I woke up quite early today, and decided to take the chance to take a few photos of my beautiful college before everyone started walking around.
I'm staying at the College of Alice and Peter Tan (not "Peter Pan", as many of my friends seem to amuse themselves by saying). It's one of the 3 residential colleges at NUS, the other two are known as Tembusu College and Cinnamon College. The latter is for an exclusive program called "USP - University Scholars Programme", although I do know of some exchange students who are also living there. Due to it's name, the residents of CAPT are called "CAPTains", it's a pretty smart name!
CAPT prides itself in being very community based, proving activities to people in the community. We have activities to take blind workers to the museum, participate in ex-convict runs and teach autistic children how to make simple food. I'm glad I got placed at this college, as these are really things that genuinely interest me and I can't wait to participate in as many activities as possible!
The entire college is really one big family, although it is still divided into another 5 "neighbourhoods". Each neighbourhood consists of 3 floors (the bottom of the three is co-ed, followed by all male and then all female). Level 3-5 is Roc (blue), 6-8 is Dragon (green), 9-11 is Garuda (yellow), 12-14 is Phoenix (red) and 15-17 is Tulpar (black). I live on the 5th floor so I'm part of the great big Roc family! Everyone is really friendly, and its not uncommon to see people coming to the 5th floor from the 14th floor! It's really a wonderful feeling being amongst so many people. We also have various activities to encourage mingling within and outside of our neighbourhood, examples include Fledgling Week and Inter Neighbourhood Games.
The college also has an academic program, and students are encouraged to take CAPT exclusive modules during their 2 year stay at the college. There are seminar rooms within the college provided for these modules, I'm hoping to take one of them, so I'll see how that goes!
We have a fantastic dining room, which is shared with the neighbouring Yale-NUS college. They still stay quite separate from us, preferring to hang in a small corner of the hall during meals, while us CAPTains spread out across the rest of the hall. Our matriculation/student card contains our meal credits, and we tap it each time we have a meal. We are allowed to tap our card up to 3 times (although this may deduct from your future credits if you do not have any excess), and any unused credits can be rolled over for a period of 2 weeks. We get breakfast and dinner for Monday to Friday. Breakfast only on a Saturday and dinner only on a Sunday. Cuisine choice is diverse, including Malay, Indian, Chinese/Noodle, Vegetarian and Western. On some days there are themes, and separate choice of meals is provided. We even have a salad bar and fruit! Free flow drinks are provided, usually water and various juices for dinner. After our meal we are required to pack away our own dishes, putting solid waste in one bucket, liquid into another and cutlery into the final of the three buckets. Plates and cups are then separated into another area.
Transportation from college is also very convenient, as it is only a short walk to the 196 bus stop. This bus terminates at the Clementi MRT interchange and shopping mall, which is handy if in need of some grocery shopping (not that campus doesn't have food but the variety is slightly limited). CAPT is the furtherest out from the main U-Town area, and from the U-Town bus shuttle terminus, I have to take the D2 or D1 to get onto the main Kent Ridge campus across from the expressway. The bus stop is most crowded in the morning until around 3pm in the afternoon. If only walking was an option, but my science faculty is just too far from U-Town to just be an easy short walk! Because of this, I tend not to leave U-Town, as everything is provided and very convenient.
Next time I'll talk about my room, and give a short dorm room tour! All my suite mates have finally moved in, as semester starts tomorrow. Can't wait to get to know them!
