Adventure day.
Haha today was really an adventure! Guess we could film '3 Singaporeans in Baltimore' with this. By the way, future travellers please do not learn from us. Extremely stupid and senseless.It was raining since morning (well since I was awaken by this idiotic fire alarm which sounded with deafening volume accompanied by a blinding flashlight at 2am, was forced to evacuate and stood in the chill and rain for 30 minutes before the FIRE ENGINE came and discovered it was actually just a malfunction of a fire sensor). After I got some stuff from the bookstore (yes, again) I went to join the rest for a lecture for all international students. It was boring, repetitive and telling us things we had known, and basically what Yiran, Yichung and me understood was 'if you want to do anything silly, go look for the people at the International Office'. I am sure they need 90 minutes to tell us that. If I had someone to SMS with I think I would have gleefully started a conversation.
However the food served was good! Typical American though, no more curry puff, mee goreng, scallops with brocconi, chocolate eclairs etc but hamburgers, cheese (only 1 kind though, unlike Germany), hot dogs, lettuce, BBQ chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, a lot a lot of soft drinks, etc etc.. Hopefully I would not get sick of it too soon. Too bad I forgot to bring my camera. And talked to the group of people from Taiwan, with the Barhain guy, an India guy and a girl from Denmark, and continuing to receive comments like 小羊不小 from everyone who could speak Mandarin.
Haha after that was the interesting part! Yichung, Yiran and me (the girls, Grace, Sneha and Denise were never with us throughout, absolutely no idea where they were) decided to venture out north to Towson to get stuff, since we got hold of the shuttle schedule. It was raining even more heavily when we set off at around 4pm, and when the shuttle came (we kind of hid in the library while waiting for the shuttle), the driver told us that because of poor weather conditions (?!! should they like extend the service because of poor weather?!!! It was just RAINING, not SNOWING or STORMING,) that would be the last shuttle up north and there would not be anymore shuttle coming down.
So well, as we had the cab company's number, we decided to go ahead as we could always get a cab back. It took a while for us to get to Towson Mall, and as we got there, we realised that we were just simply ill-informed: that mall is so high class that it was just not possible for us to get anything there. So as we were enquiring about T-mobile plans, we asked this guy from the mobile shop for directions to any nearby Walmart or any superstore where we could get cheap stuff. To my extreme surprise, the guy was very very nice, explained everything including directions and what shops were around, printed a map from Mapquest which showed that it was not possible to walk there from the Mall in the rain, and even offered to drive us there!! Initially I turned him down but Yichung and Yiran seemed quite alright with it, so I followed along.... I was extremely skeptical about this whole thing, as it was just simply against normal safety common sense! I was praying hard that nothing would happen and indeed, we got to the Walmart without anything funny happening. Extremely luckily for us the guy was simply just nice!!
DO NOT LEARN FROM US!! Use this instead: http://www.mtamaryland.com/
So at Walmart we shopped for 2 hours straight, got whatever stuff we possibly could. So now I have everything, from forks and spoons (@$1.00 for 6), pots ($8.84) and pans ($12.97), pillow ($5.00)and blanket ($14.82), bloom and dustpan ($2.84), envelops ($0.94 for 50) and writing paper($0.50), to one whole week of canned food($0.40 for 1 can of corn)/bread($1.55)/noodles(@$0.10)/Pepperidge Farm cookies (@$1.97). Absolutely Singapore price or even cheaper. It's a pity we didn't manage to buy back a microwave oven ($19.90), rice cooker, printer and ink catridge. There simply was not enough manpower to carry those stuff.
Well coming back is another adventure. The rain got heavier, and in addition to that, my handphone could not reach the cab company's number. So Yichung went to find a payphone, which he did, and after a very long while he asked me for more coins. Again, after a very long while, he came back and said that idiot at the cab company said that he needed a credit card account to order the cab, and afterwhich he was cut off!! So Yichung got a Walmart guy to help him call, and in the end he got this reply: 'call back in 20 minutes to check the status of the cab.' Well, 20 minutes! It was already almost 8:30pm and we had not even had dinner?! I couldn't help myself but got a donut from an outlet there first.
Luckily for us a cab pulled over soon and the guy on it says that it was called over by Yichung to go to Johns Hopkins. Well, when we started to load our extreme amounts of stuff, we had to do it all in the rain! There was no shelter at the pick-up point at all, so even if you had a car you would still get you and your grocery wet anyway.
Ok here our adventure was over and we had learnt some lessons:
1. Never assume that a mall comes with a supermarket
2. Never assume that everywhere is near everything
3. Never assume that a shuttle will run according to schedule
4. Do enough research before embarking on any new adventure
5. Never assume you can call for a cab even if you had the number
6. And that cab from Walmart (Towson Place) to JHU costs $15.80 (i'm very sure the guy did not make rounds)!!! I just knew that there is a bus actually. But not in that kind of rain though.
So now photos! Let me show you how homelike my room now is:
