Mic check one two.

Welcome friends and family!

Ahhh...the first post in this new blog to chronicle my Danish adventures (be it the academically challenging work or exciting explorations up and about Denmark). The title was chosen to remind myself how to treasure, cherish, and learn from this 6 months exchange program, and ensure my goal of world domination shall not diminish. Put simply, start small, network big. As with the past 23 years, I'm glad to have achieved a reasonable standard of making friends, though not as wide as Ashanti *ahem*. Good enough for me to get by this highly demanding life, and wide enough for me to remember.

While my roots are still very much in Singapore (mostly due to local expectations), I'm hoping my travels and experiences will enlarge my wealth of knowledge, people, and experience, so that one day, the world can truly be an oyster. Having had failures in scholarship applications between 2001 and 2003 (roughly 14 odd submissions, 10 odd interviews and all rejections), I turned to the NOC program (NUS Overseas Colleges) in NUS as an alternative to get me out of Singapore (a year long SPONSORED program which allows you to work and study at the same time). When that failed (which I suspect was my inexperience or seemingly uninterested business nature), the Student Exchange Program (SEP) was the 3rd and final option. Even then, the Faculty of Engineering in NUS made applications difficult as good grades (read: high CAP) was a qualifying factor. In other faculties the factor is spending power since vacancies are more than the number of applicants.

Wait.
Before you think my CAP is good, it isn't. It's still a 2nd lower, and it'll remain there unless a miracle happens. To my brothers, parents, uncles and aunties reading this, CAP = Cumulative Average Point, somewhat of a caste system in our local university which brands you as smart or stupid. Just kidding.

So, in early 2004, I sucessfully got my 3rd choice, to the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). My first two choices were UBC and Waterloo, both of which were in Canada where Aunt Irene was, and which were highly sought after too. And to repeat the story again, I chose Denmark only as a safety net, because the professor I spoke to advised me to "be realistic" because of my "not-so-good CAP" and choose somewhere which had "more vacancies" (there were 4 allocated to Mech. Engin.) and not as popular as UC Berkeley (which was the only university in the whole of the friggin U.ass.of.A. And it had ONE place only.)

That's N.U.ass for you. Encouraging learning and interaction, but limiting options. Which they will deny. 3 years on, I'm still sore about being a hall-reject, maybe because I'm not good looking enough. If I knew better, I'd apply into TH or KR and not EH. After appealing, I was given PGP and from then on, it was a different story. Anyway that's history, and I'm back in Serangoon Hall.

On the other hand, NUS has provided me with a good experience too. From friends and work in UCC, to this opportunity to study and travel abroad, NUS has done a good job bringing people together. Oh yeah I almost forgot, teaching us life skills too. As with most seniors' remarks, the things we learn in "school" we hardly apply out in our work. Not all per se, but generally true.

I didn't think my first post would be this long, nor did I think I'd have gone on to talk about my life story (which is barely even halfway, or at least I hope). But at least you now have an insight to why sometimes life is just another satirical deja vu. More later.

It's D minus 2 to D-Day (or Departure Day). And the excitement hasn't sunk in yet.
For now I'm still busy packing my room, my luggage, meeting friends and shopping for essentials. My black eyed pea asks, where is the love?

Denmark, perhaps?