Leading by friends from SUTD, we explored Singapore as a team.

It is a wonderful journey, with exhausting body but full spirit.

We visited sights of views around Singapore and Singapore is really beautiful! The buildings here are really well-designed.

I was honored that being invited as the student presentor to represent SUTD to give a speech at the forum.

The Forum is quite interesting and let me learn quite a lot about Temasek Foundation, Singapore and SUTD. Hope that this Foundation and Scholarship can carry on and offer more people with this learning opportunity!

We participated in the TFI Learn Journey for a day.

I met with some new friends from NTU, NUS and SMU, they are from Combodia, Thailand, Singapore and China.

During the meeting, we were asked to discuss about what problems we will face with in 2050, this question is quite interesting and makes us rethink about the scocial melieu.

Thanks TFI!

I realised the difference between the big cities in China and Singapore is that the race and religions here are more divergent, thus the interaction between people may be different. People from the same countries, race or religions will tend to gather in groups and students of course will do so.

However, to fix this and encourage people to communicate and interact, I think SUTD has done very well. SUTD is small, so it sets many places like the exhibition area in the library and the rooftop accessed three main buildings, where students, staff and researchers can meet to discuss and communicate freely. These were shared with me by a professor I met in SUTD’s library, when we are both watching the exhibition there.

One other interesting thing I learned about is that before students graduate from Zhejiang University and most of the other Chinese universities, we complete a graduation thesis or design work on our own. But in SUTD, students have to finish a capstone project in teams in order to graduate. These teams are randomly allocated using an algorithm, so the team members may not know each other. And they are basically from different pillars, which increases the difficulty of communication.

Some students may think this is a terrible idea, placing them in a setting, not familiar with anyone in their team. However, in my opinion, it is a wonderful way, which obligates the students to communicate, connect, and walk out of their comfort zone.

We volunteered in Tampines West Community Centre to mentor the children at YEAH programme.

at Yeah program, I also reflected on my mentoring experience with the children and, compared that with my previous volunteer and teaching experience in a remote village in western part of China.

I found some differences. Singapore is a developed country with good education system. Hence those children whom I mentored are basically all well-educated. Even though they call us ‘mentor’, we are mostly playing the role of a friend to company with them, playing games and sports together. While in the rural western part of China, where schools and educational resources are scarce and the local economy is underdeveloped and primordial, children really need good teachers and people from outside the community to bring hope and new ideals. Otherwise, most of the youth will graduate from school and back home to help out in the family animal farms.

However, I do feel that though the children here are better educated, they may not be happier than those in the west part of China. Some of the children shared they are stressed because of exams. This is very similar to the big cities in China, where enrolling a good school is the students only aim.

The study journey is alike a competition because there is only one destination. In big cities, you can only choose those jobs, and as population grows and people keep migrating into cities, we either choose to use our innovation to create new jobs or compete against others in order to survive.

As volunteers, we participated in the Handicaps Welfare Association Flag Day to raise funds for the wheelchair bounds.

During the flag day, I was astonished by the people’s generosity. I was just standing there, holding my can while smiling at passer-bys beckoning them to donate. There were people walking up to me to drop coins and dollars in the cab I was holding. Many people gave more than 2 dollars and one even offered 10 dollars.

So during the day, I was reflecting about the reason behind Singaporean’s generosity. Are they really so wealthy that do not care about their daily meal’s expenses?

By observation, I thought there were 2 reasons which could explain this. One is that the reward system works well. Rewarding people with stickers is really interesting and useful. In this instance, I saw parents using this opportunity to educate children to give. And this becomes a habit and many students come to donate on their own.

But the other reason, the real reason, is that people do trust the fund raising system. They believe the money they donated will be used in a right way, and the systems in place discourages fraud. Imagine that if there is no such a system or welfare, people will not be able to discern which charity is genuine or honest. I searched online and discovered that Singapore has a really strict law on the raising funds. Parties are required to obtain an approval from the Singapore Police Force or the National Council of Social Services to obtain a fundraising permit.I think that China still has a long way to go on the education of giving and laws to govern this.

This Saturday, we went to the universal studio to get a temporary rid of the school work. We have great fun playing the roller coasters. The show performed in the water land was really fun. We also enjoyed taking photos in the dream scene with different postures.

I had witnessed how beautiful the light was in Little India when there was a celebration of Indian.

The light gates were all along the street, where people bought things and held other events. One thing impressed me a lot was there was Singing competitions of India by the road.

Then we enter the area of markets. Too many kinds of colorful things shone inside the market. I could feel the happiness of people there.