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Well, here's my 1500th post. I wanted to necro the oldest thread I could find for my 1337th post, but instead I wasted it on some dumb 1-liner somewhere. I have to think Aerisky for reminding me about this. Oh well. I'll make this a meaningful post.
Some background about me. I've spent the first 21 years of my life in Singapore. I spent the next 3 years doing undergraduate studies in the UK, and now I've been in the US for 1 year doing a PhD. Almost everyone wants to experience life outside of the country that they were born in.. some people don't even get a chance to travel overseas for a holiday. So the last 4 years of my life has been great, right? Well not really.. the grass is always greener on the other side.
My undergrad life in the UK was rather comfy. I studied in London, which is in many ways similar to Singapore. Furthermore, there were hundreds, even thousands, of Singaporean students in London. Take a walk around campus and you'll definitely meet up with another Singaporean. Being 10000km from friends and family wasn't so bad because of the massive Singaporean community, and you could communicate with your loved ones with the click of a button. In a sense, it was a home away from home. Another difference was the experience of living alone. You have to cook, clean and do everything yourself. In other words, no one is there to pick up the shit you left behind. It wasn't so bad because all Singapore guys have to go through 2 years of compulsory military service, which teaches you how to live independently (fuck you, all you PES C chao-kengers).
Then I graduated. So I moved on to do my PhD in some random city in the US. That was the first time I understood the meaning of "culture shock". Take Singapore, remove half of the buildings, and convert every remaining building to a low-density building. Then remove 99% of the public transport network. Add a much higher crime rate where it isn't the best idea to walk around alone at night. Now imagine getting around without a car. That kinda sums up my initial experience of the new city that I'm gonna live in for the next 6 years.
While it sounds like I just reached hell, it wasn't the case. The people here are really nice. When I arrived at the airport, I met a guy who was helping to bring newly-arriving international students to their new residences. He even drove me around to buy stuff I needed! Not a bad first impression, I must say. The people that I'm working with are also very friendly. They won't hesitate to offer me a ride when I didn't have a car, and they are very eager to teach me the tricks of the trade.
The community that I hang out with has also changed. Back in the UK, there were so many Singaporeans that you could literally hang out with only people from the same country as yourself. I think I hung out with Singaporeans:other nationalities at a 2:1 ratio. However, in the US, the Singaporean community is a lot more disperse. There's a much smaller community in the university that I'm in. but I don't hang out with them often. The only Singaporean that I meet on a regular basis is the one who's in the same department as me. None of the people that I talk to on a regularly are from Singapore. It was a big change from what I was used to, but it's a good change.
I've gone back to Singapore once a year, and good food is always here to greet me. Singapore food is really fucking good, let me tell you that. Any dumb kid who thinks that Singapore food sucks is dead wrong. There's food from all countries: Thai, Chinese, Indian, German, Brazilian.. you name it. The best is still local hawker food; nothing beats its taste, variety and price. I could literally eat it everyday for the rest of my life (except that it's usually rather unhealthy). At my location in the US, there's a restaurant selling pretty authentic Singaporean food, but the price is 500% more expensive. Not something I could eat every day...
My mentality has really changed over these few years.
The first time flying to UK to start my undergrad studies: Fuck yeah, studying overseas!
Flying back to start my second year: Going back to Singapore was fun, but studying overseas is pretty fun too!
Flying back for my third and final year: The final stretch before graduation. Let's do this.
Flying to the US to start grad school: Fuck yeah, going to the US!
Flying back to start my second year: Ugh.. I don't wanna go back.
Why did my thinking change so much over the last 2 years? I guess the novelty of studying in a different country has worn off. All the excitement has passed, and now what's left is finishing my graduate studies. Plus, I am getting old. I can really feel that my youthfulness has left me. The prospect of being separated from my family for 5 more years was particularly painful. A few years ago, the thought of spending my entire future away from Singapore was constantly on my mind. Now, I'm having second thoughts about that. The opportunities for doing research in Singapore really sucks balls, but I'm giving serious consideration to that.
In summary, living overseas for me has been a really enriching experience, although I've probably spent too long doing so. I don't regret it, but I don't think I want to spend the remainder of my life living somewhere else than the country that I was born in. After going through all of this, I think that it's probably better for a person to spend about a year doing so; you'll never experience a similar degree of freedom and independence when living in your home country. If you're still young and such an opportunity comes up, grab it. But beware, after spending too long overseas, you'll truly understand the meaning of the word "homesick".
I miss home.
 
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Damn, this was cool. Thanks for writing this. I feel like I just got a lot of insight.
It's kind of hard to be excited about living so far away from your loved ones for so long. It's like a forced vacation except without the fun since you're just spending your time working and studying. I wouldn't want to spend more than a year away from my home myself. Good blog. Thanks for sharing
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I know what you mean when you say culture shock. I thought I was a world traveler when I spent 4 months in France, boy was I wrong! I spent 6 months living in China and that was absolute culture shock. A fantastic experience, but I don't think I could do it for 6 years.
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Leaving friends and family is probably the number 1 reason why people don't live overseas. Even though you can communicate with them via email, skype etc, the feeling if really different when compared to talking face-to-face. Facebook is a mixed bag; you can communicate with people really easily, but the feeling sucks when your friends are organizing meet-ups via events/PMs and you're inside them -_-'''
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cool bro im thinking of teaching in china or korea for a bit soon, so this was a good read for me
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There's a good med school by me, where when you walk a few blocks down, you might run into the type of people who do drugs on the street while shooting guns off like fire works.
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On August 15 2012 04:22 Nymphaceae wrote:
There's a good med school by me, where when you walk a few blocks down, you might run into the type of people who do drugs on the street while shooting guns off like fire works.
Sounds like Baltimore. My friend who's studying there is telling me a lot of tales about that place..
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On August 15 2012 04:29 Heh_ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 04:22 Nymphaceae wrote:
There's a good med school by me, where when you walk a few blocks down, you might run into the type of people who do drugs on the street while shooting guns off like fire works. Sounds like Baltimore. My friend who's studying there is telling me a lot of tales about that place..
Not baltimore. Not going to name the school, because I don't want to offend anyone, but there was a school that I went to in which there was a girl who tried to run over her ex-boyfriend, but it turned out she ran over a girl who looked like her ex-boyfriend. There was one girl who died, because she couldn't afford an abortion, so she used a coat hanger, and was bleeding too badly. There were 2 foreign guys from I believe Puerto Rico on the baseball team there. They ended up punching this guy's sister, in which they were in an Indian tribe.
Hard to explain this, but the tribe kind of acted like a gang I guess. They would drive around the baseball field during their practices with baseball bats, boards w/ nails, and rusty scissors almost every day for 2 years. The baseball players ended up dropping out completely, and went back to their home country supposedly. Not sure if the Indians ever caught them alone or not..
This is kind of really hard to explain, because so much is happening, and it happened so fast as I remembered it. I was up late at waffle house one night, just sitting there by myself eating a waffle. Then like 20 black men knocked down the security guard there, and ran over to this girl. The girl got up on the table, and took off her stilettos, and started swinging at the 20 mob of black guys. Then the Indians came in, while the 20 black guys were grabbing this 1 girl, and they just sat down at the table. Then a peg-legged black guy slowly comes in, and that's when I was like wtf is going on? The black guys ended up running out, as the cops were arriving. The black guys just started to flash their guns and knives, screaming things like we own this city. The Indians just ignored them the entire time, like it happens almost every day.
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Cool blog man, enjoyed reading it and gave me lots of insight. I will be studying overseas next august.
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On August 15 2012 05:39 Nymphaceae wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 04:29 Heh_ wrote:On August 15 2012 04:22 Nymphaceae wrote:
There's a good med school by me, where when you walk a few blocks down, you might run into the type of people who do drugs on the street while shooting guns off like fire works. Sounds like Baltimore. My friend who's studying there is telling me a lot of tales about that place.. Not baltimore. Not going to name the school, because I don't want to offend anyone, but there was a school that I went to in which there was a girl who tried to run over her ex-boyfriend, but it turned out she ran over a girl who looked like her ex-boyfriend. There was one girl who died, because she couldn't afford an abortion, so she used a coat hanger, and was bleeding too badly. There were 2 foreign guys from I believe Puerto Rico on the baseball team there. They ended up punching this guy's sister, in which they were in an Indian tribe. Hard to explain this, but the tribe kind of acted like a gang I guess. They would drive around the baseball field during their practices with baseball bats, boards w/ nails, and rusty scissors almost every day for 2 years. The baseball players ended up dropping out completely, and went back to their home country supposedly. Not sure if the Indians ever caught them alone or not.. This is kind of really hard to explain, because so much is happening, and it happened so fast as I remembered it. I was up late at waffle house one night, just sitting there by myself eating a waffle. Then like 20 black men knocked down the security guard there, and ran over to this girl. The girl got up on the table, and took off her stilettos, and started swinging at the 20 mob of black guys. Then the Indians came in, while the 20 black guys were grabbing this 1 girl, and they just sat down at the table. Then a peg-legged black guy slowly comes in, and that's when I was like wtf is going on? The black guys ended up running out, as the cops were arriving. The black guys just started to flash their guns and knives, screaming things like we own this city. The Indians just ignored them the entire time, like it happens almost every day.
Hollllyyyyy shitt. That's some drama going on. I certainly don't think that the city I'm in has that kind of gang business/crime going on.
