning in the right direction; aka keep your body horizontal and slowly fin forwards.

I was very impressed by the jungle. I have been to Bali before, but this was much wilder. This was an amazing trip and I got to know my buddy (Veronika) a lot better as well as all the other awesome people who dove to the depths of the ocean - up to 13 m below sea level!

Tioman Diving Trip Part I

This weekend I went on a diving trip to get my PADI open water diving license and the trip took us to... Malaysia! Tioman Island is situated to the East of mainland Malaysia and it took us a 3 hr car trip and 2 hr boat ride to get there. From the pictures you can see that it's a gorgeous place!

When we got to Malaysia, we had dinner on the side of the road at this stand. You had to choose sticks with food (ranging from chicken butt pieces to pig blood to green beans to fish to various other unidentifiable things) and then the owner of the food stand would fry or cook your chosen sticks.

Durian: the fruit that smells terrible, but is SUPPOSED to taste like heaven. I suppose it tastes almost as bad as it smells, but I've been told it's a fruit you have to get used to. The texture was very strange and no one in the group finished their piece...

Illegal DVDs were being sold on the side of the road.

The group consisted of mostly exchange students (from Norway, Czech, Spain, Japan, USA, Belgium, and Holland ofc!) and one doctor.

Malaysia is so pretty!









More to come in Part II! :)

National Day

On the 9th of August is Singapore's National Day which involves a lot of people coming to the city centre wearing red and white (the national colours) to watch parades, concerts, and fireworks!

Fireworks may only be alighted when it's done by government officials on public holidays.

We went to Marina Bay with a big group of people to enjoy the fireworks and later hang out on the bridge at Clarke Quay.

FOOD

First off, some "safe food" at the Soup Spoon.

At the supermarket I bought this sushi lunch for 2,50 EURO!

Thai Express was ok, but not as flavourful as I expected. Steer clear of chendola (jelly drinks).

Indian curry chicken prata; quite nice, but they often don't give a knife in the restaurant for you to cut the meat off of the bone. On my list: try mutton prata (prata is the bread pancake).

Today I ate this at the hawker centre; it's "2 veg 1 meat" with green beans, tofu, and sweet&sour chicken. It was quite yummy - a good lunch for 2 EUR.

In Singapore, I don't cook, because it's much more economically efficient to eat out. Some products here are very cheap while milk for instance costs a lot more and normal bread is nearly impossible to find, because they mostly sell white bread (like American Wonder Bread) that shouldn't even really fall under the category of bread.

At the McCafe they sell cheap coffee/frappes/lates and this delicious heated up cinnamon bun!

Yummy!!!

Kamer

My room!

Siloso Beach + City Tour

On Friday I went to Siloso Beach on Sentosa with some friends and it was gorgeous. The sand was white, there were places to sit and eat. The only thing was; it didn't quite feel like a normal beach, because about 500m into the water were huge freighter ships (by the 100s) blocking the view of the ocean. Sentosa island is in the middle of the port!

Yesterday I went on a city tour with other SMU students and we went to the Buddha Tooth Temple in Chinatown, Little India, Arab St. mosque, the water filter (Singapore water is recycled!), and went on a night safari in the Singapore zoo. There were no fences between us and the animals so it felt very much as if we were in the wild - especially since the zoo is located in a jungle. We also took a bus tour through the city and the bus functioned as a boat, too, so we drove into the water (that sounds funny) and took a boat tour as well.

The city is very pretty, clean, and uber modern!

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel is amazing - it has a great view over the city and I plan to get a room with some friends so that we can go to the pool located on the "ship" at the top.

This was at the water recycling center (Marina Barrage) where I got to know my fellow classmates and new exchange friends better. :)

We were supposed to go to Universal Studios today, but it was raining. However, the ticket is available for the next 5 months so I will certainly go on another day.

When it rains here, it rains a LOT! Thankfully umbrellas were invented.

Pictures!

These are some of the pictures from my first days in SG!

Singaporeans want to be white so they sell tons of whitening products. They also love creams, facials, and body lotion. Half the drugstore is filled with such products.

The Singaporeans love food. At the Soup Spoon they have wall decorations that are really fun and modern. Most restaurants are actually fun and modern!

Myself enjoying a "beauty from within" juicy drink @ Ion Orchard. They have all types of drinks; for pregnancy, PMS, slimming, skincare - quite funny.

The first picture of my room: this part is the living room that I will be sharing with 3 other girls.

First Days

During my first 24 hrs in Singapore I visited Ion Orchard and Clarke Quay.

Ion Orchard is the ultimate shopping mall. There are four floors with one floor dedicated to a huge food court. The mall opened in 2009 and features many familiar shops; Zara, Mango, Bershka, but also American stores such as bebe, 7 for All Mankind, Steve Madden. There is a huge M&S store with a special food section (if you crave some porridge or tea biscuits) and there are also some small boutiques that remind me of the Asian-themed stores in Camden Market, London.

At Ion Orchard, I was overwhelmed with choices. There were so many options! Perhaps too many?

One store was amazingly awesome; I had never seen anything like it. The name read “kikki k: Swedish design” and it featured stationary products that would make any organizational freak (ahum) drool. Link: www.kikki-k.com

Clarke Quay is a popular area filled with restaurants, outdoor dining/lounging, and a bustling nightlife. The scenery represents a colorful colonial lifestyle – perhaps representative of what I will be experiencing these next few months. It's a great place to have drinks and I think I'll be coming there quite often.

Last night I met other exchange students and a really nice guy (he was almost local) showed us where to go and we actually ended up at a comedy club. It was my first time experiencing stand-up comedy and the people on stage were actually pretty good! A lot of jokes about Chinese sizing , eating culture, and Singaporean habits were made.

Prime example: "Singaporeans eat more meals a day than that they walk up steps in one week." It just ain't fair how skinny some of them are! Why weren't those genetics passed on to us? :P

Flight

My journey started on Friday morning, the 29th of July, as I passed through customs and made my way to Starbucks. Always a good start – especially before a 12 hour long flight. I departed at 11:15 AM Dutch time on Friday and arrived in Singapore on Saturday morning 5:40 AM. After a quick taxi ride, I had arrived at the Park Regis where I would be staying for 2 nights. The only problem was that at 7 in the morning they didn’t have a clean room available so I had to wait. Luckily enough, my favorite coffee house (guess which one) was right around the corner and I was able to fully appreciate the awesomeness of a Kindle (reading about Becky Bloomwood).

Observations:

• Singaporeans love food. There are so many restaurant and coffee places EVERYWHERE! And most of them are close to the sidewalk, with huge windows, so that you always have a view of what’s going on outside.

• The weather is… hot. I may have mentioned this before, but it’s really true. In the morning it’s rather pleasant, but in the afternoon it’s like you’ve walked into a warm blanket. Note to self: relax and walk slowly (not the fast Dutch pace).

• There are all types of people here. Malay, Chinese, Indian, Mixed, Brits. It kind of makes me feel special, because I am part of a “minority” now. Most of the Caucasians are easily recognizable as either Brits or Aussies.

• The city is hectic with loads of people, but it still feels very serene and calm. Take it easy kind of vibe. Maybe I feel this, because currently I don’t yet have too many things to do and can experience Singapore fully.


P.s. I was looking out of the window of the plane and when we were flying through the night sky above northern Pakistan we witnessed a thunder storm. It lasted nearly half an hour and lighted up the sky with beautiful lightning strikes; created a bit of an ominous feeling, but very cool to witness.