My New Accomodation

Phew, so glad I finally get to move into my new permanent accommodation yesterday. No more cramming in the backpacker hostel where 4 people squeezed into a tiny room. There's hardly space to walk or sit after we placed our big luggage on the floor. My new accommodation is about 3 blocks away from the south side of my campus, very much walking distance and convenient. UC Berkeley campus is build in the middle of a big park, everywhere you walk is green lush fields and temperate tress and shrubs, and there's groceries, cafe and shop houses everywhere outside the campus, albeit like SMU except the commercial buildings are shop houses and not shopping malls.

However, my excitement was dampened when we realised the previous tenant hasn't moved out the house because of an misunderstanding and confusion between the house manager and previous tenant. Because of this, we were forced to live together with the previous tenant for one night yesterday. Hopefully everything will be settled tonight by the time we reach home with all their furnishings cleared. Can't take any more "headaches" after all the hassle we have been through searching for accommodation and commuting from San Francisco to Berkeley everyday for early 8am classes. Our apartment is minimally furnished and won't have any Internet access at our home til we get our wireless up next Wednesday, so pardon me if you guys can't find me on MSN til then.

On the brighter note, we met some very nice people from SMSA, Singapore Malaysia Student Association, a student society in UC Berkeley. One of them happen to be Shaun's friend, Zheng Yu, who not only kindly offer his sleeping bags to us to sleep when he learned of our situation, but drove and showed us around Berkeley yesterday. He drove us to the Famous "In-and-Out" US fast food restaurant for dinner and I have to agree the fries there is very unique, contains the original raw potato crunchiness which you can never taste in any other fries from other fast food franchises. Accordingly, they are the first company who invented the drive-in order concept which are widely adopted by other fast food restaurants today. We also wanted to try the famous Krispy Kream doughouts which I heard is much more better than the doughnuts from Doughnut Factory in Singapore, but unfornately we were late by about 4 minutes when the shop closed at 11pm. Haiz. Not to worry, I am sure we still have plenty of time to try it another time. Zheng Yu later drove us to the top of Berkely hills which is on east side of UC Berkeley campus where we get see the night view of the 3 main cities on the Bay area of California. The view is so awesome we could see the all the famous landmarks of the Bay Area like the Bay bridge, Golden gate bridge, Alcatraz Island, the Campanile Tower of UCB and the sea arrounding the 3 cities. What a view, but I didn't bring my camera to capture this wonderful image.

Going for my mentor/mentee dinner assigned by the International office of UCB later tonight. Pretty much like the SP dinner we used to play in Orientation Game. Haha. Quite excited to meet and interact with her, wonder how's she like. If it's good, you guys will see my updates soon. LOL.