PENGHUI:
Today was the most tiring day in the whole trip. We went to Wrenthem Outlets for the whole day with a huge bunch of shopaholics. I thought I would be able to find a kindred soul who will just sit down at a side with me bitching about the rest of those people who spend so long at shops, but THERE WAS NO ONE. Oh mah gawd. I spent the whole of like 6 hours walking around aimlessly after I bought what I needed (which was a pair of oakleys – they’re really cheap in the US!)
Anyway, Edward, Yong Cheng and I went to WELLESLEY in the morning. Even though there was no one around (since it’s summer AND a Sunday), the place was beautiful. It’s about 2.5x the size of MIT, with a freaking LAKE in the middle of the campus.
Yeah, I know right, this place is amazing. And it’s an all-girls college.
Anyway, yeah, we went to Wrenthem Outlet next, which is basically this huge one-floor shopping area. And once gathered and disseminated meeting times and all, zoom, we all went off.
Shao leading the gang.
It was a long day.
And it’s gonna be a longer day tomorrow. So I’m hitting the sack a bit earlier tonight, ciao! :)
YONG CHENG:
I got only one word to summarise the whole day – SHOPPING! Our plan for the day was to go to Wrentham Village Premium Outlets where there are many outlets selling goods at a discount. However, before even making our way there, Shao Hui brought Edward, Peng Hui and me to Wellesley to take a look around Wellesley College. Peng Hui wanted to go and check it out for his friend so I decided that I could take a look and know more about Boston as much as possible.
Wellesley College has really beautiful architecture. I feel like I’m in different world there...
A dragonfly on the tip of a bud. It is actually dead after being trapped in the spider’s web.
I guess it got stuck there after preying on smaller insects stuck on the web.
I copied Peng Hui’s technique – to show 2 different ‘worlds’ inside the chapel
and outside using the reflection of a window.
After that, we had our brunch at Dunkin Donuts which was surprisingly good! Shao Hui then drove us to Wrentham to meet the rest who were with Yuen Chau and Sun Jun. If you don’t know, all three of them are our future professors who will be in charge of our first year modules (:
We were able to get shopping vouchers the moment we reached the place because we registered beforehand. There were almost at least a voucher for each outlet and they are usually the kinds that offer “10% after $100 spent”. It can really amount to a lot if we spend much. Furthermore, American products tend to be cheaper in their own land rather than in Singapore, so it was really the time to get things we wanted for ourselves, families and friends here.
Edward, Ian and I spent a total of 7 hours in that area shopping while the rest went back earlier. Luckily Prof Shao Hui was okay to allowing the three of us to shop more. I really want to thank him because he was the earliest of the three professors to come and fetch us, and now the last to leave Wrentham. He even brought the 3 of us out to dinner after that. Really many thanks to him! :D
Well, now you see how helpful and spirited our professors are. I believe that we can all look forward to starting our term in SUTD with these professors who will give their best for their students. I think SUTD really put in a lot of effort into selecting the faculty too. All the professors are all very approachable and till today in this IDC Robocon Competition, Prof Shao Hui has been very helpful and patient to us. I really can’t wait to start school haha.
Alright, I got to rest early today, because work starts tomorrow again. This break was all well-deserved and I am raring to go for Robocon again.
Ending off with another scenery shot of a pond/lake at Wellesley...
EDWARD:
Many thanks to ShaoHui for taking time off his Sunday to bring us around the suburbs outside of Boston.
1. We visited Wellesley College, under PengHui's special request (quoting from Wikipedia, it is "a private, highly selective women's liberal arts college") Wellesley has a really lovely environment, and beautiful architecture. In short, its a romantic (academic) haven. Did i mention hugenormous as well? Compare its size of ~2,300 undergraduates occupying 500 acres of space to NUS's ~26,000 undergraduate and ~10,000 postgraduates occupying about 384 acres. See the luxury of space their students have?
2. Breakfast at Dunkin Donuts (: Apparently America runs on Dunkin' Donuts.. or was it just the police department?
3. A bulk of the time was spent at Wrentham Village Premium Outlets rushing from store to store to complete the checklist we prepared beforehand. Really appreciated that ShaoHui stayed back so we could clear our shopping list. Thanks man, ShaoHui!
4. Dinner at Wendy's. Cool touch-screen drinks dispenser machine. (apologies. no photos.) twenties and thirties of different drinks packed within one machine. Nice. Trendy concept. Let's consider bringing that to SUTD (:
5. To end of the day, we returned to where we begun. Dunkin's. bought a dozen of delicious donuts to share with our guys and soccer girl (:
It was great to get out of the hustle and bustle of Boston city and campus life to explore the sparse suburbs. Couldn't have imagined our travelling means without ShaoHui's help. TGFSH. Hooyah.
