There are so many people to thank for helping me keep my sanity intact through these trying college years. Don’t know if you all think this is too sappy of me though. Haha. Bear with me, for this is probably the first and the last.

First and foremost, I would like to extend my eternal gratitude to my parents. This goes without being said: without them, I wouldn’t be here.

To the teachers who have inspired me and pushed me to achieve my potential these four years, I thank thee, all two of you. To the rest of the teachers, thank you for giving me a pass grade. To some of them, you might want to consider a career change, teaching is not just a job.

As an emotionally dependent idiot, I owe the woman I spent 4 unforgettable years with for being there through my foul tempers and for being a lasting punching bag. She saw me through my transition from a feisty youth to a resigned chinese university student, and stayed. When my temper called for it, she flew to Hong Kong at my whim, and even to Shanghai just to help me with my unpacking when I moved to a one-bedroom apartment. She has been relentless in giving all she can to me, even when I long stopped deserving it. You know who you are — thank you.

To MissY who’s somewhat grudgingly still by my side, I know your patience with me reaches your limit many a time, and I thank you for bearing with my bitchiness, nagging, and laziness with household chores. Let’s hope this year of pseudo married life will bring much laughter to our new home. Thank you also for being my pillar of support, and more importantly, school administration informant these four years in college. Haha. Thank you for staying by me when I was at my lowest, and for forgiving me when I couldn’t even forgive myself. 

To CG who is currently in lovely London finishing up his Master’s, thank you so much for all your encouragement and advice through the trials and tribulations these 4 years. Also grateful for your help when I had to move one too many times, and for our many reasons to celebrate with treats! Your wisdom and academic talent have also been of great help to my little academic pursuits. Thanks mostly for keeping it real when the rest of the world seemed to sway the other side. Much credit has to be given to you for the sanity I have today. 

To other FUSSA-ians, although your recollection of times with me is probably of yesteryears, I do sincerely appreciate the help and support available from FUSSA these years. I wish all of you success in your endeavors.

To Vanessa, my closest Chinese friend, thanks for daring to be different from the herd, and looking out for me when most didn’t. I appreciate your honesty and cherish our years of friendship in Shanghai.

To my other Chinese classmates, thanks for being patient with my Chinese and Mandarin, and listening to my presentations with accented English even when the teacher was not in the classroom. As we embark on our different paths after this, I hope we remember the good times when we acted out “Cupid and Psyche” and other fun skits in English class.

To my one and only Italian friend Marta, your independence and courage have been of great motivation to me, and I thank you for our heart-to-heart talks, and all your encouragement that would not have been possible without your open mind.

To Birte, hailing from Hamburg, thank you for imparting some of your mature wisdom on to me. Meeting you at that fateful Irish talk was a lucky day. =)

To Yuka, thanks for sharing your interesting china experiences recently, and I do hope you achieve your goals in the near future.

Connie, thanks firstly for feeding me with great food and letting me introduce you to unhealthy snacking and life-saving instant noodles. My stomach is grateful for your occasional treats of banana bread, Reese’s and your bag of half-eaten chips. Thanks for being so cozy with me so quick at Gage, and helping me make my stint in UBC a very memorable one. 

Thanks also to my other roommates at Gage, who made 6 pax living extremely comfortable, even though we only had one toilet cubicle! Thanks loads for sharing your utensils, but mostly for giving me intimate insights into Canadian culture.

To Grace, Elena, and Madeline, thanks for the great times in UBC! The meals, the drinks, the skipping class to climb Grouse Mountain (not once but twice!), and the talking cock before and after MLT class.

To my beloved supportive friends back home: Winni, Reina, Celine, Joanne, Lay Shan, Shufen, Shuh Tien, Shaina, Dino, Yiling, Yunling, Wz, Js, etc. Thanks for all the support and encouragement! I’m also grateful to some of you for calling/webcaming/skyping/msning once in a while to share intimate details of our lives. It’s absolutely gratifying to know that friends back home still care despite the distance, and it’s life’s great luxury to be able to chat over roti prata etc with pals whenever I’m back in Singapore.

Thanks dot for always showing concern and offering medical advice at critical moments! 

Nicole, we seem to only meet long after the sun sets, but, good times.

Joice, thanks for the inspiration to take the road less taken.

To anyone else I may have missed mentioning here, you are missed and thanked too!

Starting full-time work tomorrow (1 July), and I guess it’s farewell to academia. 

Although I’ve had many misgivings in the past with Fudan University, I sang the school song on the day of commencement. Not so much because I felt proud or whatever, but ‘coz it’s quite a good piece:

Fudan School Song:

Goodbye bouts of nostalgia, hello full-blown adulthood.

Does it mean I speak impeccable English, can be referred to as an English grammar handbook, spout bombastic English vocabulary, or authorized to correct your English? Barely. If I’m qualified to do anything, it is to show you how ugly my graduation photo and certificates are (name and id numbers have been unskillfully removed by me):

Thanks to CG for sharing this song with me, What do you do with a BA in English?

