[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="576"]
From left to right: SM, me, Will, CaiJie, Daryl, ChinHooi[/caption]1) Soemin and William
These two guys are those on my left and right in that picture above, and are my neighbours in that we live in the same corridor on the third level. Let me talk about them seperately.
Will was the first person I spoke to after I moved in. I had left my door open in the hopes of eliciting such conversation, and he stopped at my door, looking in. I was watching some show or something but I quickly got up and went over to talk to him.
We chatted for a good 30 minutes or so, and I found out he was on exchange from Iowa in the US, and just got to know him slightly better. Over the next few weeks, I got to know him as a polite, friendly, chatty American who was nice to hang around. I played basketball with him a few times (lost to him 7-3, 7-3, 7-5 in the three times I've played 1v1 with him. Quite an achievement for me considering he's like 1.9m), as well as pingpong regularly. He's quite good at pingpong!
Soemin was my immediate neighbour (Will lived next to Soemin), and our first conversation was pretty odd. Being the friendly person he is, he had organized a cards session early in the semester for some bonding among the new people. I had never spoken to him or even seen him before previously, but he saw me in the toilet and was like: "hey, you're alan right? Want to play cards later?"
What struck me as odd was that he had never even seen me before and somehow recognized me. How! Lolol. Anyway, I went for that session (first of a few more to come) and got to know some of the other guys.
I got to know SM better over the next few months - very quirky, friendly, chatty, and he's the kind of person who's a softie at heart but will never admit it but instead tries to say something weird or random to cover up his acts of kindness/niceness. Because of this, it took me a while to realize it, but he is really a nice person - whether it is always footing the bill first and not being too hardpressed about collecting payment, or buying lunch for me, or letting me use his fridge. It's hard to express the nature of our interactions in words, but I think it will suffice to say that hall life wouldn't be the same if my neighbour wasn't SM.
I don't easily get along with everybody, but I can say he's one person I get along with easily. I don't know if it's because we can both be random and trashtalk each other jokingly or it's just mere exposure effect at play, perhaps a bit of both.
I hang out with SM and Will alot, going out for food outings such as for XLB buffet, to Holland V, Crystal Jade, etc. On weekends I also had lunch with SM because there isn't any hall lunch and everywhere is closed besides this nice chinese place at UCC. All these sessions led to a pretty good bond between us which I will dearly miss.
2) The Girls
This heading is intentionally misleading xD No, I do not mean that the girls in RH were the most memorable. I am referring to a particular group of people, whom for simplicity's sake I just label as 'the girls'.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="512"]
From left: Kai Hui, Sophia, Cherie, Me! (Missing from picture: Qiao Yue)[/caption]
For the first (or maybe even several) week of hall, I knew nobody - even though I knew William we weren't exactly buddy buddy and he would sit with his fellow exchange German friend during meals and it's weird if I just popped in and sat with them.
Thus, my meals would have been eaten alone, if not for... these girls! Well, I only really knew Cherie before staying in hall, so for meal times I would join in her girl clique (of the abovementioned girls) and eat with them, and gradually got acquainted with them. I took the same module as Sophia too, so this allowed for more interaction and familiarity with her.
It's really quite a big deal - those who haven't stayed in hall may not quite understand it, but eating alone is REALLY weird even if you're used to being alone like me, especially with all the raucous conversations going on around you.
Hanging out with the girls also meant Will, when he decided to sit with me, got to know them, and thankfully they (mainly Cherie and QY) were very friendly and receptive to him! I somehow felt 'responsible' for him because he was my neighbour and I brought him to sit with me (with the girls), so I was glad they made him feel welcome. He also went for the D&D (something like prom) with the girls (I didn't go because I don't like these kinda events and wasn't that willing to fork out $50 for a meal)... and the girls being the nice people they are actually asked him (and me) out for a final meal in the last week of our stay in hall :)
We went to Thai Express (as Will wanted to eat Thai food) and walked around abit. Was a good time :)
3) Insects
[caption id="attachment_1502" align="alignnone" width="384"]
EWWWWW[/caption]Well not all memorable things are good are they? This is one example of one which I will never forget but is a BAD thing.
