Sojourn a journey through life

Commute Reconaisance

This morning I went on a little "commute reconaisance" adventure. For those of you who don't know, commuting is generally the act of "traveling regularly from one place to another, as from suburb to city and back."

Now, from this, some of you may be able to deduce that I got a job. So, as long as nothing blows up in my face, or otherwise goes awry, I will be (hopefully) starting work on October 17th at Lilly Systems Biology. It looks like a super-awesome place to work, and I'm quite excited about the whole situation.

The company is located in an area of Singapore called Science Park II which is full of technology and biotech heavyweights. The building is very nice, and so are the offices. They also have a WICKED-AWESOME espresso machine in the kitchen, which I plan to take full advantage of.

Alas, it also means I am going to have to return to the world of commuting, which looks like it's going to be about an hour each way. There are so many buses and different ways of getting from place to place to place here that I actually have already tested 3 distinct routes to and from the place.

1)Bus 173 to Bukit Batok, MRT to Jurong East, then Bus 51 or 143 to Science Park II
2)Bus 173 to Clementi, then Science Park Shuttle
3)Bus 172 to Bukit Batok, MRT to Jurong East, MRT to Clementi, then Science Park Shuttle

So far, it looks like Route #2 is going to be the winner, but I'm gonna have to buy me a few novels for reading on the bus, methinks.

Also - just for kicks, I was trying to find out a few population / geographical statistics for comparison. So for all of you in the Lower Mainland:

BC Population ~ 4.2 million (stats canada)
Singapore Population ~ 4.4 million
Size of Burnaby (sq km) ~ 98.6
Size of Delta (sq km) ~ 336
Size of Singapore (sq km) ~ 692

So Singapore has about the population of BC, and is about twice the size of Delta.

For the record though, Singapore is a big urban city, where you can have Butter Chicken delivered to your house... It's not way out in the boonies like Delta (apologies to Terry and Michelle / Elliot and Seija). Although, being in Singapore does make it difficult to grab a coffee with said friends in Delta.