1 Internship, 2 Countries

The last three months passed so quickly and out of a sudden my internship in Singapore is already over. It has been an amazing time and I could only write about a couple of things that have happened on this blog. During my last week I was busy with arranging my departure. On Thursday I had a farewell dinner with some colleagues at a Chinese dumpling restaurant. The place was so crowded that we had to wait for about 1 hour until we got a table, but it was definitely worth it. If you ever get the chance to try a fried banana-prawn dumpling, do it!

On Friday morning I had to say goodbye to the rest of the team. During my time at Bosch I met lot's of great people so it was really sad to leave. As my internship in Singapore was supposed to be for 6 months, but I only got a visa for 3 months my awesome boss suggested that I spend the second 3 months at the Jakarta office. Of course, I gladly accepted. So I left clean and organized Singapore for crazy and chaotic Jakarta on Saturday evening.

When I arrived at Soekarno-Hatta airport at about 11pm I hadn't planned anything and so I decided against going into town to find a hostel. As I was already quite tired the benches in front of Terminal 3 just looked to appealing, so I spent a short night the airport and took one of the first buses (Damri, 25,000rupiah/2 Euros) downtown. From there I got a taxi to my office where I wanted to view a room. However, after a small chat my taxi driver convinced me that the place I wanted to see was too far away from my workplace to walk there, so I asked him to just drop me at the office. There I asked some locals if they knew about any available rooms in the neighbourhood. After visiting 3 different kos with them I finally found a place to stay. The room has aircon, free wifi, bathroom, small kitchen, tv, free laundry service and cost me 2million rupiah (~170 Euros) per month. But the best thing about it is that I only walk 5 minutes to work in the morning :)

Singapore Accommodation Hunt

On Thursday Sairozi and I left beautiful Phuket for Singapore. I had arranged our accommodation in advance as the hostel we stayed at offer promotion deals if you book early enough. The place is called footprints hostel and is conveniently located in Little India. The staff is friendly, breakfast is included and the showers are great. Just the rooms are  little small but since we're just staying there for sleeping that's ok. Staying in a hostel for a couple of nights is alright, but for a duration of 3 months I do prefer not sharing a room with 7 (snorring) guys. That's why I spent my day checking out rooms.

I had been looking for places on the internet and the most useful page I found was www.easyroommate.com.sg. There also is a facebook group called FindYourRoomInSG where people post their available rooms. Even though I found many interesting offers, the rent was super high. Prices start at about 700SD and can be as much as 1500SD for a single room! As I didn't want to spend more than 800SD that limited the choice. Luckily already the first viewing for a room I had this morning was great and the flatmates seemed really friendly as well. After checking out a second place I decided in favour of room no. 1 and tomorrow I'll move to my new home for the next 3 months :D

The first 2 days of my stay in Singapore have been pretty successful (apart from a fight between me, my chopsticks and the noodle soup... Anna - noodle soup 0:1) and I hope it continues this way. Monday will be the first day of my internship and I'm really excited about it... hopefully everything will go well!