For some reason, probably because of the many trees outside of my block, my room is plagued with insects at night. I get an average of 2-3 insects entering my room every night - they range from mosquitoes to houseflies to beetles to giant insects like the one you see above. It's not even zoomed in or anything! The insect was as big as my fingernail (probably abit bigger)
Thus, I was very accustomed to seeing insects and totally lost the 'gross' reaction you normally get when you see an insect crawling across your table. For me, it's business as usual. Tissue, splat. Or clap my hands, splat. Or in the case of a hugeass beetle, locate something to smack it with, then splat.
4) Independence
My mother is a natural housewife. She almost enjoys doing housework, and she does it well. She cooks decently too :)
What does this mean? Yes, many of my chores are handled by her - washing of my clothes, cleaning of my room, cooking, etc. All of which I don't have in hall - but I LOVE it.
What? Yes, because with these responsibilities come freedom - I don't have to sit properly (she'll nag if I slouch at the computer), I can eat at the computer (she doesn't allow it), I can choose what time I want to sleep and wake up and do anything I want. FREE. If the price to pay is having to dump a bundle of clothes into the machine twice a week and wipe the floor/room once a week, I'll gladly pay it. I gladly did.
It's another thing that's hard to explain to people who haven't lived in hall - the freedom that you feel. I semi-admire the American kids who moves out once he goes to college and is left to fend for himself - only semi-admire because it'll be tough too, having to work part time to finance himself. But having your own 'place' is pretty darn cool and awesome.
5) Miscellaneous
I realized I have more than 5 things but the others are like, minor points only, so I'll just collapse them into 'miscellaneous'.
More time with <3
Hall kinda gave me an excuse to spend more time with my girlfriend szehong - whether it is eating packed dinners with her or her studying in my room or just coming over to nap - without hall I'm not sure how much of those would have happened (no naps, that's for sure).
She still always complained when she had to come to my room though (My room is on the 3rd level, on possibly the highest block in the hall), but I was always glad to have her over. Have to spend more time with her these holidays, as I won't be spending next semester with her! :(( (I'm going on exchange to the US)
Communal Living
I kinda enjoy communal living, perhaps its just the idea of having friends nearby. I don't like sharing a room though, that's why I got a single room. Otherwise, it's kinda nice to see your neighbours around and yelling to each other from each other's rooms haha.
Food
There are differing opinions about this - some say the food sucks but some say it's alright. For me, I was alright with the dinner food for most of the semester, and only got really tired of it towards the end. And I actually ENJOYED breakfast for most of the semester, and became just 'alright'/bored of it towards the end. I mean, I love eggs and toast, but you can only eat that for THAT long! There's virtually no variation in the food at dinner, so that adds to the fact that it's normally not very tasty. In my last week of hall stay (after exams), I don't think I ate a single hall meal LOL. Always ate out.
Travelling
The best part about hall and probably one of the main reasons why I wanted to stay in hall is that your travelling time is ridiculously minimized. I mean, I can leave my room 15 minutes before a lesson and reach well in time. I can even walk to my classes! And if I had at least a 2 hour break, I would usually go back to my room to slack/study. Come next year, I will have to get used to 1hour journeys (yes, I know others have it worse with 1.5/2 hour journeys blabla) again :( And I'll have to study in the library again nooo.
----
With that... my year is over! Wait what? Well, after the last paper I had on the 30th April, I have effectively finished the tough part of this year. So if 2012 was really the end of the world.. CHEERS. hahaha. I will be spending the summer pretty much lazing around, while working part-time for my ex-company (which can be done from home) to earn some pocket money. Oh yea, I'll be gymming too of course, in my bid to at least get to 65KG (I'm 59 now). And in late August I'll be going to Boston University in the US
I'll be blogging a lot the rest of this year! So far I've been releasing one blog entry once every 2-3 days, I hope to maintain this pace as we progress through the year :) So come back often and comment if you have something to say! Thanks for reading! ~
[...] it I would stay in hall again in a heartbeat. I actually wrote a pretty nice recap about ‘5 memorable things about hall‘, you can read it here. The pictures are all broken though so it’s just [...]
ReplyDelete