Hello everybody,
Let me first introduce myself to you. I am Anouk de Jong, a third year IBA student at Tilburg University.... but not really in Tilburg at this moment. Currently I'm in Singapore for my exchange. Why did I chose for Singapore? Well for various reasons, for students interested in business, Asia is at this moment ofcourse the place to be. They are really upcoming in the world market and I hoped the courses in university here will give me some ideas which I would never be able to learn in an European country. Another reason is the culture of Asia, I expected it to be different from European culture and that I would learn a lot here also for my personality. Then ofcourse there is the weather, which is perfect over here! Last, but not least, the location of Singapore, in the middle of South-East Asia offers perfect travel opportunities. Well, in my opinion enough reasons to go to Singapore.
I have been in Singapore for a month already (time flies when you have fun), and all my expectations are fullfilled. The weather is great, sometimes even too hot, the culture is amazing and in this month I have already travelled to Malaysia and Indonesia. My lectures have started two weeks ago, they are really interesting, but pretty intensive though. Let me start a bit at the beginning.
The first 7 nights I had a bed in a hostel called 'Sleepy Sam's', because I didn't had a room here. This sounds weird, but in Singapore it's pretty normal, most students arrive here and then start searching. After one day I found out that it's really expensive to rent a room here, but still, I have to live somewhere... After a couple of days we found a really nice apartment at the best location. 5 minute walk from the university and also a 5 minute walk from a MRT (metro) station. I live with 2 boys from Belgium, 1 from the Netherlands, 1 from France and a girl from France.
Since we found an apartment it was time for some travelling. So with 3 other Dutch girls I met at Sleepy Sam's we planned a trip to Malaysia. First 2 days relaxing on an island and after that 2 days in Kuala Lumpur.



After that weekend it was over with all the holiday, time for lectures. I'm taking four courses over here: Promotions management, understanding societies, customer relationship management and service processes. The classes over here are quite different from the classes in the Netherlands. They last for 3 hours and only 15 minutes break. The classes consist of max 40 students and your grade consists mainly of team-assignments, in class quizzes and class participation. At this moment, I am not more busy with my study as I'm in the first weeks of school in the Netherlands, but I think that will change in a short time. So I will keep you posted on that. So far Singapore seems amazing to me, the people are so friendly, everybody speaks English, the food is amazing, the parties are awesome, the university is very very modern (I'll post some pictures in my next blog). Well that's it for the moment, but there's a lot more to tell, so that's for my next blog!
Hi Anouk,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post, it sounds like you're having a great time already! We're especially jealous of the picture of the tropical beach, that definitely looks a lot better than rainy Tilburg at the moment... :D Good luck with your classes!
Kind regards,
Maaike