One of my nightmares came true

Since last year, two of my worst insect/arachnid ‘nightmares’ have come true. The first one is obviously about spiders. Everyone has seen those creepy little things hanging in the middle of a cobweb before, right? If you were lucky enough, you might even walk into one =) So I wondered, is there a cobweb-spider big enough that its web will be capable of trapping little birds? If so, would the spider eat it? Being the curious nosy person I am, I did a google research and……found this:

Please don’t look at it if you are hypersensitive to…bad pictures: http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/45089/original.jpg

If that’s not a nightmare coming true I don’t know what it is! I’d throw a uranium bomb if I see one of those near me!

Anyway, moving on. Today I was chatting with a friend on the first floor of my residence. After a few moments I felt both of my legs tingling with pain and itch everywhere. Annoyed, I looked down, expecting a mosquito or two, and saw, instead, about 20 black ants crawling everywhere on my calves! Instinctively I looked around to find the source, and there–right at where I stood–was the biggest and densest pool of black ants I’ve ever seen! Needless to say, I spent the next few minutes running around the hall stomping, jumping, stomping, spinning and screaming. It was so hard to get all the ants off my body!! Luckily (luckily?), I can definitely tell if there’s ants left on my body because they weren’t just crawling, they were biting me! Eventually I got rid of all of them and was sweating cold fear all over me. Why would ants crawl onto humans and bite? Could this be some kind of tropical human-eating ants I read in horror novels before? God, am I glad to be NOT living on the first floor…

So that’s my second insect/arachnid nightmare coming true. Please don’t give me any more of these.

UW’s such a rip off

I forgot to get my WEEF money and now the deadline has passed…^&*!^$%!@%

Let’s see if I can get my co-op money back…

TKD today!

I started taekwondo today! it’s so tough and i can’t seem to get my kicks right…it’s totally________. _______________________________________________________________________[deleted for good reasons :S]

GIANT MOTH in Singapore!!!

EEEEE

ARGGHH

Dead giant moth in giant spiderweb

It's so big, it might as well be a bat..

Biking tomorrow…:S

Do you know anyone who’s 21 and still don’t know how to bike very well? Maybe you don’t…but I do. That person is ME. Thanks to Kai, I had about 5 minutes success riding a bike in Vancouver, but people and cars absolutely freak me out.

My little exchange group of friends are drifting away from me since I didn’t participate in most of their past activities, including clubbing, going to little India/Chinatown, shopping….Therefore, I’m determined to make up for it tomorrow! After all, I do enjoy hanging out with them and value good memories… But why, why must it be a biking trip?!

Well I’ve already said I’d go…so I’m going to be a person of my word and….go. It’d be sooooo lame and embarrassing if I can’t even ride a bike, right?! And how am I going to get better if I don’t practice? Yeah, that’s right…I will go! =S

I even did some homework and this is the best thing I found: http://www.wikihow.com/Ride-a-Bicycle

Good luck to me tomorrow — I really want to go home in one piece.

The transition entry

Okay I wanna update this blog in real time, but there’s so much that happened in the past which I did not record, so here is the transition entry! In summary, I adjusted to Singapore life quite fast, thanks to a very sweet and helpful Chinese Singaporean named Lu (photo to be added later).  Here’s the briefest summary of my ‘adventure’:

- Jan 7 8:30am: After NOT sleeping for the whole night I ran to residence office as soon as it opened…with puffy eyes and messy hair, I complained about how there’s a million ants and so much noise in my room. They agreed to change me to a quieter room next to the tennis court, where I can spy on handsome guys playing tennis…ugh, I mean, I can finally sleep now! This is where I met Lu as well – the unfortunate girl was just passing by the office to say Happy New Year (at the same time I was sobbing in the office) and somehow became responsible for guiding me around the campus.

