i have lived on campus for 2 years. part of the reasons i left were that the services were getting unreliable, the food was getting worse and some of the costs were simply retarded. 12cts/mb dl for internet, can u imagine that?
mine was as close knitted community coz we were i think the 2nd smallest hall on campus, when i first arrived anyways. ours also were one of the 3 fully catered halls, which i chose so if exams comes around, i wud not and need not be bothered to cook.
perhaps why i chose it was also retarded too hehe. from the weird maps, the way they described the halls, i thought they were better spread apart, and that they had different views from their rooms, so since the one i chose pointed out that u had be living near a river and get to see it too if u live on the right side, i decided hey! burgie it is for me!! it looks better than the others too on the brochures.
when i arrived tho, burgie looked, at first sight, that it hasn't completed its building. then again, everyone of the buildings on campus did. of course, horror of horrors, 3 of the 7 halls or so is just by the river!
there were also other reasons why i chose to stay on campus. being next to school, me and my bad habits of being late might get curbed, or almost curbed. over the months, i learnt that the nearer u r, the more likely ur to be late :P
on campus though, everything is easier. school is just next door, ur friends are kinda "picked" for u, and thru o'week interactions, u get to meet the uni crowd which if ur living off campus and dont know much abt on campus activities or feel too lazy to join, u wont ever get to know those crowd.
as a first year though, back then i was pretty clueless. plus the fact that this isnt a place i was familiar with, the on campus help, the tutors, the admin in the hall, every little bit helps. because there is constantly people around, and people with similar studying and sleeping habits, i am never really alone.
but being so close can have its own tensions too. the way the halls were built, we could hear everyone clearly over the pipes, or at least my next door neighbours. i could hear them humping like rabbits, breaking up, their kissing mistakes (the unforgettable, OUCH YOU BIT MY LIPS!) or them talking "behind" my back. there will always be inconsiderate neighbours who come home loud and drunk, breaking stuff, stuffing up the fire alarms, waking people up at 5 am, in the shower making out with their girlfriends OR barging into your room and stealing all ur snacks.
don't get me wrong, all these are also part of college, on a certain scale, when i detached myself from being in there, it's actually amusing. but all this amusement went out of the window one day when my neighbour, who had been bugging the hell out of me about my alarm which also wakes him up, to keep my alarm on my desk so that it doesnt wake him thru the pipes. my alarm though, is THAT loud. even with it on the desk, it does penetrate the walls. so he came pounding on my door a nice sunday morning, resulting in a very pissed off me who decided not to go to church, to pretended to sleep thru everything, and tell him i heard nothing, though i was seething mad.
that night, he didn't like the music i was playing. but didn't know how to change song, turn down the volume or etc, so he MUTED my laptop altogether, when i wasn't around. i mean, we all have an open door approach, if ur unhappy, u can always come and turn it down. but muting it and not leaving a note, stealing my snacks and not leaving a note, BARGING INTO MY ROOM WHEN I AM HALF ASLEEP, i had enough. i didn't even know he muted it and thought my laptop died and was in tears, coz i didn't know how to tell my dad i broke my laptop, and i need music to survive. having a md player back then, i need to have sounds to be able to record it on md.
by the time i realised what happened, i marched over to his door and had a talk with him, about what i don't like. he gave me this "worst neighbour i would ever encounter" face and i finally talked to the floor tutor, HIS GF!!! who had a small argument with him in which he denied everything.
again, have more intelligence. if u can farken hear me i can hear u too. so dumb.
anyways, that's just one of the types of neighbours i get. and u can't choose your neighbours. even if you move around, you will still get a dickhead, or a bimbo and u will always always wana scream when u get them type of neighbours.
and the food. well when i first started, it was interesting. i had an affinity towards westernised food, like pasta, fish and chips, even if its a little too greasy.
but as time wore on, their terrible cooking astounded even me. i mean, whats with the random pasta nights and pizza nights? don't get me wrong, i love pasta and i love pizza, or at least i did before i joined. but when they got lazy, it was all they cook, be it twice a week or 3 times a week. or it's bangers and mash. until i came here, hot dogs were snacks. from what i understood its about 15 bucks a meal. and 15 bux for bangers and mash.. it's kinda shitty. even if its not for normal dinners, check out our formal dinners.
we had platters of cheap food, like those u get from bbq outings with friends, those ranges from 16 plus a head to 21 a head. during my first year it was still impressive. in the 2nd year, it just kept getting worse. and u can't choose what food they should cook for you. u just have a choice of 2 types of meat, the vegies and then the cold dish bar outside (which is often a mishmash of whatever they didnt get to finish the day before, the afternoon of that day, etc.). for the vegetarians though, it's just one choice of food.
i know, i shouldn't be picky, it is college after all, and college food are basically limited to what you pay. but see, we are living there, i would at least expect a balance form of meal that isn't a mish mash of whatever u forgot to cook that week that is about to expire and etc, which at times was the exact image they are laying out to me. i mean check out the random ingredients on that pizza!! wth.