Well, let's look forward to returning to our robots tmr.
HEI KERN:
Today was an exhausting day. But the source of exhaustion is much different from the rest of the days. For the rest of the days, exhaustion came from countless hours cracking your mind to solve problems with mechanical constraints as well as machining and fabrication. But today, exhaustion was purely mental as well as physical. I was mentally stressed because I have got a whole list of items to buy with a limited amount of time. Because the shopping mall was a whole village, (no kidding; It was like a housing community) it was tiring to be essentially running around getting your stuff.
I was carrying bags of shopping produce by the end of the trip at 4:00pm. However, after closer examination, I found that I only bought one thing for myself!! I am not angry about the buying thing as I have already gotten what I wanted. My sunglasses!! Oh well :) At least I have made many people happy! :). The only problem I might have is if I had forgotten to buy for some people.
JIN KAI:
It was a clear-weather Sunday, a perfect day for engaging ourselves in a very rigorous sport of......shopping! We went to Wrentham Village Premium Outlets, and basically scored a variety of bargains on clothing and accessories. No exaggeration in describing the place as a village....tourists came in throngs (yep that includes us =D ) seeking bargain basement deals in the outlet and factory stores there.
After dinner, we hit the Target store in Boston for a taste of everyday shopping in the US. The store was in a cluster along with other stores like Home Depot and Office Max, essentially a one stop shop, albeit in a rather 'ulu' place for procuring everyday essentials.
Batteries have been recharged...back to work tomorrow!
PS: Big thanks to Sharolyn and the professors for helping organise the day's events for us!
KELLY:
We began the day today with breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts, and then were lucky to have Prof Shao, Yuen Chau and Sun Jun drive us to Wrentham Premium Outlet mall (about 45 minutes away). It was fun and rather shocking to see the guys unleashing their shopaholic sides. I found myself a few deals too and left the place satisfied.
We had dinner at a place near Target and I ordered the ribs which were delicious. It was nice to be able to talk to Yuen Chau and find out about his experience living in Boston and also more about SUTD. After dinner, we went over to Target and I bought some sweets back for my friends plus some funny graphic tees that were on sale.
Work resumes tomorrow and I hope the rest of the competition goes well!
GUAN XUN:
Today was free day! Which meant we went shopping! I've realized that clothes are really much cheaper here in the US than in Singapore. Branded (as in Nike, Adidas, Reebok, etc.) tees are almost always under US$20, and regular tees you can easily get for 10, if not less. Needless to say, I had a ball of a time. I bought 7 t-shirts and 4 polo tees, if anyone reading this was wondering.
We drove out to Wrentham, an hour's drive from MIT. Our future professors Sun Jun, Yuen Chau and Shao Hui (kindly!) drove us there and back and basically wherever we wanted to go. One observation I made that some may find interesting was that car rental businesses can do pretty well here in the US. One of the cars we drove down in was rented - a Hyundai Sonata. A brand new one costs about $30,000 and they rent it out for $150 a day. After some high degree, complicated calculations, we find that the vendors can recover their profit in just over half a year! So that sounds like quite a viable business for people who want to do that in the US.
The shopping area that we went to was a collection of many factory outlets of various popular brands, ensuring that there was something for everyone. We spent most part of the day there taking advantage of the coupons we had pre-printed. For dinner, we headed down to TGI Fridays, which we have in Singapore except that this was America so this shop was located with a bunch of other shops (most of them were pretty large) selling various things. For example, they had an art and craft store, a toy store, etc. Basically a shopping mall spread out on the ground and adjacent to a ginormous open air carpark, like one might observe in a typical American movie.
Tomorrow, I need to wake up at 6.15am. Let's hope I will manage to!
IAN:
We visited Wrentham Village Premium Outlets today. Premium Outlets is well-known for being the world's finest outlet shopping where one can save 25% to 65% on designer and name brands. (http://www.premiumoutlets.com)
Wrentham Village Premium Outlets is located near the town of Wrentham which is beautifully depicted in this tapestry near the information counter.
Before we started our shopping spree, we queued up to get our discount coupons.
And off we go!
After some nice discount shopping, Yong Cheng, Edward, Shaohui and I went over to eat Wendy's. As we found out, Wendy's in US has a similar menu selection to the outlets in Singapore. But the food tastes a lot better and the drinks are refillable. How I wish Wendy's in Singapore was as good as its American counterpart!
