Its 4:15am on the second day in Singapore but I'm wide awake thanks to the 12 hour time difference and the 27 hour flight from Boston to Singapore, but even with all of this I'm excited to be back in Asia for another recruitment season!
As you may have noticed I have added some new features to my blog for this year, I am continuing to try to make it more interactive. To start I hope that everyone who reads this blog will participate in my poll so that I can get a better sense of what my followers are looking for. I have also added a news feed to keep everyone up-to-date about world issues that I find important. I hope you enjoy these new features!
This is going to be an exciting, exhausting, overwhelming, wonderful trip this fall. It is now August, 27th, day two of my new excursion with 44 days in Asia remaining. I will be returning to all of my favorite places (Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Bangkok) and adding some new places (Hangzhou, almost all of India and Jakarta) which I'm really excited about. In total I will be away from my homeland for almost 7 straight weeks but I'm looking forward to this much more than the 3 separate trips that I did last fall.
Today is day 2 in Singapore and already I am noticing the differences from the last time I visited. Traffic is becoming an increasing problem. I have asked some of the secondary school counselors and taxi drivers why this is so and they have told me that cars have become much more affordable and many people are choosing to buy and drive instead of taking public transportation and taxis. While Singapore is a small city-state and you can usually get from one side to the other in about 30 minutes I don't know how much longer it will be before traffic becomes a bigger issue. My visits are going well, I had three yesterday at some of my best schools and was able to draw quite a crowd at most of them. At one school I asked: "How many of you have visited Northeastern?" almost everyone raised their hand, and even more so, they told me that I was the one that presented their information session! Pretty impressive when I only did about 4 sessions this summer and there were about 10 students that had visited!
The weather here has been overcast and rainy, which is awesome because it has kept it cooler than usual. Although I have done some heavy training in preparing for the temperature change (Boston has had a couple of weeks of 90+/30+ degree heat) it is always a bit of a shock to get used to the humidity.
I'm really excited for a few things here in Singapore:
1) I'm hopefully going to go to dinner with a few alumni here that I try to see regularly. I try to keep them up-to-date on Northeastern's progress but also its nice to share a dinner with someone
2) I have been invited to participate in a dodgeball tournament at one of my schools which will be a perfect ending to my visits in this city. I then will be going to dinner with a few counselors which once again is nice to not have to eat alone all the time
3) I have the entire weekend free which is rare even for a long trip. I will be leaving for Seoul on Monday and until then I hope to do a bit of sightseeing, although I don't know what to see, recommendations are always welcome
For now, I'll continue to try to take pictures and update you on my trip, hopefully I'll be able to put up new posts in each city I visit. In the meantime keep in touch, e-mails are always great to get when you are abroad!
In the spirit of Jon Stewart, here is today's moment of zen...
