I only go to 7-Eleven in foreign countries

7-Eleven was the first store I went to once I arrived. I needed something to drink and got a bottle of ice tea. I think it was cheaper than just water. I slept most of the flight. I slept very well in the beginning due to the anti-motion-sickness medicine and woke up for food. It’s kind of ridiculous though. By the time they served us, it was 2am. The flight took off at midnight. They served the vegetarians and people with special needs first. I just felt that they were really slow. We even got a printed menu, which I thought was overkill. The only choice we really had was chicken or fish. Everything else is the same so why bother with the menu??

Once I arrived, I got a train ticket for the airport express and got a local sim card. They were both fairly easy tasks. I managed to meet up with my uncle and he took me to his house. We dropped off my stuff and he showed me how to get to his store. From there, I spent the rest of the day with some friends of a friend.

I met with three people in total today, all young graduate engineers. They all had interesting perspectives. Very nice people who took the time to show me around and such. I met up with two people for lunch. We settled on Cantonese after going through Mandarin along the way. They took me around the Victoria Bay area while we talked about their jobs. They’re both geotech engineers in their second year. They were working on site this morning. They seem to like what they’re doing. Their work hours don’t seem extremely demanding. The on-site engineers seems to work about 9-5 on weekdays and half days on Saturdays once every two weeks. The engineers at the office work a bit more but nothing crazy.

I hung out with them for a while before heading off to meet with another friend of a friend. This guy is working in the civil group and was still working at 4:30pm when I met with him. We went to his office and chatted there for a while. He went back to work after our chat. He says it’s not usually this busy but he has two things that needs to get out by next Friday. We walked around the office a little bit and there were a number of people at the office, much more than you would expect at 5pm on Saturday. He’s not as enthusiastic with his job but had some interesting things to say as well.

I’ve been trying to make mental notes of cost of living around here. I should actually write them down when I get the chance. It’s pretty comparable to the US. Except maybe for eating out. It’s slightly less expensive but people do it more often. And I guess the cost of produce and goods vary widely depending on where you are, what you buy, and where you buy things.