I got back from a week-long trip to Singapore on Sunday evening, and started a new and my final quarter at ICLP on Monday. It’s been an exciting couple of weeks to say the least.
Singapore was great. I went to visit the Queks, some of the nicest and most generous people you’ll ever meet, who lived in LA for a year when I was in 8th grade. I went to Singapore back in 2004 to visit them, but it had been far too long since then, so it was nice to have the time and be close enough to easily make a trip. The best part was just seeing them and hanging out, but I also got to go to a number of museums, see different parts of the city and some of the new sites, play video games (for the first time in… 10 months?), and even do an awesome Boeing 737 flight simulator, all a lot of fun, and made better by the company.
And the food was fantastic! There are all sorts of new interesting combinations of Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, North and South Indian, European, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much or so well for an entire week in my life haha. All in all it was a fun week, and I also got to learn a lot more about the “experiment” of Singapore, and discuss some of its advantages and disadvantages with friends old and new. Everyone was fantastically nice and I really had a great time.
It was interesting speaking English consistently again, and I definitely had trouble at times—an interesting phenomenon many Light fellows, I’m sure, share as well.
The fun can’t last forever, though, and I was back to school on Monday. I’ve got four new classes that I’m looking forward to, and things got back to normal pretty quickly: class in the morning, study in the afternoon, dinner, and gym at night. It’s been a busy week though, with lots of random things coming up, so it’s been a long one too.
My classes are:
1. Zhang Menglin’s autobiography, Western Tide (西潮)， which describes the time from the turn of the century through the 1960’s in China and Taiwan—it should be an interesting look from a personal perspective at that period of history.
2. Radio Chinese. This is probably the class I’m looking forward to most, where we listen to and create our own radio news, program, and plays. It should be really fun and interesting, but a lot of work.
3. An outline of modern Chinese history. This should be a slightly more relaxed class, as I’ve studied modern Chinese history before, but it will be nice to review it, discuss it as we go along, and do it all in Chiense.
4. Legal debate. This is an interesting class, with the goal of having a formal debate with the NTU debate club towards the end of the semester. It should be good to learn a new set of vocabulary, improve speaking fluency, and learn some debating skills as well as logic. It’s a bit disorganized now it seems, but that should improve in the upcoming week (hopefully).
In the meantime, we have a (rainy) 3-day weekend because of Tomb-sweeping festival, which I will be spending in Taipei, and getting ahead on my work in preparation for a quick trip to Beijing next weekend for my godfather’s daughter’s bat-mitzvah, where I will also get to meet up with my parents! Should be fun.
