Anyway, about me: Sami, a game graphics student from Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, off to be an exchange student after my first year in KUAS.
Eager to learn 3D art, mostly worked in 2D thus far.
A sample of my works: HERE
As I began my first student year, I already decided that I'll take everything I can from the few years, Thus I was eager to sign up for the exchange programs that were available. I picked Singapore and the Netherlands as my priority targets, giving me over a year of time abroad.
Needless to say I got picked for Singapore, but as of this writing some things are a little shady about the period over at the Netherlands. All I know right now is that I got accepted for that as well, just need to work out the details. I'll write about both experiences on this blog.
Departure and Arrival
As I got accepted and got all the paperwork done, it was time to decide how the flight should be arranged. Teemu (A fellow exchange student from KUAS, programmer and fellow blog writer) and I decided to get us to Singapore and back on a budget, so we picked a flight arranged by Turkish Airlines. A 17 hour trip with one (about 3 hour) transfer in Istanbul, with the departure being in the evening of 1.6.2015. The food was alright and the flights in general were pleasant. A thing of note about your luggage is that you should keep all things in the large compartments of your suitcase/duffel bag/etc. I lost my sunscreen and hygiene related things since I put them in a smaller section of my bag. Not to mention the strange disappearance of a few pairs of underwear.
We (That is a total of five students from the same flight) arrived at the Singapore airport nearing the evening of 2.6., and made way towards our accommodation via taxi. We didn't have much of a plan since the instructions we were given were vague at best. "Come to Nanyang Polytechnic." It was late, so we figured it'd be better to go straight for the housing, and we were lucky to run into a group of engineer students that arrived earlier. I and Teemu were split from the other three students as reservations were made before our arrival, I and Teemu would share housing with four engineers.
First Week
The next morning we headed for the actual campus and our working area. The school is quite large, so it'll take a while to get used to.
We got placed in our seperate teams, I, Teemu and Eero (producer/designer) were put to work on one project with five other people, one of whom is yet to arrive. I'm not certain how much I can talk about the project itself just now, but I'll talk about some of the things that happen during the project and what I do without putting out any information I shouldn't be sharing.
Because we are still awaiting the last team member, we can't do too much, it's mostly been brainstorming and conceptualizing some ideas. The programmers have been setting up a basic framework and our producer has set up some things to keep track of progress.
Most of the week was about getting used to the weather and local area and getting our accommodation deals signed and keys handed. The way traffic works and streets are laid out are vastly different from what I'm used to, so navigation is something to get used to as well.
The first difficulty was and still is finding regular milk. Everything's processed, soy based or flavoured somehow. The local food culture is nice though, there's plenty to pick from and the prices aren't as hefty as I thought they would be. A canned or bottled soda is a dollar or so and a modest meal ranges from two dollars to three. To put this in perspective, one euro is roughly 1,5 Singapore dollars. When going even cheaper, you can do as we do and get packed noodles to cook up in house. But going out for a meal is not a hassle if you don't mind walking a bit in warm weather. I'm planning on trying as many different foods and drinks as I can.
I can say that coming over here is a good idea if you're out of shape and/or need to lose weight. I'm a big guy and the daily routine added in to the weather really makes me spend a lot of energy. I am certain I will lose weight and feel more energetic when leaving Singapore. Just have to remember to keep myself very well hydrated.
On Friday, all KUAS students got their Visa applications finished up, so we no longer need to think about anything else than keeping our hands on our identity cards. We also got our metro tickets. The system is pretty neat, and now it's really easy to get around Singapore. How ever, if you thought you need to wait for a long time with applications and meetings at KELA or the workforce office in Finland and you think it's very mind-numbing, you haven't seen anything yet. If you have a mobile console at hand, you'll be fine though. Afterwards we had lunch and went to see some shops. Game stores were high on the interest list, and we found a few. most of them small shops that also offer figurines, manga and some other really cool stuff. I picked up the art book for Assassin's Creed Unity for two dollars.
As the weekend arrived, so did the exhaustion and I got a little sick. Might be that the bacteria base and other changes caused me to have fever Friday night and my stomach had issues all weekend. But that's fair enough, a bit of rest at the end of the week is fine, there's plenty of things to do later on.
Think that'll do for the first post. Maybe I'll work on a reference list for things to check out and foods to try as well as things to keep in mind. There's quite a few lists of laws to remember, and you might want to keep caution in certain cases, but I don't think I'll get to that in detail unless I end up having some sort of adventurous experience with it.
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