aside from that, there are times when u know, ur anti social, u don't wana participate in any retarded activities there maybe. but because everyone is going, and everyone is bugging you to go, you get annoyed. or better yet, u get people hollering at ur doors to go, banging at ur doors at 9 in the morning when all u wana do is sleep in.
or u just am too shy to dance in the crowds and they are pulling you out of the door. i still remember hiding underneath the table so that no one would even know i am in the room. in case the peek underneath and see my feet walking around..
that said, i still do miss college life. walking around at 2am during exam period with my blankie around me, in shorts and t shirt and then sitting at people's door just gossiping is something that u cant do when u move out. it's just you and someone else in the same apartment.
moving out, u choose ur flatmates, for the better or worse. if u choose ur friends, u have this huge thing dragging u down that u dont wana be too harsh on them, u give in all the time coz, oh it's ur friends. then when u guys do sit down and mesh things out about rules and such, and what ur unhappy with, sometimes you feel bad.
if u choose utter strangers, you wonder why u bother even moving out of college if they do weird stuff. and then ur all shy and have to start with all that getting to know bit again.
one of the biggest challenge i guess, was actually forcing myself to cook occassionally for myself to save costs. it's very tempting to just order stuff from across the streets, or call up all the deliveries u could see. i mean, man, how can u resist curry!?!!?! sushi?!?! pizza? pho? EXACTLY!!! i couldn't lol...
and also, since i haven't cooked in the 2 years that i was in college (instant noodles doesn't exactly require much effort), my present cooking leaves much to be desired. i don't even know what goes with what anymore, or how many spoons of flour goes with how many teaspoon of this and that to make sugar cookies, which i used to make on such a regular basis it was funny...
for those who say coming to uni itself is a step towards independence, i would like to point out it's really half a step. those who stays on campus, we get most of our toilets cleaned by someone else, water and electricity bills help paid by the college so we dont get disgusting bills flooding our mailboxes, we have people help sort out junkmails from normal mails. i mean, check this out... this is just 2 days of mail..
would you want to experience sorting that out then lugging out all that junk? not me
in college we had shared stuff, like toilets, kitchenette, fridge, bathrooms. in this particular apartment, we have double ensuites. which was awesome, to say the least. the bad parts of shared amenities is obvious. people steal your food, if u forget ur soap and gold chains or whatnots in bathrooms, it gets stolen sometimes. and our shared fridge, microwave were all stinky from multitudes of use, all types of food, but 0 cleaning. the toaster was burnt beyond use, and the kettle was... i wouldn't use it. i had my own anyways.
but here, i have to clean my own toilet, i have to clean my own kitchen, and of course, my own plates. gets tiring sometimes
there's of course the distance from school. when i am really late, the retarded bus schedules doesn't help (20-30 mins for one. in singapore we get buses every 5-15 mins depending on alot of circumstances.). in the same time that i might have to wait for the next bus, i might have reached school by walking then. then again, i was already late.
i handle my choice of food. THAT is a blessing, regardless of how badly i cook. i have LESS idiots bugging me as neighbours. i mean, the walls here arent all that much thicker, but people shuddup after 11 or 10, because most are working people or people who lead normal lives so that draculas like me have our peace at night to study or have normal sleeping hours.
and i don't get sordid sounds of people humping next door, going eeee eeee eee aaa aaaa aaa, like hamsters do when they hump.
like, it's entertaining, about as much as porn entertain me at times when i am really bored and sit there and laugh at the impossible positions they can think up in porn. but, like porn, they are also very limited entertainment.
i can be as anti social as i like, with no one dragging me out of my room except for my classes. and me and my housemate pretty much kept to our own businesses. like we talk, but we pretty much leave each other alone too.
so to end off, each have their own advantages. i would say if your new to the place, or ur in your first year, it would be better to stay on campus. uni life can get very stressful and if u know people who are suffering with you, well, it makes the suffering at least a little happier because you are not alone in your struggle. there's also the ease of having tutors to help you out too in the colleges, and they hold discussions often enough for certain courses (if not they are fairly approachable at times, and only for some, if not just request a tute... and see how it goes..). there's of course, always the pool of later year students to just ask.
the benefits of living off campus is having a real taste of independence, being able to be by urself when u really want to, AND THE FOOD!!!!
so yer... i like both
it also helps that my apartment is gorgeous, despite the various packing boxes that lincy hasn't bothered to put aside (rose has termed it the box room) and a random bed that appeared out of nowhere (linxy got a new bed and now the new bed is the "sofa", but without a bedframe to make it sofa bed, it's just a matteress), a pc table that appeared there coz no one is using it (wade can use it when he comes over... i guess.) and yer, just the cool amount of rubbish.and yer, no one barging into my room when i might be naked, sleeping or doing my random dances. no one to yell at me about alarms, or steal my stuff.
yer!!!!
dang i love myself!!
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