Food

So far, so disappointing...

Here's where I've eaten:

By SUTD:
Block 34 Coffee Shop

Chinese Veggie and Meat and Rice Combo place has pretty bad food. I couldn't finish the tofu, mushrooms and rice I was given. The tofu was dry-ish, and the sauces were just soy sauce, I think. Avg cost is about $4 SGD or $3 USD

The BBQ Food is OK. It's like your average American Chinese take out. I had the sweet and sour chicken, but the sweet and sour sauce was a tomatoey BBQ sauce. It had good pieces of veggies and some pieces of the center region of a pineapple. You know, the harder pieces. 

Avg cost is about $5 SGD or $4 USD

One-North/Fusionopolis

I ordered the Beef Mian noodles and broth at the Noodles vendor in the cafeteria. The beef was good, maybe a little overcooked. The broth seemed homemade beef broth, which is good. I guess they cook the beef in the broth. The noodles were just like wonton noodles in wonton soup. So they were soggy-ish and had a strange wonton flavor that I hadn't expected. The veggies were good. Probably a top meal. Avg cost is about $6 SGD or $5 USD

On Campus

Breadyard is the most common eatery for the visiting fellows, I would estimate. They sell sandwiches, beef, chicken, tuna, etc. Very American diet friendly. They also have breakfast all day. Breakfast consists of combinations of eggs, toast and kaya butter. I've had the scrambled eggs on toast, the tuna and egg sandwich and the roast beef sandwich. The olive bread is delicious, the sandwiches are delicious; the roast beef had some local flavor to it. There is also soup (mushroom soup was good) and potatos for the sides. The iced tea is sweet, but better than US sweetened tea. 

Avg cost is about $7 SGD or $5.50 USD

The Cafeteria also has good food, a selection of red bean, chicken, pork, veggie and other bau is available. I've only had the Asian Delights option of pad thai. It tasted no different than American pad thai. It had a variety of fish in it and some tofu.

Avg cost is about $4 SGD or $3 USD

Downtown area:

Orchard Rd

My roommate and I ended up at JiBiru Craft Beer and Yakitori Bar after exploring the mall. We were starving, and disappointed to find that the kebabs of food were TINY. I paid $9 SGD for 8 bites of steak ($7 USD). The vegetable tempura was $11 SGD ($8.61 USD), and the grape tomatoes wrapped in bacon were around $5 SGD. Beer was expensive, but they had a good selection. It is mostly a beer and appetizers place.

Marina Bay

Marina Bay has a cafeteria area. I went to the Chicken Rice stand and got some tasty roasted chicken on chicken rice. I want to say it was $5 SGD. We also got banana tempura for $4 SGD at the Glutton stand. The banana tempura was in kaya butter, and delicious.

http://www.thekitchn.com/august-6-roundup-from-nationwi-92211

Some definitions:

Kaya - a coconut jam of coconut milk, eggs, sugar and pandan leaf. It's like a caramelized reduction. 

Kaya Toast - toast with Kaya and butter that people eat for breakfast.

Cost of Living in Singapore

I really have no idea what a common room or master room in Singapore should cost. It seems like a lot of places use tenants to make some money or get really cheap rent. I found this blog with a very nice breakdown of what things cost around here: http://joeyandmae.com/2013/03/01/cost-of-living-in-singapore-2013/  The entry also taught me that the food areas in the HDBs are called "hawkers." I have yet to enjoy the food in Singapore. I find the hawker food to be similar to poor quality Chinese food in the U.S.  I think I would like to live where the hawker food is best.

The only thing this entry leaves out is where the most affordable groceries are! Cold storage in One North station, by SUTD, is not affordable.

Some housing definitions:

COMMON ROOM: a bedroom in an apartment without attached bathroom.

HDB: housing and development board, gov't housing, each building is listed as a block and number

A floorplan of an HDB 

Opposites

DAY ONE

Friday was my first day in Singapore. I arrived Thursday night, and I checked into the Crowne Plaza Hotel at about 230USD a night. That hotel charges an arm and a leg for everything, use of the business center (15SGD for a few minutes or an hour or something), wifi (33SGD per 24h), and the breakfast buffet (33SGD). I enjoyed a nice bath (included in the room) and pancakes (16SGD) and fresh squeezed juice (10SGD) in the morning. All were excellent, though I struggled to figure out how to get hot water. Btw, the exchange rate, today, is about 0.78 SGD to 1.00 USD. So take 20% off to find the USD price.

