I spent the last fall semester in Queen's University, located in the small university town of Kingston which is part of the Ontario Province in Canada. We flew for 20 hours in total (Me, Cheung Kit, Peifang and Nadifa) with United Airlines via Hong Kong, Chicago and finally to Toronto. We stayed two nights in Bellwoods Bread & Breakfast; it is a wonderful basement house with a cosy setting.. wished it was my Nelson Street house! Haha we even waited for the B&B owner to cook breakfast for us, after some time we realized the service was self-catering. In Toronto, we visited the downtown area and CN Tower.. CN Tower was aka Sian Tower.. the entrance fee was high and there was not much to do except to see the great view from the top. After two days, we took a CoachCanada bus to Kingston. Kingston is really different from Singapore; small town with a area size of maybe a northern part of Singapore (e.g. Yishun plus Woodlands plus Sembawang) and a population of Toa Payoh.

After cleaning up our trashed house in Nelson Street, we booked a United Airlines flight from Toronto to Chicago. Our pre-semester trip was nearly destroyed when our CoachCanada bus drove off without us (me, Cheung Kit, Adeline, Song Hui and James). It was a dramatic experience, as I dropped my backpack and ran across Stauffer Library and Goodes Hall in pursue of the bus.. there was a group of commerce exchange students waiting at Goodes Hall for their camping trip (lol Yuxian and Yu Qin are among the group) and they witnessed the dramatic episode. I didn't catch the bus and fortunately we caught up with the same bus at the Kingston Bus Terminal after taking a cab from Queen's.

I really enjoyed my tour in Chicago, basically it is a buzzing city towered with many skyscrapers. Lol we visited another tower Sears Tower, watched Fireworks and rode the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier. Don't forget the famous Deep Dish Pizza.. think one slice is enough already! The Bean at Millennium Park was awesome and I really enjoyed the two boat tours around the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.. also learned a thing or two about Chicago's building architecture and history like the Great Chicago Fire in 1873.

We visited Montreal in Quebec Province during the Thanksgiving weekend. The Quebec Province is a French speaking region. We had some bad experiences as we were given bad services (e.g. waitress threw plates on our table instead of putting them nicely) because we spoke English instead of French. I had the most fun joining in a street performance in Montreal, the heart of street performers and Cirque du Soleil! It was a bit too long though, getting on my nerve. Our singapore contingent was a bit crazy, we tried to conquer Mt Royal during nighttime in the bitter cold condition!

Really enjoy my studies in Queen's.. though engineering is equally siong at this half of the planet. Basically it is impossible almost impossible to fail in Queen's, you will if you don't do your assignments. There is actually more emphasis on daily work rather than exams (haha I only had 3 exams in Queen's.. I would have 5 exams for the same modules in Ntu). My favourite module was taught by Professor Carlson - COMM358 Human Resource Management. I had lots and lots fun in the class - Whazzups were cool and we even had dancing sessions in class! Professor Carlson even invited us to his house for a farmhouse concert.. I went with my Swedish classmates Johan, Marcus, Mikael and Alexandra. Professor Carlson house was really well-interiored.. I really wish my house was designed by an interior designer (maybe be my own lol) instead of my garang guni theme apartment.

Wolfe Island sits just a few kilometres away from Kingston (haha can be seen from the beautiful Queen's campus). It is surrounded by numeral wind turbines. You bet Wolfe Island is one of my favourite location in my short exchange stint - it is laid back with several farming areas. Cycling with Lu Shuai, corn mazed twiced (even met Tom and Pete my intramural teammates at the farm). After my visit of Wolfe Island, I am quite convinced that I should work in the clean energy industry, since I am so into the weekly recycling routine at Nelson Street and I even managed to convinced the corn maze owner to drive me round to see the wind turbines on the island.

Queen's places a huge emphasis on sports, especially canadian football. To be frank I find that watching canadian football is much more exciting than watching soccer! Too back I don't know how the sport is played. I watched two matches - the golden gaels against arch rivals the Western Mustangs (haha Western was my 2nd choice for INSTEP but I was rejected so coincidental). The gaels won both matches at the Richardson Stadium and eventually won the Xanier Cup, the highest honour in Canada university football.

Just before I left Queen's, it opened its multi level gym centre in December. It is free for both students and community folks, and it was extremely useful for exercising during winter when it became dangerous to run on the streets with snows and melting ice everywhere. Talking about ice I watched a live NHL at Scotia Place, Ottawa. It was an awesome match as Boston Bruins came back from 1-3 against Ottawa Senators and scored 2 goals to forced a shootout which the Bruins won. NHL is indeed a unique exciting sports as player fights are allowed during the games.

The best way to settle down in a foreign country is to do activities which I have been doing back in Singapore. I joined an exchange student team called the Internationals to take part in the Intramural soccer tournament, captained by Preben. Haha basically it was a all-star european team plus 3 singapore talents - me, Yuxian and James. I played mostly as a striker and occasionally defender for the team. We played 6 regular season games winning 5 matches and losing 1. After failing to score my debut goal during the regular season, I was more determined to score. Finally, my perseverance paid off by scoring the match winning goal during the quarterfinals. The last time I scored in a competitive game/friendly match was back in 2002, during the zhonghua interclass games. Haha still searching for my first zelva goal. Back to the Intramural - we lost in the semi-finals after losing again to Multiple Scoregasms, what jinx...

Just before exams started, I went winter camping with members from the Queen's Outdoor Club at Gatineau Park, Quebec Province. It was a perfect getaway from school.. I felt that I really deserve the break because I studied the most (6 modules while most other exchange students took 4-5 modules) but of course I felt I played alot also. The only disappointment was that there was no snow during the camp, though the temperature was between -2 to 4 degrees on most days. Hiking in the great Canada wilderness was an refreshing experience.

I embarked on my 20 hours Greyhound busride from Kingston to New York city after my exams. I arrived in New York City along with a snowstorm.. nearly fainted trying to drag my exhausted body with my lugguage through the snow to Skyline hotel. I watched Wintuk (a christmas musical by Cirque du Soleil) at Madison Square Garden on my first night and ice skated with Cheung Kit and James on the second night at Central Park.

The second place of our US Tricity Tour was Washington. We had a slow paced tour of DC for two days, visiting countless museums and statuses. However, Washington, being a captial city, will be boring to stay in on a long term basis, especially as the food in Chinatown wasn't that fantastic. Our last city was Boston. I really liked Boston and would consider working there in the future, good Chinatown food and many sports teams like Boston Celtics and Boston Red Sox are really a plus plus point.

After learning to cook my own meals daily, experiencing the beautiful and trouble of snow, learning about different cultures especially in my class COMM270 Business Communications, it was really an experience of a lifetime for me. I really hoped time could freeze like the lakes during winter and spend all my time in the beautiful country of Canada!

11th February 2010

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