From what I’ve experienced, NUS students are incredibly energetic, incisive, and fun-loving. The Tancho House Committee visited all rooms individually and delivered welfare packages to keep us snacking as we studied. More students than expected would be camped out at 3 or 4am in UTown in the largest Starbucks in Singapore. On any given night, students would organize a supper jio (meaning “invite”) in the Tancho group chat on WhatsApp, essentially compiling a list of food orders for a select restaurant (like a McSpicy from McDonald’s). In addition to three-hour-long class sessions, ACC1006, FIN3101A, and FIN3117 each demand seven to eight hours of preparatory work per week according to the syllabi. Coursework is not easy. Peer competition and instructors’ expectations are high. Theoretically, I could travel five days a week and still attend all three modules stacked on Monday and Tuesday. I know one girl managed to hit six countries already, so it’s possible if you want to live that life. However, some Saturdays are occupied by exams, and studying is an absolute necessity. For the first half of the semester, coursework was light, allowing me to comfortably travel every other week. I didn’t want to overdo it by leaving the country every weekend. However, the second half of the semester hit faster than expected, and along came the exams, term papers, and group projects that would collectively judge how much I retained amidst the distractions. Despite a few adventure-ready weekends, the mounting pressure to at least perform decently in the modules and complete my fair share of group work, paired with the fact that I have largely not explored Singapore, have convinced me to postpone any travel plans. After all, the temples and volcanoes will still be there, at least in the near future. The end of this experience abroad is rapidly approaching. Just as everything began rolling, it is all being abruptly forced to a close. I will have my last class session on April 17; reading week begins on April 21. After submitting a Bank Management term paper on April 20, I will have roughly 2-3 weeks to travel Southeast Asia before my Accounting Information Systems final exam on May 10. NUS Business School Career Services Prior to leaving for Singapore, I contacted the NUS Business School Career Services Office and inquired about interning in Singapore. BIZ Career Services sent me the following cover letter template, resume template, and foreign student guide and shared that exchange students are entitled to only one career consultation session of 30 minutes with the career advisor.
PART I: INDIA – JAIPUR, JAISALMER, AGRA, VRINDAVAN, MATHURA, NEW DELHI For the few days after my last class of the week and throughout the duration of recess week, I travelled to India, exploring Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Agra, Vrindavan, Mathura, and New Delhi. Prior to the trip, my group applied for Indian e-Visas and booked hostels, a domestic flight, and an overnight train. 1 US dollar = 64.96 Indian rupees. It only costs ₹400 to purchase a 2GB of data per day Airtel SIM card in India, however, we needed to provide a passport-size photo, passport, and visa. Departing from Singapore on Wednesday, February 21st, we arrived in Jaipur just before midnight, and the streets were deceivingly quiet. For roughly ₹170 per person, we rented tuk-tuks the next day. Aside from conveniently getting us around the city, the tuk-tuk drivers also acted as guides who gave recommendations on what to do, where to eat, etc. Leaving from Moustache Hostel Jaipur, we visited the cenotaphs of Gaitore, an elephant village, the Amber Fort, and the Jal Mahal (Water Palace). Hiring the same tuk-tuk drivers for the next day, we caught a ride to Hawa Mahal and Galtaji Temple before driving up the Aravalli Hills to visit the Nahargarh Fort at sunset. We received Remote Location Waiting List (RLWL) status tickets for our overnight train from Jaipur to Jaisalmer, meaning that there was a low chance that we would get off the waiting list. Following our backup plan, we caught an overnight “super luxury” bus from Jaipur to Jodhpur. It was not actually super luxurious. At 3am, we took a local bus from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, arriving at Swan Hostel even before our train-taking group members. After intentionally getting lost in Jaisalmer Fort, exploring the shops, restaurants, and homes in the back alleys and rooftops, I met up with the group and enjoyed dinner at the rooftop of the Hotel Lalgarh Fort & Palace. Meeting up with other NUS exchangers in India, our combined group of 17 people left Jaisalmer early Sunday morning for a 1.5-day camel safari in the Thar Desert, setting up camp a few kilometers from Pakistan. Upon returning to Jaisalmer, I stayed in the hostel to collaborate with my corporate finance (FIN3101A) group regarding our case assignment on Yihua Timber’s buyout offer to HTL International due over recess week. Majority of the local students remained on campus to study over the course of recess week. For the remainder of our time in Jaisalmer, we rode motorbikes to Gadisar Lake, the Jain Temple, and the strip of road to the airport. Before catching a flight from Jaisalmer back to Jaipur, we ate lunch at a family-owned Italian rooftop restaurant in Jaisalmer Fort. On the same day, we caught an overnight city bus from Jaipur to Agra, arriving at the Taj Mahal before sunrise. Everything we saw in Agra post-Taj Mahal, such as the Agra Fort and the Baby Taj, was comparably underwhelming. Despite the beauty and international popularity of the Taj Mahal, the streets of Agra do not share the same standards. En route to Hotel Kanha Palace in Vrindavan, we could see subtle signs of Holi—from pink sidewalks to the occasional bustle of men throwing colored powder. The legend behind Holi is that a young Krishna, jealous of his beloved Radha’s fair complexion compared to his blue-black skin, smears colors on her face to make Krishna and Radha one and the same. Vrindavan, the childhood town of Krishna, was roughly 11km from Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna. Afraid that food places would close down for the holiday weekend, we enjoyed arguably the tastiest lunch and dinner that we’ve had in India at Mayur Restaurant. We basked in the playful craziness of the locals near the entrance of the Prem Mandir, a Hindu temple. Countless locals insisted on taking selfies with us for their social media. It was a toned-down version of the festivities at the Banke Bihari Temple, which we did not partake in. Later in the evening, we saw massive piles of wood prepared for Holika Dahan to celebrate the death of Holika. The next morning, I journeyed to Mathura alone. Knowing I would be overcharged otherwise, I caught a free ride with a truck driver who seemed to be picking up anyone on the Mathura-Vrindavan road. Children on the rooftops and the streets would douse passersby with colored water from buckets and water guns. Adults usually threw colored powder or gently smeared it on faces. Walking the narrow alleyways to the Dwarkadheesh Temple in Mathura, I was inevitably colored from head to toe. I met a local university student who was kind enough to offer me water and negotiate with a tuk-tuk driver to give me a ride back to Vrindavan for only ₹10 (which he paid for me). He shared his WhatsApp and we still keep in touch. For the remainder of the day, our group hunted for an open and functioning ATM. The long holiday weekend meant that ATMs were either gated shut, out of cash, or somehow broken. By the time we were in Delhi, we were not interested by temples, forts, palaces, etc. We hired a tuk-tuk to explore Old Delhi and caught an Uber to the business district. After eating at Johnny Rockets, which was by far the most expensive (and most Western) meal we’ve had in India, we took the Delhi Metro to the Indira Gandhi International Airport. With a brief layover in Bengaluru, we arrived back in Singapore around 4:30am on Sunday, March 4th. At a certain point, it felt as if I was studying abroad in India. The hectic streets overwhelmed with the overlapping honking of car horns mixed with free-roaming cows and people hopping on and off moving buses. The nasty washrooms and the cold showers at every single hostel. The convenient snack stands at nearly every street corner. The clever ways locals try to make money and the hardworking and persistent salespeople, including young boys, on the streets who refuse to take “free money.” And the need to always bargain to a justifiable price and to remain conscious and aware of scams as they happen. Everything about India hit like a wall, but eventually, none of it fazed me. This fraction of India I experienced has grown on me, and definitely taught me to appreciate things I never thought I would. PART II: BACK TO SINGAPORE – ACADEMICS AND IDEAS
The day after returning from India, I had a case presentation for Corporate Finance. The case assignment (worth 20%) entailed analyzing financial statements and financial ratios, computing WACC, applying DCF, and performing DDM, relative valuation, and various sensitivity and scenario analyses in an effort to advise investors in regards to a buyout offer. Two of my modules (FIN3101A, FIN3117) schedule exams for Saturday. I recently completed a Bank Management quiz (also worth 20%) on the banking business, licensing and regulations, performance assessment and risk capital, product pricing, and asset-liability management. This upcoming Saturday, I will have a Corporate Finance midterm. Some instructors use ExamSoft’s Examplify, a testing application on student-owned or -loaned laptops. On a related note, some instructors use kahoot.it for informal, in-class quizzes to review or preview material. It seems that everything NUS does, NUS does extremely well. NUS Open Day 2018, basically a one-day open house event for prospective applicants, was on a scale I have never witnessed prior. The diversity and scope of NUS-wide, faculty-specific, and residence-specific events can make campus life overwhelming; you need to skim the myriad of flyers and select a few to focus on. Unaccustomed to living on campus, it sometimes feels like I am living in a bubble, sheltered from everything truly outside of NUS. Experiencing everything that NUS offers, I recognize that there are certain programs that students at UH Mānoa can adapt and integrate. Some ideas include:
|
ABOUT ME
Keng-Chia Chao BBA Candidate in Finance, Accounting, & Management Information Systems Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Archives
May 2018
|