At roughly 11:30 AM, I walked out of my final exam. Perhaps not as elated as I might have thought myself to be. There wasn't as much fanfare surrounding the completion of my 3B term here in Singapore, when compared to previous terms back in Waterloo. I believe that a part of the reason for this could be that the completion of exams back home usually meant that I would soon be heading back to Toronto, where I would spend a week or two relaxing at home before starting work.

This time, however, I'm not going home, and I will be starting work in a matter of days (May 11, to be exact).

What's more, while I may not be going home, all those around me are. In fact, Yushi is leaving for the airport within the next hour.

So while Singapore is the same environment as it has been for the past four months, I can't help but feel that it will be somewhat of a different experience due to the fact that I will no longer be living on NUS campus, nor will I see the familiar faces around me that I've become accustomed to.

So with that, stage one of my exchange in Singapore is complete, and I will be embarking on the second phase, which is the co-op term at RoviSys Asia. The formalities surrounding the internship are starting to firm up. NUS has finally received all approvals and documentation required from UW, and I have just sent off the final letter that UW needs to continue with the approval process on their end. CECS should be contacting my employer soon, and hopefully within a couple weeks time, my JobMine profile will be updated to reflect that I have arranged my own work term, and that I am employed.

As you may have gathered (or not) from my last post, I've been finding it increasingly difficult to bring myself to develop my Mandarin skills for rather silly, yet annoying issues. And with myself off campus and working in an exclusively English working environment (most of my colleagues will be Americans), I don't foresee as many friendly opportunities to speak Mandarin as my time at NUS had presented me with (namely my EE2001 project group, and Yushi).

Nevertheless, I suppose it's not a critical thing, and I should have more confidence to speak English anyway.

But I digress. It's sad that friends are leaving, and I'll still be here. But it's exciting that I'll finally be getting my wish of seeing what it's like to work in Asia. We'll see.