What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.

I can’t pay the bills yet,
‘Cause I have no skills yet,
The world is a big scary place.

But somehow I can’t shake,
The feeling I might make,
A difference,
To the human race.

I just sat for my final paper in university, possibly the very last one of my life. It was for my Shakespeare elective. Everyone left the exam room complaining about it, because the final mini-essay question was not in the text at all, nor did he give us any clue that he’d drop such a bomb. We studied excerpts from 9 plays: The Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Henry IV, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. But the critical exam question was on The Merchant of Venice! O, judge o you Gods, what fools he makes of us.

In spite of that, I’m very pleased. This university life is over. OVER! 

Since nostalgia hasn’t kicked in, let me say all this now. I’m so glad I don’t have to sit in those toilet-stenched classrooms with creaky fold-down wooden chairs paired with completely vandalized wooden chipped off tables anymore letting voices of boredom weave in and out of my semi-wakefulness, resting on my one too many photocopied copyright breached textbooks distributed at almost no cost. I’m even more elated at the fact that I don’t have to write on A3 brown thinner-than-toilet-paper exam answer sheets while witnessing how students are referring to small pieces of paper in their pencilcases, underneath skirts, or under caps. Or more recently, students leaving the classroom for the bathroom and miraculously filling up their papers with the right answers after they return.

I wish I could say I’m also done with the administration people in my university, but alas, I still need them in order to graduate.

Peace, ho! Studies and exams, I bid thee farewell.

I received the following text message from my class representative:

“通知：周四没来拍照的同学请发一张个人生活照到＊＊＊＊＊，最好是风景照，照相馆的人会负责PS上去”

(Notice: Those who didn’t join us for photo-taking on Thursday, please send a casual photo of yourself to *****. An ideal picture would be one with scenery as background, as the photography studio staff will be responsible for using photoshop to place you in the faculty group shot.)

The powers of photoshop.

Or the Chinese power of enforcing everyone’s “presence” in an important group photo?

Singaporeans are mocked, laughed at, and made fun of because of our reputation with our language(s). Can’t blame foreigners or ourselves for doing so because these exist:

(found this powerful image at STOMP’s website, under “Friends of Stomp”)

For the majority of Singaporeans, being Chinese, we pretty much have a confused mother tongue, or a different concept of monther tongue, and as the ads imply, we do not speak good English, and we need to be told that Mandarin is “cool” to be encouraged to speak it. These “encouragements” come in various embarrassing ways:

Go Malay and Tamil! Our hopes are on you guys to show the world we do speak a proper language or two. Or else we’ll soon have Malay bagus! or Tamil अच्छा!

———————————————————————————————————————-

This semester has seen Fudan’s course selection system introduce the English interface for the first time, which is an incredible feat, knowing the jwc people. However, of course, there are English issues such as:

Obviously a direct translation from Chinese, but sounds kinda cute?

There are some things I’m so glad to hear the last of, although they can be very entertaining (only to outsiders, probably). The following two incidents were related to me via MissY, therefore there may be slight differences due to interpretation or in the name of story-relating.

———————————————————————————————–

Every semester, the police officers (not sure if that’s the term for them, but they wear the same uniform I think?) from Shanghai’s Exit-Entry Bureau come to the Foreign Student’s Dormitory (with the exception of 2007, but I was away anyway) to assist us in our residence permit applications. MissY, out of sheer frustration with the application procedures and cost (she has applied more than 8 times, thus handed in the same amount of ID photos of herself) decided to voice the incredulity. Sometimes we can’t believe how, for a lack of a better word, retarded they can be, or how retarded they think we are.

MissY:  Why is my residence permit only valid till 31 July when that’s less than 6 months from now? Why do I have to apply every half year and pay 400RMB each time? That’s so expensive! I paid only 800 for an American visa that is valid for TEN YEARS!

Police Officer: Your residence permit is given according to the dates the school provides, and it’s 400RMB for a permit within a year. 800 for an American visa? Impossible. You must be referring to US dollars. So if we do the calculations (does it in front of her), every year is about 500RMB! So you see, our Chinese residence permit is not expensive!

MissY: Then why do you keep needing a photo of me?

Police Officer 1: Because you grow prettier every year! Hahahahaha

Police Officer 2: You see, all you give us is a small photo, but we give you such a big piece of paper in your passport!

MissY: …

———————————————————————————————–

MissY was in a meeting with the committee members from the various foreign students’ associations. From this semester, it is compulsory for all “self-supporting” students to purchase insurance. No insurance, no residence permit. So the insurance company came to give these student leaders a briefing on how the insurance works.

When it’s an EMERGENCY, instead of calling for the ambulance at 120, we are to call this person-in-charge’s number. Which by the way, will not get answered after he knocks off at 5pm, and during lunch hour. The eligible hospitals have a section for foreigners (!) but we are NOT to go there or else we will not be able to claim for anything.