Marina Bay Sand light show at night.

I left the hotel around 9am. I took a cab to SUTD for 26SGD. There is no tipping in Singapore, which is nice, but doesn't make for the best restaurant service, outside of fancy hotels. My cab driver was great. We passed by the Marina Bay Sands hotel/casino shown in the photo. The three towers are connected by rooftop area where tourists can go. It also has an infinity pool for guests. My driver was also a PADI scuba instructor, and he said I would make lots of friends on the liveaboard trips.

At SUTD, I had a confusing arrangement. I was able to check into the hostel by visiting the manager in the visitor center, right at the SUTD entrance, but I needed to get an access card ASAP so I could be programmed for entry on my own. Also my room is on the 5th floor, and the elevator is a skip stop. So I had help with my 120 lbs of luggage, moving from the 6th floor to the 5th. I also happened to be the last one moving into the room, so I got the top bunk of the three beds. Each single is a narrow room (by US standards) with a bunk bed and a twin bed. There are three wardrobes and a couple shelves. There is also only one outlet, but I think my roommate acquired a surge protector with the multi-country plug outlet.

I immediately when to Human Resources, which is also by the entrance accessed through the President's office area. My contact there gave me thorough directions on where to go to get my medical exam for my employment pass, and he called another employee who came to meet me. She gave me my access card, showed me to my desk, and gave me a tour of the offices where my colleagues sit.

I then went back to the hostel to program my access card for the hostel (the hostel staff had lent me their card momentarily) and I set out to Clementi to get my medical. The medical office was closed from 1-2, so I went and purchased multi-country to UK plug adapters. I had only brought euro adapters, because I had recently been in Seoul and Munich. But Singapore is a UK remnant so the plugs are different.

Friday night, I went out with my italian roommate to Orchard road. This street is home to a giant mall, where I got some towels and a bowl from Muji. We walked along Orchard to see all the high end, Luis Vuitton, Hermes, etc. stores, and tried to eat nearby, but it was expensive for not much food. It was a sight to see, though, if you can stomach that much consumerism. :)

DAY TWO

Onto the theme of opposites: I almost got hit by a car on Saturday. Traffic runs opposite, thanks to the British, so I was looking the wrong way when crossing the street. The buses are therefore on the opposite side of the street than what I'm used to, and people stand on the opposite side of the elevator and walk on the opposite side of the hallway. 

Also opposites, on Saturday I purchased an umbrella for the sun. Umbrellas are generally useless for the rain here, but very useful for the sun. Torrential downpours still soak half of your body. But the sun can be shielded from your face.

Saturday, otherwise, was good. I woke up at 7am, as the sun was rising, and called a number of housing leads. I scheduled visits for Thursday, Sunday, and Saturday. Then I headed to my first visit in Clementi. I almost said yes to this first place. Even though it was 650SGD + 50SGD for utilities to share a small room where I would have just a twin bed, a small cloths rack and set of half-size plastic drawers, the roommates were very nice. They were from all over, traveled together, cooked together, had movie nights, and practiced Mandarin together. It would have been amazing, but I would have had to pay more than the SUTD hostel (550SGD), commute, and live with less space.

I went to Chinatown from Clementi and shopped. I picked up plastic hangers, clothes clips, and some Neckermann sandals to replace the identical Birkenstocks that have broken. These sandals were only 29SGD, and I don't mind the brand change. I may buy more before I leave the country.

I also enjoyed some fresh dragon fruit and banana smoothie and egg custard while I was out. I then had lunch at an HDB near the hostel. The food was terrible, but 2.50 SGD. There was a funny Chinese (?) show on the tv with lots of visual humor.

I'm getting tired of writing, but at night we went downtown to the night festival, which is August 23-24 and 30-13. There are lots of light shows, but we couldn't find the food in the Hawker Food Alley, just the art. So we went to Marina Bay and got some food. There were lots of good food stalls, and I got roasted chicken rice (3.50SGD) for dinner and banana tempura (3.50SGD) for dessert. It took such a long time to find food that I went home at 10:30 instead of going back to the light show areas, though we did see some flying light kites across the bay.

Other odds and ends...