My residence in daylight is a botanical garden (and thus an insect heaven)

My high-class 5-star hotel room

- Jan 8 xx:xxam: Orientation! The guy giving the presentation was really funny..joked about how the cure for lovesickness is to find a replacement…and a lot of other inappropriate jokes about condoms and stuff -_-. After that was the exchange student lunch where everyone sort of ate in an open room with no table nor chairs. I walked around and tried to talk to people…which was very intimidating…thankfully, the people here are all super friendly, and I can feel comfortable around them and make friends in no time! We all wanna have a good time

Chilling with exchange students

Went to City Hall....so random

- Jan 9 xx:xxpm: Decided to do mass shopping! I brought very few summer clothes with me and most of them have those faded, ragged look due to being old. Bought lots of clothes The fashion here suits my taste because the style is very cute and colourful. It’s slightly cheaper than Canada as well….speaking of cheaper, food is definitely cheaper on campus here (opposite of UW where food is MORE expensive on campus coz students have no choice anyway). I usually spend around $2.5~$3 SD per meal, which is equivalent to $1.7~$2 CAD per meal with tax. The rent of on-campus residence is only $155/month ($117CAD/month). What a pleasant surprise since I did zero research before coming here. Here’s me in some new clothes:

My tropical look

There’s more but I’m tired of writing…and this post is way too long. So stay tuned and see you next time =D

The much delayed posts about my past thoughts…

Jan 5th must be one of the saddest days of my life. I have to say goodbye to my boyfriend (yes I love him very very much) at the airport, and endure roughly 20 hours of flight. I was so depressed that I didn’t eat anything on the aircraft, which is indeed a manifestation of how depressed I really was…because I never…NEVER pass on free food. To make things worse, the first flight was delayed as well. I was so stressed out when I arrived in HK because my name was announced and I was on the verge of missing the flight. Thankfully it was okay… After another 6 hours or so I finally arrived in Singapore…at 12am midnight.

NTU was nice enough to send someone to pick me up. Wait, not just me, but two other exchange students as well. As a result we waited in the airport until 1:30am and finally picked up two cheerful looking girls – Sylvi and Fernanda. I figured the residence probably didn’t have adapters ready for me so I bought an adapter at the airport (at $25.99…). Fernanda did the same. We talked a lot on our way back and exclaimed at every little thing- buildings, trees….they are all so different from Canada! Most importantly the temperature was HOT and the air was humid…I suspected I didn’t bring enough summer clothes.

I thanked myself profusely for my wisdom of foreseeing this situation — the adapter bought at the airport was so very essential for making my first night more endurable. Why was the first night so difficult? Well, my student ‘buddy’ picked me up after the bus ride and gave me the keys. My room was on the 4th floor and there’s no elevator. She’s a petite Asian girl -_-. So anyway, after much struggling and panting and heaving, it took us 20 minutes to get my luggage upstairs.

My residence

Lizards!

First thing I noticed: 3 tiny lizards and a hand-sized moth outside my room! Second thing I noticed: no bed sheet or pillow was given and I didn’t bring any. Third thing I noticed: I need an internet cable. My roommate was not there that night, but her furniture and stuff was definitely ‘there’. In fact, her stuff took up 70% of the room space…Well, sleeping was definitely not an option now, so I tried to get on wireless internet. To make long story short, I had to go to 1st floor lounge to get wireless internet and I cried while skyping my boyfriend, Ms Cindy Howe (-_-), mom, and ‘tiger’. I absolutely wanted to go back to Canada.

After I got tired from crying, I decided to take a shower and try to sleep. How lovely………. the water was cold all the way through.

In summary, a very sad and uncomfortable night indeed. I didn’t sleep at all.

The TV lounge where I skyped and cried for 3 hours

No one's awake..I can only talk to the cats here

Cindy told me it’s definitely okay if I decided to go back to Waterloo……at that moment, I pictured the dull campus of UW, the same classrooms and same people I’ve seen for 3.5 years, and I LOVED it. That’s how much I wanted to go back. I also wanted to see Kai again…that would make me very happy indeed. Will I go back? What’s the right thing to do?!