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I have reached Singapore since a few days now and I’m loving the weather here. It’s not as hot as Shanghai and I feel like I can tan without getting sunburnt. I’m already a bit tanned by now. I am staying at Hillview with Lisa, a Mauritian friend who was studying at NUS and who is now working in Singapore. I haven’t seen her since 2004. We were both in the majorette team back in secondary & high school. She’s like a little sister to me. Staying at her place reminds me of the times when I used to go and stay over at her house back in Mauritius.
Lisa is at work right now and I am currently at Desmond’s place to upload some of the photos and blog a bit.
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I didn’t take a direct flight from Shanghai to Singapore. I went to Guangzhou first and then took Tigerair from there. Due to the rain, the plane was delayed by 2 hours.
I took a ‘Hot meal of the day’ and it was surprisingly good. A little tip: Pay in SGD. When paid in RMB, the prices were ridiculously higher. (On Tigerair, people have to pay for the meals and drinks because they weren’t included in the plane ticket. )

A typo mistake.

Yummy chicken egg noodles. My first time having a meal on the plane when it hasn’t taken off. We were all bored and hungry and the stewardess had to start serving food and drinks.

Doodles. We were bored.

Our handphones and the handphone chains that we bought at the airport. Desmond’s phone is the gold one, mine is the white one. I wanted to buy the red Olympic mascot handphone chain but it was sold out.

-_- Desmond did that. The one standing is his.

View of Malaysia from the plane.

Photo of Pulao Tekong,an island off the north-eastern coast of Singapore. If I remember correctly, Desmond said that it is a military training area.

View of Singapore from the plane. Desmond helped me snap this photo and then the plane was landing already.

This is the first photo that I took in Singapore.

I’m posting this photo because I just went to see The Dark Knight yesterday at Westmall.

I have been to only a couple of places in Singapore so far but what I can say for sure is that I love the food here. More photos soon. I went to Sentosa and Chinatown already. I’ll go to the zoo and the night safari this weekend. I have to check online about interesting places to visit here. I need to do some shopping too. I didn’t bring much luggage. Too bad I missed the July sales.

OUF!! I finally have time for myself now. My graduation ceremony was around a month ago and I have been super busy ever since. My sisters came to Shanghai for my graduation and afterwards, I was busy taking them around to buy goods for their new store. They left Shanghai last week to go to Hong Kong and now, they are back to Mauritius already.

My 2 little sisters. I took this photo when we were out shopping at Wujiaochang.

Evre since they left, I’ve been busy packing my things. I have to leave the International students dorm in a couple of days. I ‘have to leave’ because I’ve finished my studies. I’m on scholarship and the 4-year scholarship officially ends on the 31st of July. So it will be bye-bye dorm, no more monthly stipend from the government, no more studying, no more free books,no more free medical facilities, etc. I’ve almost finished packing my things by now and I still can’t get over the fact that I have so many stuffs. I’m going to move my things to my bf’s place tomorrow.

AND….. I’ll be going to Singapore for a month . ( and Malaysia too of course) I hope to be able to get a China tourist visa once in Singapore and then come back to Shanghai in September to ship my things to Mauritius etc. I still have no idea what I’ll be doing exactly. Job-hunting in China doesn’t seem likely. Not that I don’t want to but with all this Olympics thing going on, it’s hard to get a work visa now. Applying for other visas isn’t as easy as before. I know many people who have left China already. I love Shanghai but unless I somehow manage to get a job or an internship here(well anything that gets me a visa), I won’t be able to stay here. Anyway, I’ll see when I get back to Shanghai. Right now, I’m pretty excited about my trip to Singapore. I have been planning to go to Singapore since so long already and now I am finally going! hehe . I have bought my tickets already. Leaving in a couple of days.

As for my graduation photos… Well, my camera chose that particular time to go kaput again. Therefore, no photos taken from my camera. I will have to email my classmates to ask them to send me some photos that their friends or relatives took. My sisters took a few pics with their own camera but they left Shanghai without transferring the photos to my computer. I will have to ask them to email me the photos when they get back to Mauritius. I managed to get a few pics taken by the other Mauritians in my university and a couple of pics taken by Desmond. I’ll upload more photos soon.

With my 2 little sisters.(who are younger than me in terms of age but they are both taller than me,especially when I’m not wearing high heels.) Snif snif
In the first pic is Karine who is 2 years younger than me and in the second pic is Celine who is 4 years younger than me. Somehow when I introduce my little sisters to my teachers and friends,most of them ask me if they are my ‘real’ sisters.
ah…and the flowers are from all the other Mauritians in my university.

With Kailash and Vricksha.

With Karina and JN.

With Desmond.

With Deenoo.

Photo with some of my classmates.

We all got our thesis results.
I got a 优 (you) which means excellent. Everyone in my class passed the thesis. For the 24 people in my class, the results are as follows:
Excellent : 5 people
Good : 7 people
Medium :10 people
Pass : 2

The teacher was saying that compared to the students who graduated last year or the year before, we all did quite well. I think she said that because unlike the previous 2 batches of students, this time we all passed the thesis.
Thesis final result= Thesis writing 60% + Thesis defense 30%+ 10% for something else (I’ll check this on Monday. )

I didn’t expect to get such a good result. I was quite worried because I got asked 6 questions during the thesis defense. Usually, they ask only 2 or 3 questions. Well,according to my main teacher, maybe the other teachers were interested in my thesis.
I didn’t worry about my exams results but I was very worried about the thesis. Well at least now it’s all over and I know that I’m really going to graduate. The graduation ceremony will be on the 17th.

I’ve finally transferred photos from my phone to my computer. The quality of the photos taken with my phone isn’t good but I’ve stopped carrying my camera with me all the time now,especially ever since I keep having the memory card error problem. I don’t always have time to open up my camera and reset the internal battery.

I had my business Chinese final exam today. I’ve really enjoyed the classes this semester. One thing I’ll never forget about this class is ’synchronized swimming’.
During one of our oral business Chinese classes, we somehow started talking about the upcoming Olympic games. The teacher is pretty cool. She doesnt’ stick to the syllabus all the time. Sometimes we talk about the news,festivals and other topics before we start class. On that particular day,she asked a representative of each country to talk about the disciplines in which his/her country will be participating. One of my Japanese classmates,Fubu wanted to say synchronized swimming but he didn’t know the Chinese term for it. Therefore, he made a drawing on the board,showing two people upside down in the water and with their legs in the air. We understood the drawing at once and burst out laughing but it took the teacher a while to understand it.

(photos taken with my Samsung E908)

The Chinese term for synchronized swimming is 花样游泳(hua yang you yong). The Chinese characters were written on the complete right of the board so they aren’t really visible in this photo.

A closer look at the drawing.
Look at the legs. Or rather, look at the ‘toes’.

I love that drawing. It really made my day.