end of my two day SIF symposium at Raffles City Convention centre.... today's session was surprisingly not bad, perhaps due to the speakers they invited...took away some lessons from Ho Kwon Ping's talk about challenges facing youths.... in particular something that struck me as very true was that many of us are still somewhat 'parochial'; even ppl like us studying overseas.... we may think that having travelled to many major cities in US and Europe, we have seen a lot of the world, when in actual fact we might just have merely come into contact witih some of the many diverse cultures in the Western world... and many of us dun really look to the less developed world at all... many issues ppl face in the developing world, i believe i am unable to imagine or really emphatise with... hmm actually even after having gone to Europe, i think all i have done is more like i hav stayed at those places, been to major attractions.... the amount of knowledge of each place i took back with me was like really minimal...
haha and of course at the symposium we managed to find some traces of not-too-subtle messages to the young ones that singapore is facing a declining population and it is our responsibility to do something to alleviate this problem...

today i suddenly became aware that I am actually quite privileged to be given the chance to study at Berkeley. was with two HDB scholars, one overseas one local and was talking to the overseas one about soem travelling experiences and the local scholar expressed some mild form of envy that we get to do so much travelling.... then bumped into one of those Prudential agents lurking at MRT stations trying to get passers-by to fill up their survey forms and upon hearing that i was studying at Berkeley, he just blurted out, "Wah, so zai!"... and dunno felt kinda embarrassed cos it really isn't that zai... but dunno... i guess from my point of view it isn't, cos at Berkeley and more prestigious unis there are a lot of really really zai ppl... and i am just nothing.. but i guess as compared to many ppl studying locally or who dun even get the chance to go to uni, it really is some remarkable academic achievement... sigh so dun really know what to think. but what i do know at this point in time is that i really want to go back to Berkeley and really make good use of my remaining 2 years there....=)