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Aww I missed this blog. And problem yo, nice 1.5k post :D
Hm I don't think I have anything constructive with which to respond but it was a good read. Cheers! Sort of like a mini-life story, really interesting. Also wtf at nymphaceae's story.
Good luck on your PhD! Not sure what field you're looking into, but best of luck on your research. Publish or perish! (jkjk) Here's to many more 1.5ks of posts on TL 
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On August 16 2012 10:27 Aerisky wrote:Aww I missed this blog. And problem yo, nice 1.5k post :D Hm I don't think I have anything constructive with which to respond but it was a good read. Cheers! Sort of like a mini-life story, really interesting. Also wtf at nymphaceae's story. Good luck on your PhD! Not sure what field you're looking into, but best of luck on your research. Publish or perish! (jkjk) Here's to many more 1.5ks of posts on TL
Fuck... publish or perish. So you've heard of the worst nightmare of people in the field of research hahaha.
I'm doing medical science research.. which means that it's very hard to publish because it's so competitive and there's a possibility that I might get scooped =/
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Ahh I see >__<
Yar, really tough, some of the competitiveness is just ridiculous. Keep calm and read/watch manga/amine I suppose~
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I wish you wrote about the experience more, not just express your overall feeling of being homesick. Unless you did study 24 hrs a day and didnt see much outside of campus grounds.
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So people with different tastes from you is dumb?
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so much to write about too... do you feel faceless in a white world? do you think you can never blend in? there has to be something that you cant accept here in US
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On August 16 2012 11:56 Azera wrote:
So people with different tastes from you is dumb?
Youre too young to understand that hes right though. but its cute that you bit
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On August 16 2012 11:50 ecstatica wrote:
I wish you wrote about the experience more, not just express your overall feeling of being homesick. Unless you did study 24 hrs a day and didnt see much outside of campus grounds.
I could write on forever... Summary of my undergrad life:
Traveled around half of Europe during semester breaks. Budget travel in Europe is amazing, you can travel on 50 euros/day including flights.
Went skiing during winter breaks. Fuck yeah, skiing for 5-6 days consecutively is the best thing ever. Except by the 4th day, your knees hurt so much that they don't obey your commands.. until you're about to fall off a cliff.
A ton of activities organized by the Singapore students organizations in London. From small 1-day events to creating a full musical from scratch. The things you can do when there's hundreds of students in an overseas land...
Friday nights were LAN nights. A friends' apartment turned into a LAN shop. Bring your own laptops and play any LAN game like CS, Dota 1, CoH.. We even had a switch to create our own local network lol.
Yeah I studied really hard to stay at the top of my class. I studied Biology, and the exams were entirely essay-based. No free marks >,< The UK system goes by marks and not by a bell curve, so I had to work my pants off for my first class honors. I had some friends in engineering who didn't even need to show up for the final exam to secure a first class -_- fuck all of you.
And London campuses look crappy =/ It would suck to stay in it 24/7 (some people really do). The nicest campus grounds are in Oxford, the place is so awesome. A good place to study, but I don't think it's a good place to call your home.
On August 16 2012 11:56 ecstatica wrote:
so much to write about too... do you feel faceless in a white world? do you think you can never blend in? there has to be something that you cant accept here in US
When I first arrived in the US, I stuck out like a sore thumb lol. I can tell the difference between American and British English, and Singapore tends to use the latter. I had to switch my vocabulary a bit, like elevator = lift, bathroom = toilet, trash = rubbish... etc. I can never get the hang of biscuits. In the south, "biscuit" has a totally different meaning from what I'm used too lol.
My race causes me to stick out even more. I'm Chinese, so I'm an obvious minority. In campus, it isn't so bad. However, if you take public transport, I'm the only Asian dude and if I'm lucky, there might be one white dude. Weird people start talking to me about weird topics O.o More reason to own a car lol.
And Singapore food is so fucking good if you haven't tried it yet, you have to!
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On August 16 2012 11:58 ecstatica wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2012 11:56 Azera wrote:
So people with different tastes from you is dumb?
Youre too young to understand that hes right though. but its cute that you bit
Hes right because you share similar opinions?
Its just the whole 'I like it and so should you' vibe Im getting.
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On August 15 2012 02:46 Heh_ wrote:
I've gone back to Singapore once a year, and good food is always here to greet me. Singapore food is really fucking good, let me tell you that. Any dumb kid who thinks that Singapore food sucks is dead wrong.
Nah, fuck that. Vastly prefer the food in the US. Being a Caucasian PR might cause some bias there.
Finished a first year studying in the U.S., anyways, and never felt homesick - coming back to visit Singapore almost felt like leaving home to travel. I'll have to see if my mentality changes over the years, though. Good to read about experiences like yours.
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EPT
