Expat cooking woes

I became a expat on saturday...
In ancient times, there were adventurous souls like Marco Polo etc who used to travel to unknown lands bearing their king's messages or whatever….for the last two days, I have been seriously doubting if these guys were given a choice by the kings…I mean why would someone agree to go to all these strange places ….seriously…I landed in Singapore on Saturday…thankfully the service apartment which has been arranged for me is really really nice in terms of decor, location etc etc...
When I surveyed the apartment, I found that the service apt ppl had left a couple of maggi packs…for souls like me who wouldn't want to walk even 10 m for their dinner. Anyway, I go to my really cool kitchen to try and cook that pack…and whoa! what a kitchen it is...a big cooking frame, a sci-fi type oven and a grill, 10 sizes and types of spoon, bone china cutlery, wine glasses, a fridge with nothing in it and what not…the immediate challenge was to find out how to use the burner...there were 4 of them with around a 10 knobs, all looking the same…the easiest option obviously would have been to call up room service and ask them to tell me…but I thought over it and then suddenly realised that I have nothing else to do anyway…so I took it as a challenge…sat in the kitchen for half an hour just looking at the model, surfed the net, the ultimate saviour, to see if the company has put a user guide online, even went to the adjacent mall to check if I could find a home store where I can ask the salesman to demonstrate how to use the thing etc etc….finally, it was late evening, I was hungry and was about to give up and call KFC (no found through net) when I thought, " let me give it a last try"…I sat there…looked at each knob carefully…then discovered that there were signs painted around each of them indicating which burner were they corresponding to…then the next problem…I searched the whole kitchen but there was no lighter/ matches in the whole apartment…given that the Singapore guys are pretty thorough in whatever they do, this was a surprise…so started thinking about that…by this time it was already 9:30 pm and I was really hungry….sometimes it is the hunger and the prospect of having to get ready to go out and have dinnner which puts those bright ideas in your mind...there was this inconspicuous looking small knob which had no signs around it and I thought that was curious...so started twiddling around with it...apparently I could click it without anything happening...but sound it made reminded me of the sound which a lighter makes...click...suddenly it all fell into place...there was a inbuilt lighter...10 mins and I had a steaming bowl of maggie before me. The Maggi here does not taste the same as the one back in India...it is somehow thinner and smells different but then a hungry man at 10 in the night does not care :-))
the weather here is hot & humid...rains quite frquently....but it is breezy too which is a big relief. There is a big bookstore very near to the apartment (as near as the Baskin Robbins outlet from office, back in bangy)...haven't bought anything yet (except a adapter for my lappy) but it is bigger than the Crosswords in Brigade Road...so should be interesting. Buying the adapter was quite an experiences too with me raoming around with the plug in these big malls and showing it to incredulous salesmen who would not udnerstand why a plug has to be that shape :-))
Anyway this was the initial report...would keep updating frequently.