I'm using this blog as a skeleton to help put together a tip sheet for next year's fellows. So, I want to make sure I get everything written down that I had to do before coming.

I had forgotten to mention that MIT has International SOS. And, if you have your MIT certificate, you can go to the private MIT SOS portal and scroll to the bottom of the page. There will be an image of an insurance card, click the print card button to load the PDF. I had an issue with the web browser ADOBE where the card number would not display, so I downloaded the pdf to store and print out.

ISOS also has an emergency information  and vaccination record storage option that should be good, but I had some problems entering information.

MIT employees are covered by International SOS (ISOS) for emergency assistance while traveling abroad for both work-related and non-work-related trips. Students and MIT employees traveling abroad are encouraged to register with ISOS prior to departure.
MIT’s ISOS program does not cover medical expenses. For information about health insurance coverage in the case of a medical emergency while traveling, consult your health plan. Whatever your coverage, do not hesitate to seek medical care if you become ill while traveling.- Travel Clinic

I got my Singapore phone number on Friday. SingTel prepaid cards are available in some SingTel shops, but not all. Mostly you can just pick one up at the 7-Eleven, pop it into your unlocked phone, and start using it. I put the SingTel Hi! card ($15 for $18 of credit) into my dad's old G2 phone. I then just turned off the data network. While I'm on WiFi, I can use WhatsApp to message people like a text message. I can also use WiFi to download maps to use with my GPS and city guides on trip advisor. I can get monthly plans after I get an employment pass, but I may just stick with the prepaid plan. Phone calls will probably only be used for meeting people.

I think WhatsApp is kind of a silly service. It's just another internet messaging service. The only difference is that it's tied to your phone number. So, it finds your contacts by searching for their phone numbers in it's registry. To activate WhatsApp, you need to have a phone number that receives texts or calls. I gave WhatsApp my GoogleVoice number. Then, Google emailed me the text message with my registration code. It can also call your google voice and leave a voicemail with the code if you have trouble with the texting option.

I still have GoogleVoice connected to my old mobile service. I don't know if that's bad or not. I simply turned off Call Forwarding and turned on "Do Not Disturb" mode.

For GoogleMaps, you can view a map on the Wifi, and then in the menu or some other options (it's different in different versions) you can "Make Map Available Offline." The maps are about 1 or 2 MB depending on the size. I then use this offline map and my phone's GPS to locate myself when I'm out and about.

I highly recommend nice family of offline appa: the TripAdvisor Offline City Guides. You download each city that you want. It stores Trip Advisor entries for attractions, shops, restaurants, itinieraries, and other items on your phone. You can access them offline, and even bring up maps and have TripAdvisor use your GPS to guide you to the selected location. It was helpful for me to find the borders of Chinatown, yesterday.

In Seoul Incheon Airport...

Aloe fruit punch and black rice cake at the Tteok Museum
which did not sell postcards

I'm on my way to Singapore. I arranged my trip to follow a conference in Seoul. Seoul is a beautiful city with lots of beautiful greenery and architecture. Everything seemed clean, safe, and affordable. Also, I really love rice cakes. I'm having rice cakes and tea in the airport right now. Sorry everyone, no postcards from Seoul. I didn't have time to go to museums and gift shops. :(

I needed my copy of my temporary approval letter for the Singapore training employment pass to check in and get my baggage checked. But it wasn't a very elaborate process. I realize, just now, that I forgot to change my address on my bags from the hotel in Seoul to a Singapore address. Luckily, I did leave my contact info and business card in there. So, hopefully, those will be found should my luggage get lost.

I arrive in Seoul at around midnight Singapore time, and I'll check into the Changi airport hotel to sleep. Taxis are more expensive late at night, and I don't need to take a cab ride downtown late. Friday morning, I'll move to the SUTD student hostel (dorms.) I don't know what I'm going to do with my baggage, since I can't (don't want to) lug 120 pounds of luggage around SUTD in hot humid temperatures. But... maybe I'll just suck it up and do it. :( I don't want to take cabs back and forth between the airport and the other side of Singapore.

The first order of business after I check into the hostel is to get a phone plan and SIM card. I'll then put that into my dad's old G2 and unlock it with the code TMobile sent.

The second order of business is to visit rooms for rent. I have a couple places lined up through easyroommate.sg, but I may also hire an agent.