Life in Wellington Part 1

The inital settling in part was quite fast. Got to know my room mates, and registered my courses. The registration part was quite troublesome cause everything was done manually and not computerized. So was kinda irritating. Nevertheless, got it done in 2 days and everything was fine.

Life in general is quite slow here in NZ. I wanted to take 4 courses, and was initially discouraged by the office as they were afraid it was too heavy. Apparently the norm here is 3 mods per sem. Haha but even with 4 mods, I already felt it was so slack. Managed to get at least a B+ for all of the assignments and tests. And I didn't even do much. Like some essays the students spend 2 weeks researching and writing it. And I only spent 1 day researching and 1 day writing. Haha tests were all studied for the day before. If only SMU courses were so easy too!

While I was there, I joined the Canoe Club and the Badminton Club. I actually wanted to join the Trekking Club also, but didn't in the end as most of the trips clashed with kayaking. So decided to focus on kayaking instead. Anyway the Trekking club people didn't come across as very friendly. OK la I don't think they were unfriendly, just not very sociable, or maybe just shy to new people. But anyway, I rather kayaked since I can always go for treks on my own if I really wanted to I guess.

Other than that, spent the weekdays hanging out, watching movies and drinking. Wah I think the Europeans really party very hard. After a few weeks, I didn't really join the partying much already. Haha guess I wasn't really much of a party-er. Other than that, weekdays were spent walking around town, chatting online, movies, visiting cafes and playing badminton. Weekends were generally for kayaking and exploring the region.

Welly Town

To transport my car over to Wellington, I had to drive up my car onto the boat. Reminded my of the boat we took to Lombok island when we were going to Rinjani. Haha except this time the boat is much better, and I was the one driving up the boat.

Anyway, the ferry ride is about 4 hours long. For a boat of its size, it was surprisingly empty. Not many travelers around, mainly families. So didn't really have anyone to talk to. One of the downsides of travelling alone I guess. You do get bouts of boredom. One is when doing outdoor activities. I mean not really outdoor. Imagine going to a theme park alone. Haha, ultimate boredom I think.

I was killed time by alternating between watching some stupid movie they were filming, reading a book and playing my PSP. Finally, after 3 hours like that, we saw land again!! Hooray! I thought we were going to reach soon. Turned out distance was very deceiving. Haha it was about 1.5 hours again before I actually touched land again.

The Marlborough Sounds at the beginning of the boat trip

Far view of Wellington

First commercial building I see in NZ!!

Love the location of that flat man

Wellinton is by far the crampest city in NZ. It is also super driver unfriendly. Lots of 1 way streets, narrow roads, and worst of all. Street name boards are virtually non-existent. And when there are boards, their locations tend to be soooo hard to spot, making it useless. Like there was this board which was blocked by this gigantic signboard giving directions to the State Highway. Super bad planning. Haha or maybe I'm just too spoilt to the organised Singapore streets. It took me about half an hour to find my school la! Damn irritating. Haha bravo LTA!

Administratively, it was surprisingly efficient for my room. It was all prepared for me, and all I had to do was sign a few documents and tada! I was shown to my room. Here are a couple pics of my empty room. Haha it was a total mess once its filled with my stuff. Oh incidentally, I only cleaned my room twice in 4 months. Super dirty I know, but its not as bad as what you might think. There is barely any dust there, plus I'm rarely in my room. So no big deal I guess.

Overall, it was a really nice and pleasant room. Pretty spacious too. I was half expecting some cramped up room, maybe is the image of the SMU hostel ba. I was housed with a German guy doing architecture, a Korean lady doing her degree in linguistics, and an American lady doing media and theater.

My hostel is catered more for international students, so we actually get a wide mix of different people. Not many kiwis though. But nevertheless, it was great fun getting to know and talking to so many people of different nationalities. Besides, this is probably the hostel with the highest number of exchange students.

After getting settled in, I spent the next few days rushing around to get enrolled. The system there is rather bad, as there is no one central place for us to register for our courses. It's like there are 8 steps in the enrolment process. And each individual step has to be done at a different office. So I have to travel from point to point to get it done. And what's worse is that some of them are really far! One part of the school is actually about 20 min walk away. So, all in all, it was an extremely tiring affair. But still got it done, and just in time for the start of school too!