The narrative - Part 1

Here is a very brief (by my standards) report of my recent trip to Singapore. Popular demands et al..

Characters you will meet during the course of this narative:

1) Ranjini: (a.k.a assie) She's a classmate of mine. A total nutcase/genius/idiot/sweetheart - you get the picture. She denies the obvious very vehemently. Both of us travelled to and fro together. She can be fun when she's not scared of the little beetle on my head or a water tank or, i dunno.. the skyline!

2) Aquila: My soulmate ;-) Well, the only other girl in India to be doing a master's in physics, have a blog, 2 friends from col., go through a make-over, read the way books should be read, etc.. If you know any other, we'll be happy if you could let us know!

3)Sharmila: Aquila's classmate (they're from Pune university). A complete sweetheart. The only sensible and responsible person among the lot of us - hence she gets stuck with handling our finances, tickets and p.o.a wherever we go. Oh and she knows moonwalking! But that's a tale of it's own..

4) Tanya: A girl from Delhi. One of those who remind you not to go by first impressions. Sweet, cheerful, bubbling with life, confidant, etc.. - a typical Delhi girl! Except she's smart too!

5,6,7) Siddharth, Soumalya, Veeresh: Three guys from my class. I will say no more. Read on and form your own opinions :-)

8) Sandip: Aquila's classmate. Obbessed with photography. Has been known to take a minimum of 1000 photographs in one day. And no, I'm not exaggerating. Oh, Veeresh like taking photos too, but Sandip takes the cake.

9) Rakhi: A PhD student from IIT-M. Helped us settle in and gave us murruku everytime we visited her. :-)

10) Sharon, Minrui, Binni, Yilin, Zhi Han: People in my lab. But more about them as the tale proceeds.

11) Dr.Sow: My guide. (Yeah, I admit his name should've been first conventionally, but heck, you guys don't wanna hear about my work in the lab, do you??)



The story:

Ranjini and I arrive at the Changi airport and are picked up by my brother. I guess he convinced the taxi driver that he knows the town well, cause we had to pay barely $20, while my friends paid $35! Guess the autos in B'lore and the taxis there don't really differ much!

We reached Temashek hall (our home for 6 weeks) at 9 in the morning. We went to the chap who was incharge of giving us the keys(correction: transponder) to our rooms only to be told by this lady (maid? wife? daughter?) that he was still sleeping!! We insisted that he be woken up, and he came out all grumpy and grouchy (it was only later that we found out that that's how he normally looks; even when he's telling jokes about how there are two sesons in S'pore: hot and very hot (you can roll your eyes all you want - i was forced to laugh politely)). He gave us the transponder and explained how it works. I never did get why they had to use something like that! What's wrong with a normal key?? Esp since they made us pay 42$ if anything happened to it!

To be continued..