It's 7am. The sun is starting to peep through the apartment buildings that were glistening with lights across the park just a few hours ago. You wake up two hours earlier than expected and pull down the blinds to go back to sleeping blissfully in the dark. However, being on the 15th floor of UTown Residence Hall and having nothing but a single fan and the fresh air from opening windows to keep cool, the environment around you quickly starts heating up. Your room starts becoming stuffy and suffocating and you wish you lived just a few floors below to enjoy the luxury of having an air-conditioner in your room.
Finally, at 9:15am you roll yourself out of bed and brush your teeth. The face cleanser slightly stings your eyes as you frantically try to splash water on your face using the metering push faucet. The residence hall maintenance staff had replaced the traditional double handle faucet for this more environmentally friendly faucet within the first month of your exchange. This has proved to be the most frustrating part of your dorm experience. While Fine Foods across the dorm serves Kaya toast and coffee, you are accustomed to eating cereal for breakfast. So, you grab the overpriced milk container you bought from Fair Price and pour yourself a bowl of Snowies, the local generic brand of Frosted Flakes. Sighing as you sift through the colorful shirts and pants you brought from home, you inevitably change into the pair of Thai pants you bought in Bangkok and a cotton shirt. In constant 90 degree weather, the key is lightness and comfort, not fashion. Today you have two classes: a lab for your biology class and your philosophy class on environmental ethics.
The lab starts at 10am so you sprint as the D2 bus approaches the UTown bus stop. During lab, you and the local classmates in your group review types of data collection methods for your semester project. You and your group mates joke about the monkey videos shown during class and you learn more of the Singaporean lingo. Next, you restlessly wait around for the A1 bus to arrive as your philosophy class starts 20 minutes after your lab ends. A gust of freezing air greets you as you enter the classroom and learn about Islamic environmental ethics. After finishing class at 3:30pm, you talk about the quirky professor with an exchange friend and local friend. Your local friend is deciding where to study for the summer. Why not choose Boston or D.C! However, you weren't able to convince him in time as he has decided to study at the University of Hawaii for the summer.
What will you be having for lunch today? Pad Thai from the Yusof Ishak House, the campus student center? Or maybe just a chocolate waffle? Why not both.
After a long day of attending classes, you certainly deserve a nap. Two hours later, you decide to clear your head by going on a run in the gym. It's still too hot to run outside. The friendly lady at the front desk smiles and greets you using your first name as she taps you into the gym. Unfortunately, its peak gym time and the treadmills are all unavailable at the time being. You work on the mats in the corner and finally start your run.
Sweaty and red, you hop into the standing shower back in your room and then message your friends about dinner. Fine Foods is bustling with people as they order cuisine from the Xiao Long Bao, Thai, Chicken Rice, Minced Meat, Korean stalls and more. Walking, almost instinctively, towards the Korean stall, you order the dish you eat at least four times a week: Kimchi Shin Ramen for SGD$4.30. Everyone rushes to find a free table that isn't already marked with a packet of tissues, denoting that it is being saved for someone else. During dinner, you discuss plans with friends for grabbing dinner somewhere outside campus for the next day. At some point, you tease your British friend about the United States being the best nation in the world (you know this is true though). The discussion then shifts to the internships that the University of Waterloo kids are doing over the summer. Which tech company are they interning at for their co-op? How will they possibly find reasonable accommodation for the summer? The hourly salary of USD$50 that Snapchat, Yelp, Amazon, etc. is certainly not enough to sustain them. Rolling your eyes at the "woes" of the computer science kids, you turn to talk to other friends at the table about plans for traveling. The social media posts of traveling on study abroad trips before arriving at NUS were certainly deceiving. It takes so much more effort, time, money, and preparation to go on trips to other countries. You can't complain much though, the trips are always worth it.
After 9:30pm the staff at Fine Foods subtly hints that it's time for you and your friends to leave. It's time to move on to the less exciting part of the day: studying. The Education Resource Center next to your dorm is the Gelman of NUS. Even though there is a soft, cool breeze on the outdoor portion of the first floor, you walk by friends sitting outside in hopes of finding a chair in the lovely air-conditioned space that is Starbucks. Sometimes you indulge in a tall medium roast coffee at SGD$3.40, or brew coffee as they like to call it here. Unfortunately, luck is against you and Starbucks is packed with local and exchange students chugging coffee as they furiously type away. So you climb up the two flights of stairs to Mac Commons. As the name suggests, Mac Commons is filled with Mac computers and printers. Today isn't your lucky day; Mac Commons is also jam packed. Onto the third floor. The third floor resembles that of the third floor of Gelman: neat rows of cubicles with students either focused on their work or napping on the desks. Finally, a cubicle opens up and you begin that paper on the "Theory and Application of Christian and Islamic Environmental Ethics".
Two hours and a 5 page outline later, you shut your laptop for the night and head over to a friends room to play board games like Mafia, Coup, Secret Hitler, and more. Before playing, you call your family and talk to them about their day and errands that need to be done back at home such as finding housing for senior year. After winning one round and losing another round of Secret Hitler, someone suggests watching a movie. It's only a Monday but why not go for a fourth round of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds?
It's 1:30am. Shoot; you have a tutorial session tomorrow for your Economic Dimensions of Singapore class at 10am. You tell yourself it’s okay because you're on study abroad. Tomorrow will be a fresh new day and you will certainly be more productive! As you look out your window and observe the glistening lights from the apartments across the park, your eyelids become droopy and you can't help but smile in anticipation for tomorrow's sunrise at 7am.