How A Singaporean Undergrad Decide Silicon Valley Is The Place

Honestly? I didn’t know that it was the place I should be heading to. Silicon Valley was this dreamy upmarket glorious place with big names that I’m accustomed to seeing on the web, because I use all these services when I turn on my laptop — Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Apple etc. Big names that people are used to associate with “billion-dollar companies”& “tech startups”. I didn’t have much interest in these companies except that it should function on my laptop when I needed them to.

In January 2013, I took a Leave of Absence from the National University of Singapore, to work at a mutual friend’s traditional family business in the construction industry — an industry I had been very familiar with, having had to grow up with much involvement in my mom’s career. We were revamping the business, with hired external consultants to spearhead the next phase of growth. In the meantime, we decided to embark on a new project to build a database system to facilitate the communications between construction workers on-site, and project managers who were frequently shuttling between the job-site and office.

I was hardly a technical person, and we started off with reading manuals on how to build a database. It was decided that we used Filemaker — a cross-platform relational database application (a subsidiary of Apple) — to build off our database for the company. Along the way, I was probably just stabbing in the dark, wondering what the hell I’m doing most of the time, until it became apparent that databases form almost every single foundation of the company. Of course, we got really excited thinking of the possibilities. Two young ambitious learners, holding the powers of technology, unbeknownst to them that it could wield great outcomes till very much later (well maybe only 3 months later).

And then, I got approached by a climbing friend to join Climb Asia to temporarily cover the Business Development Manager’s role in one of Singapore’s longest-history climbing gyms. In April 2013, I was like, why not? I have till August before I start the semester in school. And I was almost done with the Filemaker project. Working in a climbing gym, and being a climber at the same time had many perks. I get to climb for free at 2 of Singapore’s really established facilities till December 2013, even though I would have ended work with them in August. I got involved in the scenes behind climbing. It was enlightening and I saw tough work done by tough men.

During my 7–8 months of absence from school, I learnt 2 major lessons.

It’s fun to take a leave of absence from school to recalibrate what you want to get out of it
Technology has limitless potential

I returned to school again in August, friend-less in my own faculty since everyone had somewhat moved on to different classes. I decided, heck, it’s even more carefree to be able to choose my own classes and fit the schedule to my own timetable, why should I be living my college life around my friends’ interests / schedules / timetables? I got to make new friends in the Business school, do projects with new people I don’t know beforehand, and it really wasn’t as bad as some might think.

In March 2013, I posted on my blog about NUS Overseas College (NOC). It seemed really appealing. On 22 August 2013, 2–3 weeks into the new semester, I applied for it. Just because, WHY NOT?

Ding dong back forth with the application paperwork, some of the funnest / quirkiest interviews I’ve had for 2 months with the NOC office, sitting in my Finance class one afternoon, I received this email.

I jumped up and down mentally, my stomach was set on fire, I had a massive amount of butterflies, and then I was like SHIT REALLY? And that Finance class was the best class I’ve had in my entire college life. I smiled like a dork for the rest of the class, with everyone oblivious to what had been the greatest piece of news I’ve ever received in my inbox. I AM F-ING GOING TO THE VALLEY.

And, I had no clue where the hell Silicon Valley is, except that it’s somewhere in the USA. Noob. Well my first choice in the application was New York (the first ever batch) followed by Silicon Valley. It looked like I got my second choice. And on hindsight, I am so thankful I got my second choice instead. The months flew by like a whir, it was December 2013, I was on a plane, with very little packed, heading to the land of the free, with no one but friends I just made. YOLO.