...and Landing

The second part of the big journey was kind of smooth. Our plane departed from Doha about an hour late, because the packers were too busy pulling wheelies with their luggage caddies to actually load the baggage onto the plane.
And it turns out I was lucky with my seat again! This time, right in front of an emergency exit. Not only does it provide a quick escape in case of an emergency - it also means loads of legspace!

I was really looking forward to the sunrise, but the crew ordered everyone to close their blinds at the time, so that people would be able to sleep... wimps.
Watched another movie, and then slept. Oh, the guy who sat next to me, Thomas from Paris, is also coming here to study at NUS. As were 3 other people - Gero I mentioned before, another German guy, and that French girl. They all got picked up at the airport and had rooms on campus... unfair! As you may or may not know, all 4 of us Göttingers didn't get one, and are now staying in a hostel for the first week, until we've found a proper room somewhere.
Anyways, I seized the opportunity of having someone else's meet & greet-personnel at hand and tried to make them help me get to my hostel. Our plane was almost 1.5 hours late, and the immigration queue was huuuuge, so when we finally got out of the airport, it was too late to get to campus for registration and check-in, so that's due for tomorrow, then! I grabbed a cab, and it came with a very chatty driver, with a very heavy singapore slang, who also managed to miss the street and drive me around the whole block once. But he gave me 2S$ for it, my very first Singapore note!

So then I checked in. The hostel is very nice, and they have wireless :) I ran into the other guys shortly after, and we took the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit from Chinatown, where the hostel is located, to Little India, to grab something to eat there. They have these RFID chip cards for the subway, where you always get billed the exact fee for the number of stations you passed through, at the cost of potentially complete remote surveillance.
On our way to a very nice vegetarian restaurant, we passed through what seemed like a food mall, with lots of little food outlets and very aggressive, personally targeted marketing. I must have looked very hungry, they kept trying to sell me something. :-/





It smells funny everywhere here, lots of strange and foreign tastes in the air. And there are sooo many little shops everywhere! In one alley I went through on my hunt for an ATM, there seemed to have been shops - small, private ones, nothing big - up to the second floor... I found that kind of impressive.

Now they're singing Karaoke outside the window of our four-bed dorm, weird songs. I think I'm gonna put on my headphones and catch some well deserved sleep.