SUTD’s swimming pool is so cool!!! It’s free for students and facilities here are very convenient. It’s my dream swimming pool and it would be better if my home school can have facilities like this. It’s quite enjoyable for students to rest and swim here. When tired, benches are so comfortable! It’s so nice!

Compared to our home university, SUTD campus has a relatively small scale. But it instead, has a better design of the whole environment, such as classrooms, the library and some extracurricular space. Studying in SUTD is more smooth and convenient with all those amenities. I want to share some designs which I really appreciate.

The most agreeable place is the library and I think there is hardly a student who isn’t willing to study here for a whole day. When I step in the library for the first time, the impulse of study soon rose from my mind. The copy machine, discussion booth, ubiquitous iMacs and various kinds of seats perfectly satisfy all the requirements of my dream library. Study in SUTD library is quite pleasant and enjoyable for me.

Second I want to mention the separate classroom design. One day I accidentally came across a staff moving the barrier in the classroom, magically two classrooms merge into one larger classroom, such an interesting design allows teachers and students to have more flexibility and that’s the biggest strength of SUTD.

After living in Singapore for these months, I still couldn’t be versant with understanding Singlish and fit myself with this strong accent, but I’ve found some features that characterize Singlish.

First off, it strikes me with a short, flat and fast rhythm with several strange accentuations and pauses. My Singaporean classmates told me that Singlish is kind of a slang mixed with Malay, Tamil as well as Chinese. That’s why they have some special words and phrases which don’t even exist in English. Another impressive feature is they tend to shorten sentences to streamline the message delivery process even though it’s incorrect in terms of grammar. And their sentence structure is often directly translated from mandarin, for example, if they want to know the time, they just say “Now what time?” instead of “What is the time now?” Sometimes it also makes things easier to get across for us Chinese.

Other features like adding the modal particle “Lah”, repeating words and dropping the last syllable of the word and the like. All of them are emblematic of Singlish and distinguish Singlish apparently from any other language.

Having known that HBD flats are what most Singaporeans dwell in, I was very eager to find out what it looks like inside those common buildings, as well as the differences between them and the common apartments in China. So far I have visited two HBD flats and here are what I’ve found.

 

The first HBD building I visited is The Pinnacle Duxton. It’s located downtown, a few minutes’ walk away from Outram MRT station. The modern-looking complex comprises of seven 50-story-tall buildings joined together by a lounge bridge at the top. I came across it on the internet as it was recommended as one of the best spots to enjoy a spectacular night view of Singapore. The view didn’t disappoint.

 

The second visit was due to a private invitation. Kay Jin, a friend from the course Entrepreneurship, invited several friends and me to his place for some local food. The building was close to Tampines MRT station. Kay Jin’s aunt was sort of an influencer on Facebook because she’s constantly trying out new recipes. We had some chicken rice, fried prawns and pot-stewed meat, and I dare to say that they’re tastier than anything you can find in a hawker center.

At this week’s event, I made some friends with the kids there. When I arrived, Caden was playing the Ukulele, singing with his favorite Youtuber. And I played with him, finding we were on the same level. Then he introduced his lego character to me. I learned that there was a game that popular in those kids – Gacha Life. Caden was crazy about it.

Then we went out and played in the playground. Though I was a little afraid of high, I climbed with them. We lied down and chatted together, Caden told me he has a twin brother called Gavin, but Gavin was playing at the court.

At the end, we went back and played the guessing game which I didn’t know the name. Caden was really good at the game.

Hope to see them next time!

It’s my favorite programme indeed!

At first, we were going to mentoring with primary school students. But they seemed don’t need any help haha. So I talked to the teenagers there, finding them were all high school students. They kindly asked how I found SG, and we switched IG. A girl named Nurelysha was especially warm.

After that we played badminton together. I cooperate with the local guys, and it allowed us communicate without saying anything. The most interesting thing is that a kid wanted to challenge me on one on.

At the end of the event, I got friendship, happiness and health.

On 19th September, which happened to be the center’s 10th anniversary,  we Came here the second time, I felt more relax. I was not only more familiar with my teammates, but also with the kidney failure. And I have known that the patients were so  strong in the face of the terrible disease.

I talked to a middle-age man this time. He was really humous. He describe himself as an optimistic and hard-woking man. He used to be a chef, and he enjoyed delicious food his whole life. He even brought his own dinner to the center. He said that one can only be happy when having a good meal. We also played the game Bingo, and we were so lucky that we won the prize every time. At the end of our conversation, he invited An Jingchen to his house to cook together.

It was such a sweet memory!

It’s the first time I went to the Kidney Dialysis Center. A lady kindly introduce what kidney failure and kidney dialysis are to us, and told us what we need to take into consideration with the patients.

I was nervous to talk to the patients at the first place. But I realized that they are so optimistic that the conversation is more than relax.

We were with an old man this time, he told the story of himself. He said he was also leading a volunteer work team. He believe if you do some good to this world, the world will reward you too. He loved his family and his own life. Though kidney failure beat him, but he will always beat it back.

 

12th Sep

We were divided into several teams. Because we didn’t know each other, I was nervous at the first place. But everyone was sooo nice here, especially our leader Valen. We finished our mission quickly, and won the third prize! We felt each other connected when doing all this.

After the game, we were going to paint a T-shirt. I drew a pikachu and a national flag of SG on it. At last every team showed their T-shirts and had fun.