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.

Back at UBC I was learning Beginners’ German from a German PhD student whose lessons were quite fun and engaging. Even though he was unsure of certain grammatic rules, we always forgave him because beads of perspiration would form on his head even in the midst of winter. Our German textbook introduces grammar step by step and we were just getting into past tense. Learning was in short sentences. I was already struggling with so many rules to remember and vocabulary to memorize, but I managed to get by with pastel colours.

Here in Fudan my classmates are done with grammar rules and usages. My current textbook is filled with PASSAGES and during today’s lesson I was completely lost when the teacher read the passage and the class started analyzing sentence structures. Usages and grammatical rules are briefly reviewed in Chinese and I can’t really follow. There’s way too much I need to catch up with, and I’m not sure if I can handle learning a 3rd language with my 2nd language in such a short time. What is 第1-4格respectively? And then there’s 强变化动词，不规则变化动词 (irregular verbs?)，不定式 (indefinite?)，现在时(present tense?)，过去时(past tense?)，完成时…

I am so dead.

Going…Going…Gone.

I haven’t had time to sit down to reflect, but what I know now for sure is that the past 4 months has been nothing short of pleasant, fun, and wonderful.

Much thanks to my housemates for giving me insight into Canadian culture and helping me with all my needs, and all other friends who made this sojourn so enjoyable I find it hard to leave. Mostly, it’s thanks to the friendly, and always-going-out-of-the-way-to-help Canadians and their pleasant habits.

It’s 2.30am now and the cab I booked will be arriving at 7am. Still, I have not finished packing.

So I have to pack now, blog later.

The next time I blog, it’ll be across the border, down where it’s not as cold.

At UBC, in Vancouver, in Canada. The final 10 days (till my next visit, of course!).

Slowly, I’m trying to cut the strings of attachments.

I’ll always revisit the memories created in this lovely liveable place, and with its people I befriended so easily (you must know how anti-social I was/am in Fudan). It remains on the top of my list of places to live/retire in (if I can afford to).

(And of course, the place to sign marriage papers if someone asks)

Click on the pictures below for pictures of UBC, and other memories in Canada.

Hey I submitted my photos to UBC’s Go Global Photo Contest just in time before the deadline. Nothing fantastic, just wanted to try out for fun. Nevertheless……….

VOTE FOR ME!

Sorry, I couldn’t put it any other way without sounding 不要脸. Haha.

I recall being forced to write compositions on accounts of being trapped in a lift back in Primary School. Be it a continuation story, a story based on pictures, or just a set-titled composition, we’ve all written about it during those front-teethless years, even if we’ve never had that experience. For 22 years in my life, I have never been stuck in that claustrophobic environment.

In fact, lifts, other than images conjured up by horror flicks like The Eye, have always been the creator of sweet (or bittersweet) memories for me. But that’s not the topic for today.

So today I can actually write a true account of how it was like being stuck in the lift, and compensate for all those primary school years when I couldn’t choose that topic or simply couldn’t come up with an accurate account. But since I’m staying away from writing (other than necessary essays) because of a growing phobia, I’ll just leave it to your imagination, haha.

Keywords: 3 girls, 30 minutes, 7 rescuers, dying ventilation, the lift kept going up and down, but the door just wouldn’t open

No pregnant lady with a burst water bag, no plunging elevator, or any other drama involved. We were happily crapping away to lighten the mood while the lift went up and down, like talking about how the leftover from lunch that we packed would last us for one night, but that we didn’t have enough water. The creepiest part was probably how the lift went to floor zero (there is no button for this), and when the rescuers shut the power without warning in order to stop the lift from moving to get us out. Pitch darkness for 3 minutes, and then the ray of light burst into relief of 7 faces staring at us holding our cellphones above our heads for light.

I suppose it’s quite amusing for those on the outside to find that the lift they called for took so long to arrive and then when it finally does, hear girls shouting through the thick door for help. Someone even said “are you stuck inside? Oh, have fun!”

Other than that one optimistic student, I thank the kind souls who helped us call the relevant personnel to get us out.

To date, I’ve been stuck in a lift, experienced two blackouts, and four five six seven evacuations because of fire alarms, all within this short stint at UBC. Exciting stuff, huh.

Add 24 hours with 16 hours time difference from your home country, and you get 40 hours on your birthday! That’s if you count your birthday starting from midnight of the day according to your birth country, and then only ending after midnight of the country you’re in! Haha

I had a very healthy birthday cake this year! Carrot cake! And it was very yummy!

Wah I think my arms are going to be as big as thighs.

The cake was baked by 2 of my lovely housemates! Thank you Alison (left 1st row) and Allison (centre 2nd row)!

And thanks to my Singaporean friends who were also present at the cake-cutting and sang the Chinese birthday song!

