Whoa there. You’re kidding right? Of course you are! Because if Week 12 is starting (the entire semester here is divided into numbered weeks), it means I’ve been in Singapore for more than 13 weeks, and 13 weeks is a little over 3 months and 3 months is … well, impossible. I mean, okay, I know I’ve been here at least a month, but come on, three? I don’t think so.

Let me tell you a bit of what I’ve been up to since I got here. You’ll realize it can’t have been that long!

So on 27 August, I left Delhi by Jet Airways (which, by the way, happens to be my favourite airline right now because they reserved a seat on the plane just for my guitar – for free, might I add), finally reached this “fine” city sometime in the evening, got a taste of Singapore’s exorbitant prices at the airport store, asked for a regular taxi that turned out to be a Mercedes, checked in to the hotel, went walking around looking for dinner (and found some at a place called “Queen’s Tandoor”), and badly missed having my camera.

Two days later, I checked into my room on campus – I was assigned to one of the halls that were renovated for the Youth Olympic Games (which is clearly good) but were only vacated the previous day and were consequently not cleaned properly (which is bad; I still find the occasional spider lurking in a corner sometimes).

That was the week before Week 1.

Week 1 started with the standard “Hello, welcome to this huge university in which you are going to be lost quite often, literally and figuratively” ceremonies, ended with an Indian Freshmen Orientation “Camp” and was greeted with great delight and excitement in the middle by my finally purchasing a Mac (well, MacBook Pro, but that’s irrelevant). YES I FINALLY GOT A MAC AFTER WANTING ONE EVER SINCE I SAW IT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CLASS SEVEN WHICH HAPPENS TO BE WAY TOO LONG AGO!

That led to Weeks 2 and 3, which basically consisted of the commencement of classes (i.e., the time to religiously attend all lectures and make other soon-to-be-broken similar resolutions), the ECA fair (where I signed up for some very random clubs, most of which I didn’t end up joining), and my desperate wanting of a camera, which I did not end up buying.

Week 4 brings back memories of the time when I heard the F1 race while standing outside the City Hall MRT station (that was such a fail moment), after which I was accosted by the guard standing outside the City Hall MRT station, both of which kind of temporarily dampened the beauty of my just-purchased camera from the mall near the City Hall MRT station.

Then Week 6 ended with a trip to Sentosa (I say “trip” because we left at 6.30 in the morning and returned at 9 at night) for Red Cross Subcommittee Orientation. More on Red Cross later, but suffice to say, it was a lot of fun.

Then came Week 7 (the Thursday of which was interesting) followed by Recess Week (which ended sooner than it began) in which I attended a fun Dandiya Night, went all the way to Marina Bay Sands to see the Skypark but reached too late, and then camped for a night in East Coast Park. Okay, so I guess it wasn’t camping because we had no tents or sleeping bags or campfires and didn’t even actually sleep, but it was a hell lot of fun, despite my being dunked into the ocean some three times.

November 3, incidentally, happens to be the day I came to know that Iron Maiden is coming to Singapore. If you don’t know why this was worth mentioning, may I direct your attention somewhere else.

The tickets were kinda expensive (especially if you consider the price they were in India) but what the heck, I have to make use of the money relatives give me sometime, don’t I? Booking opened at 12 a.m. on 9 November and three of my friends and I kept refreshing the booking page in excitement, nearly booked eight tickets instead of four, and began yelling madly when we saw the “Booking Confirmation” page. Iron Maiden, oh yes.

Now 9 November happens to fall in Week 10, if my calendar is to be believed. Continuing along the same believe-the-calendar line of thought, the Harry Potter 7 outing yesterday (in which nearly 80 tickets for the show were booked) was the close of Week 11.

Oh damn. It has been more than 3 months.

PS: By the way, I do think that HP7 was better than all the previous ones. Which isn’t saying much, but still. Though what I found strange was how so many scenes were actually a lot more dramatic and better represented in the book. Ah well, I know I can never actually be a fan of the movies.

PPS: There was (obviously) a lot more happening, but I’ll leave that for another time. Suffice to say, college is damn hectic.

PPPS: Long post, whew. I’ve been trying to write almost every day since I got here, but somehow or the other it never quite happens.