Thursday, November 3, 2011

Singa after three months!

All the group projects are due the coming weeks, we have only one week of lectures left and the finals finish in 20 days….. AAAAH the Singapore experience is coming to an end!!!! How crazy is this, as I can remember arriving as the day of yesterday. Everything about Singapore seemed exciting and perfect, well now we know better ;). My parents and brother visited me last week and they pointed out the cultural differences to me again, while for me this all got normal and I’m used to it. We spend 5 days in Bali and 6 days in Singapore and it was good to show them all the places I’m spending my time here.
It’s hard to get a real impression of Singaporean people as they have very different personalities, but especially act differently in different contexts. In school I found out that there is a huge difference between the students in my marketing/business classes and my sociology class. In marketing and business they are not that keen on working with exchange students, they are competitive and go for their own success. In sociology class I made some true friends, we have lunch together, we talk about various topics and I get the feeling they actually do fun things next to their study and CV boosting activities. This is quite rare here in SMU!
One of my friends’ girlfriend is a stewardess of Singapore airlines and some classes ago he told me she bought me pindakaas & stroopwafels. Well isn’t that sweet?? In my service processes class I’m in a project group with 3 Singaporeans and they are so focused on grades, school and their own peer evaluation. After the project we have to grade our team members on how they performed in the team and I get the feeling they only work hard for that, they try to give me the introduction of the case each week, so they can legitimately give me a low peer evaluation grade and their selves higher. Weird right?? OK, again, this sounds negative, but you can also see the Singapore education system in a nicer way. Everybody works very very professional and I definitely learned some important skills which are going to be so useful for working life later. For a presentation we dress up and we really perform seriously, while in Tilburg we only think about finishing and passing the presentation. I went deep into various companies, we wrote a 50 pages report for a Thai restaurant, we wrote a promotion campaign for Cosmopolitan, we analysed the service processes systems of companies varying from Club Med to Sands Casino. This was all very interesting and I love the professional approach to these kinds of things. I’m wondering if this would be possible in Tilburg, because the culture in the Netherlands is not really to excel and try to be better than others. We are more working towards the questions, while here they’re always trying to find ways to do more than the question and differentiate from other groups in a certain way. It’s hard working, but I have to admit it makes me such a good feeling after a successful presentation or finished report.
Well, for me exam period is starting, so I’m spending my days in library. Luckily the best way to get distractions from studying is planning my travels for December and January. As I finish the 24th of November I have two months of travelling!! In January I’m doing volunteer work in Vietnam and I’m so excited for this! Scared of getting homesick?? I’m more worried about getting homesick back in NL. Yesterday I went to Arab street (the Turkish district) for dinner and a shisha, sitting outside till late in the evening in wearing nothing more than top and shorts. How’s the Netherlands ;)? I realize I’m quite lucky to have this experience here in Singapore. So a little promotion for Singapore here: if you love nice weather, travelling, new cultures, delicious food, many exchange students (500 in SMU!), a dazzling city AND are you willing to get education in a totally different, inspiring and motivating way? Apply for Singapore!!! It’s amazing!
And, I decided I want to do a second exchange in my master year, so recommendations are welcome!!

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