L’électron libre

First of all, all apologies are to be presented to the few readers of this category. The intraviews were supposed to be very monthly but things got very busy. It’s not there was no time for it, it’s just the mind was somewhere else.

NUS: The Exams and Lectures Experience

Last intraview was before the exams. Everything went very well, the level of difficulty and in fact education at NUS is much lower than what I expected from a uni so well ranked. I think the international rank of 9th best university in the world is a big joke. Singapore is known for selling fake illusions for its citizens and throughout the world but you cannot fake the quality of the lecturers and the philosophy of the exams.

The lecturers were basically barely English speaking. The first lectures my brain was 200% dedicated not on the content of the lecture but on trying to figure out intelligible words coming out from those Koreans and China Chinese professors.

It’s a big deal, it’s not like they were doing English as a favor for some special programs. NO! English is the MAIN language in SG. And they afford having terrible accents.

Add up to this the fact that a year-5 module is presented by professors whom mostly do nothing but reading their slides.

I was very sad that at such a high level of education, a university like NUS among the world’s best still teaches students to learn by heart, and score an A+ by doing the past exams over and over again. Absolutely no focus on inspirational understanding. One of those modules you are into, score at, and forget…Very sad.

Thank God, my research supervisor is absolutely excellent, which makes up for the cheap course-based academic education at NUS.

The Summer

Housing

Condo renting was canceled, owner wanted to sell all of sudden. So got a room with a few friends. There is currently great opportunities in this crazy market in Singapore. You could rent an apartment, sub-rent the rooms to make profit based on high rents, and target the exchange students and other short-term stayers for whom it is very hard to find something even at a high price.

Research

My research mission is done jointly with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), through the Singapore MIT Alliance. Spent the summer getting the experiments really started and read a few papers as well. The first results are promising. Cannot say much about the precise topic due to confidentiality issues but it has to do with converting heat into electricity, which I find really exiting knowing the plethora of examples of energy wastes through heat in everyday life.

Business Exploration

A subsequent hobby has been to sort out and specify tons of projects that had been pilling for a while. Strangely I am barely finished. There’s about 20 business projects and just as many technology-based projects. Not all are good, not all are fully specified, not all are viable on the markets, so there is still a lot of work to be carried out.

The business projects include very various things. The most interesting ones would create an immense added value to people shall that project meet success. Other projects are more experimental, and a few involve arts and fashion.
In any case, I think the year ahead is going to be very dense with business launches, successes and the failures that go with them, all intense moments !

A few god friends have joined Singapore for this term, among whom my friend and business associate Erwin. A few common projects will hopefully undergo massive specification now that we’re on the same piece of land.

Precisely one more year before the bird has to fly on its own.

The Traveling

After an OK trip to KL and Malacca (Malaysia) last semester, I have finally been to one of those beautiful islands nearby : TIOMAN ISLAND ! First time snorkeling and diving, it was extraordinary. It really is life changing: Regardless of the many underwater documentaries, my real deep awareness of underwater life was born the very day I first dived. It’s one of those life experiences that are scary but new, stressing but exiting. One of those experiences your fear the first time and you are addicted to once you’ve done it, yep , that’s DIVING !

Next trips soon: Perhentian Islands (Malaysia), Koh Phi Phi Island (Thailand), Bali (Indonesia) and Borneo.