Home?

So I'm back in Singapore. It's been a good 4 weeks now and I've been catching up with family and friends amidst serving out my mandatory 8-week attachment. Didn't take me long to get right back to what Singaporeans do best: complaining :D. I decided to let some of it out here.

Looking back, I'm glad to have survived spring term. It was ridiculously stressful, finals were difficult as hell (I had Organic 2 right before History and an impossible steroid annulation on organic which I couldn't solve even with an extra 1.5h), and Biology was just absolutely disappointing. But the critical reading/writing for History was really amazing, although I'm not looking forward to doing it again. I missed out on Aikido and I realize I actually do miss trudging over to West Gym on Mondays / Wednesdays to wield that lovely wooden blade and defy gravity for ~80 min.

I've also realized how much I miss Northfield, and what a beautiful place it is. For one, it's definitely less warm there. There aren't any annoying mosquitoes. You don't need to go farther than Division to get any groceries or stuff—no stupid malls, hordes of mindless people (zombies?), arms a-flailing, bumbling right into you from all sides. You don't need to take some mass rapid transport crap, where you're expected to squeeze with 8 other poor sardines into a 1-meter square according to the airy CEO who probably has been awake early enough to see what human traffic looks like at rush hour. There are no ants lurking in mysterious corners, waiting to devour any cake/candy/cookies that you leave on the table. People smile at you when you cross the street. Drivers smile at you when you cross the street, and don't attempt to run you over. People say "please" and "thank you" and don't glare at you as if you have some disease when you do. And Northfield doesn't flood. No one expects that it should, and no one is expected to expect that it should.

Worst of all, I love my job but (almost) dread my boss. She's patronizing, has double standards, and is not in the least bit helpful. And she's a local, supposedly. Born and raised here, studied abroad, arguably made it big. While I hoped that she would really be a mentor for the short time there, I now realize that just holding a civil conversation with her once in 2 days is a pretty huge accomplishment. The supposed purpose of this attachment is to allow people in the program a chance to experience the highlights of a research job and learn some useful lab skills (of course while mobilizing the entire batch of 50 as convenient labor).

At Carleton, I have never had any professor—not one single time—turn me down without having another student waiting to see him/her, or without offering to meet me at another time because they had some other important business to attend to. I have never had them accuse me of wasting materials, nor assert that because I did something differently from them, logic predicated that I had no common sense.

And that's the biggest irony: I felt more "at home" when I wasn't. I was welcomed and well-taught by "strangers". I didn't have to beg to know what I was doing wrong. So what's so great about being here anyway? I think I'm just about ready to face it; institutionally, we are second-class in our own country.