You have to admit that the cake is really special! Sorry for the exclamation marks throughout this post. I’m just very touched and thankful! Haha. And it’s the first time I had a carrot cake for my birthday! And it looks like a big donut! Haha…

But of course the most unique (and loveable) birthday cake I ever had was last year, my 21st’s. Made of jelly. Made by her.

And thank you all happy-birthday-wishers!

This year I have had an excessive number of people who otherwise wouldn’t be aware of my birthday wishing me a Happy Birthday via Facebook. Hmm.

There was a blackout in the entire campus yesterday around 1pm, for about 15-20 minutes. I was in one of the classrooms at Buchanan and we just pulled up the blinds and continued writing our assignments. I heard that other classes ended immediately ‘coz of the blackout. Bleh.

Then in the evening at about 7.30ish there was a blackout again. -_- This time for about 2 hours. This happened just after I posted my previous entry on my whining about work overload.

Neighbours from the other unit came over and we played Cranium (this rather interesting board game that consists of components like charades, pictionary, etc).

If blackouts happen more often, can I use that as an excuse to not do all the work that are due?

Playing with candles. X. My name lah.

No it’s not that cold in Vancouver, well, not yet at least.

My schedule book has so much orange ink scrawled all over for the next couple of weeks, depicting all the deadlines for the many assignments and term papers. Arrgh!

I won’t be able to delight you with pictures of this or that mountain, nor anything exciting for the next few weeks I guess.

What’s lined up for me for the next three weeks: German writing assignment, German Test, World Lit assignment, World Lit term paper for writing workshop, World Lit final term paper, Brit Lit term paper, MLT term paper, Technical Writing Report, Technical Writing Report Presentation, Creative Non-Fiction writing assignments…

And then there’s the exams in the following two weeks.

I don’t know which I should start doing first.

Who says students on exchange have it easy?

My dear friend Winnie commented that Reina and I, who are on exchange in Norway and Canada respectively, only blog about “nothing but fun and more fun”, and that the only time we talk about school and books is when we boast (my word, not hers) about skipping classes (I think this was directed to me ‘coz I bragged so in one of my previous posts).

So I decided to blog about the not-so-fun here!

1. Making it to the top of the list has to be the worst household chore: Clearing Compost. Compost is the garbage that is decomposable, such as the vegetable leaves that you throw away, and whatever remnants of food you dispose of while you’re cooking or whatever. You don’t know how awful it is until you have to clear this mountain of colourful soiled variety of rotting food compiled by 6 individuals with uniquely distinct different choices of food. You do remember how in Fear Factor, the daredevils are compelled to gulp down the horrible concoctions stewed by the evil producers of the show? Eggs with unknown powder, chilli, peppers, sauces, etc.? Add bones, veggies, carrots, apple cores, potato skin, egg shells, and whatnot to the mixture to have a better idea of what we have to take turns to clear here. I really dread it when it’s my turn to have to transfer them to the compost bin downstairs that is filled with a hundredfold of your contribution. And guess who volunteered to scrub the compost bin?

2.  We have loads of reading too! And by having our fun our reading piles up, so we end up having to work doubly hard to catch up after dawdling away! I think we feel immense pressure to grasp this opportunity of the exchange tightly, and so try to pack in as many activities as possible, but end up in pain later (after going for a long weekend gazing at mountains and other beautiful natural landscapes, you want to run away upon returning to the mountain of books on your desk). So you might run away again. And the whole cycle of pain and pleasure begins. again.

3. We have to plan our trips/explorations around quizzes, tests, assignment deadlines, and exams! So we can’t be full-blown travellers because of these obligations that we simply must fulfil! And Reina just whined about having a 5-hour long project meeting today, and she’s gonna have a 4-hour long one tomorrow! Thankfully I don’t have such torture treatment. I only have half-hour short house meetings, where we discuss the best way to clear the compost hahah.

4. We (okay, I)  succumb to lying. I missed a German Quiz this Wednesday because I overslept (but it wasn’t because I was out there exploring like I should be!). Instead of getting a zero, I managed to convince the professor to not take that quiz into account for my overall score. How did I do it? I’m not telling.

5. Okay this list is getting hard to formulate. I’d say…the weather! Both Reina and I need to endure the bitter, penetrating cold! Hers is worse though. In Norway they barely get any sunshine and it’s really depressing with all that fog. For me, it’s gloomy with all this rain. Our days are getting way shorter, so we have even less time to go out and have fun!

I admit we really only talk about our adventures and never did mention other important aspects of our exchange. The differences in academic learning, the different schools of thought, the different systems (or the pleasant experience of having one) in higher level institutions, etc. Hmm…another day okay?

I need to pack right now for my shopping trip to Seattle Premium Outlets with my housemate tomorrow. Heh.