Knolls and Ravines of my Shanghai Adventures
I’ll just preface this and say that whatever hiccups I’ve mentioned are not representative of the program but only of my personal experience. If any, the program is now better handled, and by much better hands. (and that this is purely a recount, explaining how this was written)
It’s been exactly 16 days (at the start where I started this piece), and 28 days (now that I’m finishing writing) since my NOC Shanghai days (officially) ended — and being the fella I am, penning down my journey as significant as this was kinda my personal requisite. Since playing the story-teller in a group setting was never my flair, maybe I could share fragments of my experiences through penned characters; akin to my peers’ preferred channel of travel-vlogging. (it’s 1.32 am now and I actually jumped out of bed — and back onto the bed with my laptop — after watching Brad’s exchange vlogs; I’ve been contemplating writing for a while but guess the catalyst came to me eventually, and also because memories are starting to become hazy) I’ve been back from the land of Mandarin so please forgive my half sky hang Engrish (半天吊). Also this is most likely be full of recounts, and less of my opinions — just a forewarning; else you can close the tab now haha.
Just yet another unplanned — and abrupt note; This is going to be a long piece that probably gonna takes me hours, to days, to write, and will probably take you up to one half of a clock’s revolution to read. At this very juncture, I have a lot at the back of my mind, unfiltered.
If you have, at any point in time between August 2019 and a year later in 2020 asked me how I’ve been or probed on my thoughts on NOC, I’ll probably answer with a gang-kor smile and say “haha X more months” or “oh, we’ll find out in a while”. I was likely just very, very lazy. In actual fact, this journey was really full Knolls and Ravines.
Chronologically appears to be the soundest direction this recount can go — and so we shall. (How can someone previously from the operations branch not do this systematically? Oh ok, let’s break it down into phases)
Phase -1 Year 2 Semester 2 (Y2S2)
NOC / Exchange was a pseudo-planned decision that I wanted to take on on my third year in Uni. (wanted to share this after I graduate but oh wells) My plan for uni was simple. Year 1 — orientation to environment, testing of interests and the making of a lot, a lot of friends. Year 2 — Focus on your interests, maintain your CAP, participate extensively in Freshmen orientation programmes. If we were in close quarters these few years, you might have figured that I did materialise these goals, rather aggressively. My Year 3 was planned for either a full year of NOC or a 50/50 concoction (haha sneaky sushii reference) of studies and exchange. Year 4 was finally intended for me to focus on my final year project. My plans and perspectives may have pivoted for now, but my point in case here is that I was lucky enough to be able to fulfil my first 3 years’ plans with little hiccups. I guess getting into my first choice — Shanghai was the best news I could receive in Year 3 Semester 2. Yay to adventures time!
Phase 0 The Hunt for survival
Upon acceptance into the Shanghai Program, it was a flurry of “if you do this if you don’t do that…. you’ll get removed from the program”, “Do this”, “Why are you asking why”. It was a stressful and frustrating period being played around like a chesspiece. My Sem 2 CAP fell to a 3.68 (as compared to my usual 4-ish). There were many instances of last-minute taskings, uncertainties and rejections in that short period of time (Week 7 even up til exams). My mind was not on my modules; it was entirely on landing an i̵d̵e̵a̵l̵ job so that my choice to have forsaken a slot for an exchange to take on NOC is justified. Blame me for my sunken cost fallacy, or thank me for continuing on this journey, having later gained so much from it.
One random morning while I was still interning at Good For Food, I was rushed into a last-minute interview and surprisingly received an offer when the call ended, then forced to give an answer by the end of the day. I wasn’t even done with my day-job yet. What-the-heck. I took it on without thinking much. I had to justify my choices — If I don’t take this offer up, I’ll be the last to land a job and I’ll likely be out of the program. Naïve I was and weak on my stance paired with certain manipulative statements, I took the job up.
Even though the role accepted stated “Chatbot” and “marketing”, I was initially eyeing a full software engineering role. After some head-cooling, I actually thought I’ve landed an ideal internship — Chatbot and Marketing. Chatbot, fulfilling my technical pursuit. Marketing, what every start-up founder should know(and practice). I anticipated what’s ahead.
Partially because of how I’ve suffered due to my lack of exposure to tech practices in companies and their roles available, I’ve decided to start an initiative, R H D E V S. Hopefully with some little exposure now, I’ll be able to shed some light for our juniors in Hall, before some of them decide to embark on NOC or any other programs.
Phase 1 The Shanghai Experience
My memory is getting hazier by the day, and more so now in Week 4 of the semester. Never the best in planning my writings — so pardon my all-around-the-place thoughts. It was an amazing year and I am glad that I managed to grasp some lessons and meet some wonderful individuals along with it.
Started off NOC proper with a bunch of administrative and logistical to-dos. Invigorating times — likewise to when you get a new laptop and you’re spending time customizing everything to fit yourself. Several administrative events at Fudan to attend as well as the Chinese Government-imposed checkups later, some of us found ourselves on our first trip in Shanghai; to one of the old Watertown at the outskirts of Shanghai, 朱家角. Never been to any ancient towns ever, so I guess it was pretty intriguing. Before the hectic internships started we visited a waterpark as well — Again my first (not counting the one time I had when I was maybe 5 years old?). We also managed to get our accommodations sorted out — my 3 other housemates even made friends with the neighbourhood noodle stall’s 秋姐, who eventually became a rather familiar face over our half a year over there. It was always a comfort going to her stall after work with Jeraldine for a simple bowl of 葱油拌面 (and of course with my preferred chunks of Chili and Vinegar.. and a nice little side of fried egg hehe).
The first few weeks of internship, Jer and I took leave to head over to Suzhou to volunteer at Innofest Suzhou 2019 for a short 2 days. (Thank you NUS enterprise for sponsoring our hotel stay hehe budget) Through this, I finally could answer a doubt I had since my intern days in BLOCK71 Singapore — is there actually a BLOCK71 Suzhou? (in 2017, I could find no concrete information online). Being in a foreign land, It was still amazing that I saw familiar faces, such as Hui Min and Dawn from Enterprise (though I doubt they recognise me after so many years). The first trip out of Shanghai checked!
December was the most exciting month to date yet. In terms of my Company, there seemed to be momentum for better changes. (which didn’t follow through but it was still great to have felt hopeful). There were plans to travel, and there were a few holidays ahead of us.
In just the short span of a few weeks, though, I’ve had a series of unfortunate events follow me. First, my phone started malfunctioning — restarting on its own and not having connections. Next, my fitness watch started to not charge, regardless of my attempts on fixing the charger. Then I sprained my ankle and was left stuck at home for a few days (Thank you 外卖/delivery for saving my sorry ass). My wireless earpieces then started to fall apart. And that’s not all, my most expensive possession decided to die on me — my surface pro 4. (but thank you for making space for a wonderful yet affordable Xiaomi Laptop Pro). Its screen malfunctioned and I could not perform any work nor studies on it. Thankfully, the series of unfortunate events ended with my Surface; or you could say it took hiatus until COVID hit but again, the pandemic wasn’t a personal ill-fate.
AI Innovation was another exciting event. It was interesting to have so many people planning one event — So many hands and brains to make a few hours great for 100 odd participants! This could also be the first-and-last event that the majority of the whole Shanghai batch participated in. It was also evident how my unique(?) emotionless working style isn’t well-received by some — But oh well, for the time and space constraints, my role as a small pawn didn’t require me to share my weird ways. I also guess this is a takeaway that I have to work on — starting with RHDEVS and Taby!
My badly managed finances never really supported me to visit places too far away from Singapore (with that one-time exception of Annapurna Base Camp hehe sick trip). I guess China itself was an unexplored gem of mine. Though we did have plans to do a round-China trip that was cancelled due to the situations, I still did have my fair share of travelling in China, I guess. It was extremely convenient that no matter where you went, Mandarin was normality, and systems were coherent(And also how being a Fudan student could immediately strike conversations; though me being me didn’t really try to)
The Suzhou trip was the first all-fun-just-travel trip we went on — my most memorable one out of the few! We managed to get some crazy nice accommodation on some island in the middle of Tai Lake. That night/morning we’ve also invited over a then-acquaintance — Isabel, who was then part of NTU’s work-study program at Suzhou. Thinking back, she travelled 2 hours to and fro to the Tai Lake (haha sike) Even though we spent most of the trip walking around unplanned places and doing stupid stuff, I am still thoroughly fond of the experience with the 8 others.
Huangshan was, unfortunately, the only “mountain” I got to climb in China. There’s some saying (I think) that Huangshan is one of the seven most beautiful mountains in China. No disputes on that, but we decided to go on the biggest human migrations on earth — during Golden Week. We found ourselves stuck midway on a Mountain with what — 50'000 other climbers? Tbh won’t really call this a “nature” trip given how it’s so urbanized and modernized — but no arguments about how beautiful the whole place really is; unreal! Ah, a funny incident: Of the 4 of us who decided to camp atop Huangshan for the night, we were supposed to have 2 tents and 2 sleeping bags… but guess which Idiot let one of them roll down the side of a cliff — and froze that night? (haha sorry Eugene)
We managed to squeeze in a trip to Hangzhou over a short 2d1n. Tbh there was nothing particularly memorable, but nonetheless a great getaway when work started to feel mundane.
My last trip was over the weekends to Hong Kong! (no comments on the r/s between HK and China) This was also where I met Yocky 哥, having his med-tech start-up hustle. Thanks Yock for being such a hospitable host and bringing me around the famous sites even though you’ve probably brought a few others prior to me. I really enjoyed this trip — especially with the 18-degree weather (whereas Shanghai was starting to get bone-chilling cold) Also this was when I figured that my childhood watching TVB dramas was not good training for my spoken Cantonese tongue. The most surprising of this trip was how ratchet yockseng’s accommodations in HK was — a makeshift apartment atop a high-rise building rooftop. The whole “apartment” was probably smaller than my room back in Shanghai, and he was paying the same bucks as I was. If it was me, I honestly probably would have avoided home it’s bedtime. I also managed to get to Shenzhen for a night before heading back to Shanghai the next morning. Thank you Lijing for adopting this homeless kid for the night :’) Travelling alone (kinda) for the first time ever was really an enthralling affair. It was surely uplifting to have been able to meet Yock and Lijing!
In our time at Fudan University, we (by choice or not), had to take a Chinese module — taught and examined fully in Mandarin. And mind you, it wasn’t your 风和日丽 Singaporean “higher”-Chinese. In this module, I guess I’ve got schooled on what mandarin truly is… But on the side note, it was a refreshing account to be taking classes with Chinese students that made it into the Ivy-league of China. Having been graded on a Mandarin presentation in front of Chinese students though — cues ball sweat. (Thankfully we all passed haha thank you Prof)
Somehow, there was a day that truly sparked a memory in me. I’d dub this the happiest day in Shanghai, and contrary to my usual, this day was spent alone. I’ve never really done anything (truly) alone — I’d always be connected to my social media because I (kinda) have a fear of being alone. That day, I left work and was heading towards Sinostage for a dance class. I had time to spare, so I decided to just walk there, from a distant MRT station. Listening to good vibes music on my headphones coupled with the weather, the few-km far walk really didn’t feel draining. After Class, it was rather late and I had to walk pretty far to the next available MRT line. That walk through certain neighbourhoods though was really just — refreshing. I felt unexplained joy in my 20?30'000 steps that day.
Another one would be the Moller Villa Christmas Market — where 247tickets sent us over there to get physical leads. Regardless, it was a good excuse to be out of the office, 1.5hrs away from the city centre. As it happens to be Isabel’s last day in Shanghai and second last(?) in China — so Liying and I joined her at HDL to send her off proper (LOL my first HDL in China after few months there). After I left back to the Christmas Market for work, they came over to see what’s going on — and paid a hefty price to enter a boring Christmas Market; when I could have just brought them in (haha too bad) Honestly felt a little sad to have a newfound friend leave so soon. Nonetheless an amusing supposed-ly workday with fake snow and Santa.
Ahh… my 8 hours of work + 2 hours of travel most workdays… at 247tickets. I honestly do not know how to describe my time here —which contributed to many of the ravines of my adventures. I guess the upside to the internship was meeting firstly Karla, Amado, Farida, Kimberly, Sabrina and Lebo. (definitely not forgetting long term war buddy Jer). It’s likely a startup trait to have such constant changes, but just here to share an interesting version of our story. So we signed contracts to our accommodations on the first few days in Shanghai, justified by its super-close proximity to the office — but after we penned down our signatures, we received a message along the lines of “Sorry for the late reply, we were busy moving”— later revealed that the company is shifting operations from 10 minutes bike ride away to 1hr 15mins public commute away. From the office, we were literately closer to getting out of Shanghai than to our homes. One week into the internship, one of the more senior fellas left the team. Two weeks later, our then-direct supervisor left. Karla eventually took up the role to be our direct supervisor, but our first month was just full of uncertainty — the dust didn’t settle at all. Just another interesting recount that I’d like to document down else my poor ass memory won’t recall this few months down, much less years down the road. I guess I’m not gonna even try to recall the bad stuff because no lessons were learnt then. But again, things got much much better after we got familiar with Karla, and had other Interns Kimberly and Sabrina joining us. Life in the department finally got vibrant! Thank you all for brightening up my unplanned-last-few-months of internship — and making it worthwhile.
Budget was likely the word you can describe me and my two other buddy’s life in Shanghai — Jian yang and Eugene. We went for the cheapest, everything. Food? We could live off 2SGD ready-to-eat food from convenience stores, or play with the rewards system of delivery to get dirt cheap meals — I still stand strongly by my opinion that ready-to-eat meals are delicious. Travel? We bought 3SGD monthly bike passes and rode sharing-bikes everywhere. (even for more than 10kms, in the windy cold) Tbh, I doubt we spent much on anything else on the regular. I’m utterly grateful to have these 2 (and Christine sometimes) for poor-ing it out together. Ah, don’t worry, it’s not the program’s problem that we do this; there are others who take cabs everywhere and eat expensive meals every day — it’s all choices! Eh… why so gang-kor you might ask? Ah. we had an Xsgd monthly wage, and rent alone was already hitting Xsgd or more. I guess I was trying to be financially neutral and after spending so much on settling in and misc. stuff, I had not much spare money besides those NOC would reimburse and Grants at the end of the program, and also because our pay was on a 6-month basis. (Some of you might have seen me borrowing money to replace my spoiled phone and laptop… Thanks Baolong for accepting my Credit Score haha) This is a fact and if I’m asked to take this down because of an objective fact backed by numbers, then you can go figure: financial neutrality is impossible for the program I’ve attended, at that point in time. (This is not with-counting my Travelling expenses) Best takeaways from NOC, these cheapo fellas. Fun fact, not long after we finally had full attendance with this 3 for a dinner in Shanghai, we were recalled. Then, back in Singapore, not long after we met for a dinner (again), the plan to head to Israel was cancelled.
Just so I hope to not miss anybody that I’ve had enjoyed the company of; Thank you huochezhan house for the random meals, TR4049 group for the weekly meeting at Weworks (and Kenneth), MANA buddies every week at Fudan and my NVC fellas back in Singapore!
Just thought to share this too, but Singaporean (Nanyang style) Coffee is still the best — Western-style Lattes, Starbucks all can’t hold a candle to our traditional style sock coffee…
Phase 2 Prata Flipping
COVID hit and comes the most electrifying time that I’ve have had in quite a while. My trusty planner became obsolete — nothing was within my control and there were no milestones to meet. I was literately doing nothing and waiting for things to happen. In that period of time, I felt pretty helpless and powerless. Truly the most dispiriting I’ve felt in a long, long time.
If you’d like to explore my state of mind then, It’s documented down on another writing (with loads of indirect reference, so IYKYK la)
On the eve of Chinese New Years’ eve, some of us decided to gather at our place at 长寿路 to watch a movie — Joker if I’m not mistaken; guess who were the real-life jokers a few hours later? Halfway through the movie, I received a WeChat ping from Charles, a counterpart from the Beijing program. He asked if we did receive news about recalling. We laughed and joked about us getting recalled right now. Maybe we jinxed it, but we were. We were supposedly going to visit Harbin the next few days, passing by Beijing.
25th January (thanks Jenna whose bday is 25 Feb to correct my wrong date), Chinese New Years’ eve. I went over to 火车站 house to join Jit for Chef Gary’s reunion dinner. Many of us were back in Singapore to spend the Chinese new year, but we were the few who didn’t make that plan — for our own reasons. It was a rather small gathering as compared to our usual. I thoroughly appreciated the company.
The morning of 26th, Chinese new year, we found ourselves on the way to 浦东机场. Props to the NOC management, for if they had not called us back in time, we might have been stuck in China for a while more. Just 6(?) hours later, the chilling cold of near 0 degrees went back up to the hot sunny island’s 33 degrees. I guess it was a silver lining that I won’t be missing this year’s reunion dinner at home (even though not on the eve). Even then, my brain still couldn’t register that I’m back home after a supposed year-long adventure away from home.
The first few days in Singapore was spent catching up with some of the other folks — all fun and games and it really didn’t sink in that we’re not going back to Shanghai. (Still recall the irony that I met a group at Chinatown haha)
(psst the next paragraph or two will be full of recounts — just purely fact stating because too things happened)
After a week with little to no updates, we were informed of the better news — we could choose to continue our NOC at Israel, Vietnam or Singapore. Israel, being my second choice during the application, naturally became my top choice. This was on the 9th of February. Over the next few weeks, the Overseas Manager(OM), Sharon, engaged us and helped us vet our job applications as well as managed our ranked internship choices. It was pleasant that Sharon actually put in a lot of evident effort to help us improve our applications. Through her efforts, I learnt a lot more about CVs and job applications in general. We started job hunting for jobs and by the 3rd of March, fortunately-or-not, I landed a Software Engineering internship with Rewire, a company that one of my ex-intern-colleague interned at. In our old company at Good For Food, our inside jokes revolved around calling each other masters, and the above-mentioned colleague, Gilbert, was one of our stronger programmers. This left me extremely stoked and honoured to be able to learn from a place the master went to. Just 2 days later, some of us from NOC Shanghai fellas went out drinking at Yishun, and one of them, Eugene, had a last-minute technical interview. He (obviously) got the job and the next morning, News broke out that Israel started imposing SHNs on incoming Singaporeans. Then, I still didn’t want to lose faith; and we heard from NOC Munich folks that we will likely be visiting Germany as a “mid-stop” before entering Israel. Indeed, this was confirmed by a meeting with the management. And if I recall correctly, within the next 24 hours, Germany’s situation got worse, and their daily increment went over Singapore’s total count at that point in time. (About 120, if my memory doesn’t fail me). This also died together with the short-lived colleague-hood with newfound friend Jesmine from the Beijing programme. Another day later, we were fed the choice of going to Vietnam or stay in Singapore. Being absolutely sick of the fluidity of the whole hoo-ha, I took the decision to stay in home-court and fight remaining battles with home ground advantages. 13 March Morning — we went to send our first warrior, Gary, to NOC Vietnam. We joked right before his flight to see him tomorrow. Funny enough, he was back the next day after MOE declared all overseas programmes to be recalled. What zoomers would describe as oof, biG OOf! What an interesting few months that I hope I will never have to experience again.
Also, Thank you, friends, whom I’ve approached to ask for advice over this phase in time. I don’t think I approached many people but I still can’t recall exactly who. Still, it was honestly a much-needed neutral third-person point of views.
Phase 3 Homebound
After resigning to fate, it was the most relieving thing honestly. After several months back in Singapore, I’ve finally unpacked my luggage. I’m gonna be staying, for good. Job hunting, again and again, was a bitch; though this time in Singapore, there is supposed home-ground advantage. I eyed either joining Xfers or better my mobile development knowledge at PSLove. After rounds of HR and tech interviews that spanned over a few weeks, I was fortunate to be able to end my days of checking emails every now and then with the news that Xfers was willing to adopt this stray NOC student for 4 to 5 months.
With the circuit breaker measures in place, I spent most of my time home learning and programming under Xfers and its front-end engineering team. I’m immensely thankful for the patience and guidance that every single one of them has provided me with. I hold dear to me the experience here, despite being a remote internship. Regardless, I was extremely delighted to be able to be programming the remaining of my NOC, even when not compared to designing Xiumi articles or creating chatbot Quizzes all day. I had fun learning and utilizing the knowledge in Xfers. Definitely will recommend, haha.
Phase 4 Looking Ahead
So now at my last year of studies, I guess the most important tasks for me is to find a job and complete my FYP (find your partner; haha kidding… unless?). Being back in Raffles hall now, I’ve started to normalise back to my interests — running, dancing and building things, and I’m glad that I have.
After this year of countless weird episodes, good-and-bad, I’ve grown. I’ve become clearer of my directions, albeit just a little. I’ve made some valuable friends that I’d like to keep. I’ve achieved the smaller goals I set out for NOC.
Looking ahead, I hope in the coming year, I’ll be able to do what I love atop of my academic pursuit. In an ideal case, I’ll be dancing, running, or programming most the time. Here’s to a fruitful Year 4 — and employment after which :-)
