I am in Singapore and I am alive! I was looking for a nice picture to illustrate this victory, preferably one with a derpy cat with two paws in the air, but all pictures I could find looked somewhat fake, so I am going to instead post this delightful picture I got from Mark recently:

Happy Bunny

I can certainly empathize with the bunny’s victory.

Life in the Singapore housing market goes fast. While still stumbling around like a baffled tourist (a state pretty familiar to me when I don’t have enough sleep), I got a call from an agent I had been communicating with for a room, which happened to be available. I went with the flow, and saw the room, after which the agent was so kind as to join me on the bus towards a phone shop (I hadn’t bought a simcard yet), giving me a good description of the neighbourhood and helping me find some important shops and giving me some handy tips on malls and the MRT.

I think everything would have gone far less smoothly if she hadn’t done that, so I am grateful.

I also got the valuable tip to perhaps visit Malacca in Malaysia at some point; it turns out to also have been a Dutch colony.

With a phone number arranged and a room in the cross-hairs, I then had to get a bank account. Sadly by then (after some sleeping) it was Sunday, and on Sunday, the banks are closed. The Singapore housing market goes fast, however, and this delay was not great for the room: a challenger appeared around the afternoon, and the agent worked tooth and nail to stop the room from being rented out to that challenger.

My hope was that with a bank account, I could pay the good-faith deposit conventional in the Singapore housing market more easily than using the worldwide transfers from the Rabobank, which I had never used before. (The good-faith deposit signifies the intent of the would-be-renter to rent the room, and is transformed into the security deposit after the renting contract is signed.) Sadly, it turns out that like so many things in Singapore, a residential address is needed for a bank account. So that was a wasted day; apologies to the agent.

Therefore, if you ever go to Singapore with an In-Principle-Approval letter for a job as a Research Fellow at the NUS:

  1. Get a prepaid simcard. This cannot be an e-Sim; I checked.
  2. Get a proof of ownership for your prepaid simcard.
  3. Get a residential apartment/room/house/registered cardboard box/etc.
  4. Get a bank account. This requires proof of residential address.

Future steps will still have to be added; my residential address will have to be communicated to the NUS, who will use that for transforming my IPA into a full Employee Pass. With this I can get a Singpass, which I can then use to put a subscription on my sim, and most importantly, to finally be able to check the balance of my public transport card via my phone. I cannot wait.

The public transport is worth every penny here; the MRT (metro/subway) is great, and the buses are also very good. The weather is heavy and damp, but I find that I don’t have as much trouble with it as I expected. I truly am a warmth-enjoyer. I did get a bit of a cold from the air-conditioning, but I will get used to that in time.

This did not stop me meeting up with Erfan, a friend of Nazanin who I had contact with before coming here, and the both of us and Erfan’s dog Bo having a pretty great walk from the shore through the NUS.

I am currently waiting for a contract for renting the room; I hope that will all work out. Jetlag hit me hard tonight; I shocked awake at 2 AM and couldn’t properly sleep after, so I am taking it easy otherwise today. I thought I had avoided jetlag. Jetlag seems to have had other plans.

There is also a high likelihood of me going to the new Spider-Man on Thursday; before that I will probably rewatch Spider-Man No Way Home, as I had a good conversation with Daniel recently that led me to consider giving that one another shot (I didn’t like the amount of nostalgia in it when I first saw it).

And now I shall get back to waiting, probably eating something, and watching a movie. The landlord of the room is now supposed to contact me.

Tom out.