Week 4 – (Hardly) Local Living
Meeting up with locals is difficult. Not only that I’m physically far from downtown, it’s also not normal to start up random conversations with strangers unlike in the United States. I did hang out with locals, but it took a bit of extra effort in my part. I used meetup.com to find small activities to do with locals, and I used the Singapore subreddit to find concerts and such.
I played board games in a local coffee shop, and I went to a bowling and billiards club to play a bit of pool. I wasn’t particularly good at either of these, but it was still enjoyable. There were a couple free concerts at the floating platform; it was enjoyable, but hip-hop/rap isn’t too popular in Singapore so it didn’t fit my tastes completely.
Managing my budget was surprisingly easy, with meals costing at S$6 maximum, I always had leftover cash once I came back to my dorm. I’m quite the thrifty traveler, so I often went with the cheap (but good!) noodles often. I eventually stopped worrying about my expenses midway through the term, and even then I had to go to a money changer because I had too many Singapore dollars!
I believe a major player in “saving that money” was that I didn’t buy groceries nor did I go out to the bar. Alcohol that would normally cost a few US dollars costs eight dollars in Singapore! I was never a fan of the bar life around here, so this didn’t affect me at all.
