This blog will be serving as a travel diary as well as a compulsory, although not exactly very formal, report of my next five months in an exchange programme in Singapore.
Let me give you a short briefing about myself and this trip.
I am studying networking technology in Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. I started already back in 2002, but after a few delays I am now finally about to graduate. However, before handing in my master's thesis, I wanted to try out living a couple of months abroad.
I had a few alternatives for the exchange destination – in the far west and the far east. Europe was outruled because of the language issues and simply because it was just not very interesting; I could easily do longish holiday trips all around the Europe any time. The USA or Canada might have been strong candidates if just our university had had better connections to the American universities. Now there were only a couple of never-heard-of schools available for the exchange.
The far east, on the other hand, offered quite a few exciting choices. At least Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Singapore were on the list. Having considered the conditions in each country, I thought Singapore would give me the nicest experience without too much hassle. I filled in the applications to Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore.
About a half a year later, I eventually received a response. It was showing me green light to NTU! I heard there had been unusually lots of people applying there from our university, so I was really happy of getting lucky this time.
NTU provided me with detailed instructions on what to do before the trip. They are using an online system for everything, including applying and paying for the VISA, booking an accomodation in the campus area and so forth. It's been working just great, I haven't had to mail or fax a single document.
It is now T minus 6 days to the launch. Most preparations (like selling the car) have been carried out. I still need to some course selections and dump my personal stuff away from my apartment. And I'll have to have final beers with my friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment