I am in Beijing, the capital of People’s Republic of China, which is one of the world’s ten most polluted cities in the world, home to the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen Square, host city of the 2008 Olympics, and a place where 13 million people reside in.

Life has been good so far. Weather’s still similar to Singapore’s though I was told after one week of continuous gusts of winds, it will be winter where temperature can drop to below zero degrees. Food comes in mega portions but I am fine with more oil and salt, and not forgetting the price! For S$4.50, you can have an 8 course meal in a decent restaurant. So it’s certainly good news for me.

We had our convocation last week, which is not compulsory for foreigners but hey, we might as well go for it, right? And it was a true to nature Chinese affair. 4 mega red flags flank the university’s logo, and the event started off with 4 male singers, decked in tuxedos, along with a soprano, teaching us en-masse how to sing the school song. When the VIPs finally came, the anthem was played by a student orchestra, followed by the usual speeches and videos.



My room is almost done up. We live in this dingy old place but precisely because of that, we have the maximum creativity to do home improvements – things like linoleum from Jin Wu Xing, which is a wholesale market three times the size of Expo that sells everything, and cupboards from Ikea. When it’s fully complete, I will post pictures. Right now I’m trying to find that stalk of Vanda Miss Joaquim…

Till then. :)