U Town - A first impression.

An inherent flaw that could be noticed before I even stepped into U Town was its accessibility. It is a good 10-15 minute walk from YIH, so you’ll probably want to be taking a bus in. However, there is only one bus that goes to U Town – Bus D. It’s bound to be packed! And what happens when a few hundred students end lecture together and have to head to Arts/Science/out of U Town? That’s right, a massive jam at the bus stop.  

 Upon arrival, I followed the signs that directed me to the ‘Town Plaza’ area which was basically the open walkway in between the buildings. F&B outlets lined the sides, but only a few were open. I saw Fish&Co Express, so I decided to give it a try.

It is nothing like an actual Fish & Co outlet – it resembles a fast food joint more than anything else. The menu boasted a variety of different combo meals such as Fish and Chips, Grilled Fish set, etc, with prices starting at $5.50.
One of the first things that I noticed besides the salty Fish Chowder was the absence of any network reception in the Fish&Co outlet. I don’t know if it was just affecting me, but I couldn’t get any connection on my iPhone whatsoever.  It was the same situation when I entered the Koufu Food Court later on.

After my pitiful lunch, I carried on my recce to locate certain places such as the enigmatic TP-AUD. I mean, we know CRE-AUD probably means CREATE tower Auditorium, and ERC = Education Resource Centre. But TP?

I saw a sign that I thought would bring me to my destination – ‘Town Plaza Auditorium’. However, when I followed the sign and walked into the building, it was ‘NUS@CREATE Auditorium’!  How confusing.
The entire area was still under construction too, so paint fumes and whatnot was pervading my senses. The auditorium’s seats were even still plastic wrapped! Hmm.

 I gave up on this quest and decided to head down to ERC, which was another 5+ minutes deeper into U Town from the one and only bus stop (Yes, the one with the magical Bus D) This means ERC is about 10 minutes from the bus stop. I don’t see how you won’t be late if you had a lecture in Arts just before a lecture in ERC… unless you had a car.

On the 1^st level of ERC (which is actually one level up from the ground floor), there’s a ‘Mac Commons room’ and a ‘PC Commons room’. Curious, I decided to go ahead and check it out… and realized they’re basically computer rooms! Yup, the Mac room is like a Comp Lab but it’s all Macs, and… yea I am in the PC room.

The monitors are one of the widest I’ve seen… by my estimate it’s a 25” monitor? Maybe even wider. It’s not even proportionately high, just REALLY wide.  You can easily open two pages of documents simultaneously and have more than enough space to read them at a comfortable font size.

Alright, I should probably continue my hunt for the ERC-AUD and also the mysterious TP-AUD. Hope to find them soon.