MissY’s friend 1: Okay, so let’s say I’m dying right, and as I’m lying on the stretcher, I must make sure I tell the medics “不要带我去外病，带我去普通病!” (Don’t take me to the foreigners’ section, take me to the ordinary section!)

Such poignant last words, huh.

MissY’s friend 2: Make sure you’re only dying before 5pm, and avoid lunch hour too.

Insurance guy: We, at XYZ insurance, care a lot for you guys! Last year, one student was admitted to hospital after being unconscious. He was placed in 外病 ‘coz the medics found a foreign passport on him. I visited him the next day and the first thing I did was to transfer him to 普通病, and when he woke up I told him our insurance company will consider whether to pay for his night’s stay at the foreigner’s section. So you see, we really care a lot for you guys!

———————————————————————————————–

Haha?

…or sugar or pepper.

Always always always. Can’t trust only one source, and you must always assess the source.

For instance, certain Singaporean Fudan University (or collectively affectionately known as FUSSA) seniors filled us (then) wide-eyed wide-jawed juniors with misinformation. (Dont worry CG, this doesn’t involve you)

Myth #1: Foreign students cannot apply for exchange.

My discovery: Lo and behold! I stand here before thee.

Myth #2: Don’t live out of campus on your own, if something drastic happens, you will only be discovered after the rotting smell comes on.

My discovery: My bachelorette pad was possibly the best place I ever stayed in. You do know that a single room dorm doesn’t have an alarm that notifies people of unconscious bodies either? And lastly, living with others can prove to be one of the worst decisions of your life. The very person who said this had to move from her supposed dangerless, perfect-roommates place to the dorm cell due to roommate (actually, housemate) conflicts. I am also living with someone who has had too large a share of roommate (this time, really a room) disputes.

Myth #3: Avoid taking buses in Shanghai, the sardine can syndrome is an outrage of modesty for girls. Take taxi la, not expensive.

My discovery: Buses are the cheapest way to get around, and you get a huge slice of life on them, even if it means holding your breath under someone’s hairy armpit (yes, females too) and having a fish tail from someone’s marketing poke you in your shins. Taxis chalk up a lot of money in the long run, and you run the risk of listening to “Singapore is very clean” for the millionth time if the taxidriver is chatty and investigates his passenger’s background. It can actually be fun on buses in Shanghai, not many places give you a free roller-coaster ride like an overpacked bus rushing for time.

Myth #4: Contact lenses are not safe to buy.

My discovery: Clear vision and gentler on the wallet.

Myth #5: FUSSA is fun!

My discovery: is better left unsaid.

Nevertheless, the seniors deserve credit for helping me a great deal when I first arrived in Fudan. And fellow Singaporeans look out for each other in necessary times, like some of them tried to help when MissY and I were stuck in BKK, so I’m grateful.

But yeah, don’t go around preaching your own ignorance. More importantly, have a good filtering system in your own head.

Merry Christmas!

What is bad and good on this Christmas day is that I had my German exam, but it’s the last foreign language exam I have for my undergraduate life! So now that it’s over and done with, I’m free from the struggles of German grammar! Until I decide to pick it up again in (what might be the near) future.

However, however, however. I might probably only have tonight to rejoice in breaking free the chains of German grammar, and to feel joy in Christmas, because from tomorrow I’ll have to work on a thesis paper, and three other exams next week, and two more the following week. It’s like counting down towards New Year as I count down the number of papers I have left to prepare for, huh.

By the way, I’m sure you guys have noticed the increase in sponsored posts in recent weeks. Pardon them, for they are for supporting this site and personal needs.

After I’m done with my exams on 5 Jan 2009, I’ll hopefully be joining the foreign students’ trip to Beihai, and then to Seoul with MissY, Singapore for CNY, and then KL with my dear mother, before coming back here. I think this year I’ve done more outbound travel then go around Shanghai. Oops. It’s always our own backyard that we neglect. Should mow that once exams are over then.

After four years of sedentariness I got up really early last Saturday to join a dragon boat race! 首届上海高校外国留学生龙舟赛. The inaugural Shanghai colleges’ foreign students dragon boat race.

Was female captain for the day and may I say it was a very very stressful role to play, having to be involved in certain unnecessary (or necessary) politics. Can’t divulge much but let’s say it put my EQ to the test many a time when someone had to be out of the team so that someone else can be on it just because. Wasn’t just once, wasn’t twice either.

Nevertheless it was interesting to see how us students of various colours rowed together in this predominantly Chinese sport. But it was far more spectacular (or a spectacle) to witness the power of talking to figures of authority, because rowers were swapped practically in the middle of the lake, during the opening ceremony, despite the cameras and all the VIPs, just because someone was extremely displeased to be out of the team.

And then there was the middle-aged guy captain from a certain water-stingy country who took things in his own hands a great deal, asked for my opinion without any intention of respecting it nor heeding it, and now he’s harassing Grace for English help. Help.

Well the crude anger from a week ago has dissipated, and this race day is certainly a memorable one in years to come.