Two weeks ago, I was still attending classes in person. Last week, I was “on holiday” in Los Angeles (everything was closed) when we were informed by SUTD that we needed to be home as soon as possible. Two days ago, we were notified that we couldn’t fly via EVA Air because we were supposed to transit through Taipei and Taiwan had closed its borders the day before. Yesterday, we took a flight on Singapore Airlines home and starting from today, I’m serving my SHN notice for the next 14 days.
What was meant to be an 8-month exchange/holiday in the US, followed by a 4-month exchange/holiday in China has effectively been changed to Zoom classes, a local internship in Singapore and potentially doing our second exchange at SMU instead. My natural inclination is to whine about how COVID-19 had ruined what was supposed to be the best year of my academic life ever. Instead, I’m in a more pensive mood and while jet-lagged at 3am, I’m giving thanks for the best things that had happened in the past 2.5 months.
1. The Magic of Community
I first opted to live in a co-living space in San Francisco by myself, because all classes were scheduled to be there after Spring break and because I was impatient in attempting to settle accommodation arrangements with a few weeks left to go before flying off. I was living in a nice neighbourhood (though I was bleeding rent), the people were nice, and In-and-Out was only a 15 minute walk away (that’s super important), but it didn’t feel like it could be home for the next few months.
I guess the lesson here is something that I should have learnt back when I was interning in Tel Aviv, that in a foreign environment, the people you’re with matter a lot. I might even argue that they make all the difference, and I’m an introvert! Simon Sinek calls it a Circle of Safety, where one would be able to “survive and thrive regardless of the conditions outside”. Tel Aviv was a nightmare in many ways because I literally felt like I couldn’t afford to eat meat, and work felt mundane and meaningless. But I look back at the whole experience fondly now (probably with rose-tinted glasses) because my housemates (Clarence, Eunice and Sarah) and the good people at Hillsong Israel made my stay there exponentially better. From eating home-cooked lunch by the pier and repeatedly having dinner at the same restaurant for happy hour, to playing with kids on Thursday nights at church, it was good because of the people I was with.
And so because of the 9 people who took me in after a month — JJ, Haoze, Nicole, You Shan, Yi Xuan, Xiang Qian, Ian, Brandon and Chang Hsi, despite the dirty kitchen, pubic-hair ladened toilet bowl and the McDonald’s smelling house, it was an incredibly good 2.5 months run. I remember 3-hour movie nights, incredibly delicious and cheap home-cooked dinners (I kid you not, I don’t even miss food from Singapore) and our varied conversations very fondly, and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
2. The Magic of Silicon Valley
I attempted to watch Anthony Chen’s Wet Season on the flight back (sadly only made it through for 30 minutes) and besides the film being way too slow for my liking, the other part that was incredibly painful to me was not just watching how mundane the lead character’s life seemed to be, but how she also accepted this mundanity as her lot. As a teacher, while she was no doubt fluent and proficient in Mandarin, she didn’t seem like she was exceptionally good at teaching. Much of her day is also spent feeding and bathing her father-in-law (filial piety), wondering where her husband is (failed marriage?) and attempting to increase her chances of conceiving. No doubt her persistence is admirable, but I’m graduating next year and I have an intense fear of life being as such for the decades to come, though others will tell me that I’d be lucky to even have a job given the looming recession and the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I contrast this to Silicon Valley because my opinion is that regardless of our government’s repeated investments into developing the entrepreneurship scene in Singapore, I will argue that we will never accomplish what Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv have if we as Singaporeans don’t rebel against the way we are conditioned to think. The idea of a bell curve persisting throughout all national examinations and even in universities suggests that your performance is relative to someone else’s, and it doesn’t matter if your score is 60/100 and you got an A, because most people in your cohort couldn’t pass their finals. The idea of how getting a job is the end goal and not as a means to an end to our own personal goals, is also symptomatic of how we are conditioned for stability and reputability.
One metaphor I will remember about Silicon Valley is from our Entrepreneurial Leadership lecturer on how a pie is distributed. For many of us, if someone else wants to eat the pie, we instinctively associate it with ourselves getting a smaller cut. In Silicon Valley, they think about how to expand the pie, so that even if your cut seems small, it is still bigger than what you had before.
The other amazing thing is the sheer number of ongoing events in San Francisco. I was glad that I was able to attend quite a few in my short time there, from software engineering interview tips at Pathrise, to a Harvard in Tech seminar by women working in cryptocurrency, and even one on AI ethics. Besides the free food which helps to cope with the cost of living, it also reflects the diversity of tech interests in the area. With the dense population concentration in Singapore and the diversity of interests outside of tech, I hope we are able to facilitate a bigger knowledge-sharing ecosystem akin to Silicon Valley’s in time to come.
3. The Magic of a Big Country
The joy of living in a big country with tons of things to do and many sites to visit is only more pronounced because of growing up in Singapore.
I remember one night during my first few weeks in San Francisco, when I was tormented at the thought of spending another full day in the city because I had already seen all that I wanted to see and I decided to book a bus to San Jose just because I could. It turns out that San Jose isn’t the best place to visit without a car and it wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be, but it was the first time that I had seen a Tesla outlet and an Amazon Bookstore, which were both pretty impressive.
There were way too many things that I should have done if I had not attended classes so faithfully, but having the chance to ski for the first time in Tahoe, as well as a weekend trip down to Big Sur and half of Highway 1 and spending a day at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was still pretty good. It’s a gift to never be able to finish exploring your home country and while I’d miss being able to travel out easily, I’d have to settle for hunting down good food in JB when this crisis blows over.
In a period of time when you’re rightfully supposed to be thankful for good healthcare, being healthy and being safely back in Singapore, it’s hard to express why I feel like life has cheated us exchange students out of something. There’s no one to blame and no one to be angry with — it’s life, and sometimes curveballs come at the most unexpected times. I’m not looking forward to unearthly hours for UC Zoom classes and it’s hard to be excited for a local exchange, but there’re always things to be thankful for (like how LDR ended 9 months early) and for now, I’d take what I can get.
