Lessons have started. I am taking International Finance and Mainstream Chinese Philosophical Thought (what a mouthful). The finance class was held similar to the NTU seminar style. Anyway, I think my finance professor taught in Harvard. And apparently she knows the Dean of SMU's Business School. Cool. Did I mention that there's this cute Canadian Asian with uber huge eyes in the class? Power. She can compete with Hamasaki Ayumi for the biggest eyes relative to face size.
Mainstream Chinese Philosophical Thought was interesting for the first part about the contrast between Western and Chinese philosophy. How Chinese philosophy has no transcendental beings or ideas as compared to Western's Christian God or the Platonic ideals. Then she got to the Chinese history part about Zhou Dynasty and I dozed off.
Anyway, it's a pretty cool mix of people around here. Despite being from the smallest country (in land area), the Singaporean contingent is the largest at 30+ or 40+ people. Must be the tution waiver. There are groups of Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Australians and Taiwanese as well while I've met a Mexican, a Swede and a Korean. I think the TV lounge will get quite interesting if there's a World Cup match between the countries of some people here.
I feel kind of out of place being here. Well, as a product of the Singaporean education system, I am supposed to be bilingual. But if I start sounding too Singaporean the ang-mos would fail to understand what I say. Yah I can try to speak to them with a slang and though it works better it feels so unnatural. As for the Hong Kongers, I don't understand Cantonese so I get totally stunned when the sales people can't speak Mandarin or English.
Really can't help but feel like being I'm neither here nor there. Like a Jack of all trades but a master of none. Never mind, there will come a time when Singlish will conquer the world. Then the world will become a better place.
Mainstream Chinese Philosophical Thought was interesting for the first part about the contrast between Western and Chinese philosophy. How Chinese philosophy has no transcendental beings or ideas as compared to Western's Christian God or the Platonic ideals. Then she got to the Chinese history part about Zhou Dynasty and I dozed off.
Anyway, it's a pretty cool mix of people around here. Despite being from the smallest country (in land area), the Singaporean contingent is the largest at 30+ or 40+ people. Must be the tution waiver. There are groups of Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Australians and Taiwanese as well while I've met a Mexican, a Swede and a Korean. I think the TV lounge will get quite interesting if there's a World Cup match between the countries of some people here.
I feel kind of out of place being here. Well, as a product of the Singaporean education system, I am supposed to be bilingual. But if I start sounding too Singaporean the ang-mos would fail to understand what I say. Yah I can try to speak to them with a slang and though it works better it feels so unnatural. As for the Hong Kongers, I don't understand Cantonese so I get totally stunned when the sales people can't speak Mandarin or English.
Really can't help but feel like being I'm neither here nor there. Like a Jack of all trades but a master of none. Never mind, there will come a time when Singlish will conquer the world. Then the world will become a better place.
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