When 3 is not a crowd

There are 5 students from NTU going for this exchange trip to the University of Western Ontario, of these, 3 are from the school of Electrical & Electronics Engineering (EEE) and 2 are from the school of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE). The unknown candidates from the EEE aside, representing the MAE in the exchange to Canada is yours truly ME and my close friend of 4 years, a Mr Li Jiahao living in the western region of Singapore. He is the very same friend who told me about this INSTEP business and more or less influenced my decision to sign up for it.

I will now briefly introduce Mr Li Jiahao in this entry, readers who find this excruciatingly boring and irrelevant may choose to skip this section. I have known Jiahao since NS (national service) in Paya Lebar Airbase's (PLAB) Field Defense Squadron (FDS), despite the grandeur of this important sounding name: Field Defense Squadron, we're really just regimental police (RP) patrolling the airbase. To be a tad more blunt, we fall between the categories of underpaid security guards to over-worked slaves. Predictably, in times of woes, close friendships were forged, the intensive trainings and heavy workload at PLAB had allowed me to become close friends with Jiahao. After all, he looked pretty docile and benign in appearance, not to mention that he was always ready to lend a helping hand to fellow soldiers in need.

Alas, I thought that I have known Jiahao well enough in the 2 years of NS, but it was in NTU that the REAL Jiahao is unleashed. Like a starving famine victim presented before a spread of delicacies, Jiahao spared no effort in letting me know that without the rigid discipline of the army, what kind of madness he is capable of. Crazy antics such as the capability of sleeping for a full 24 hours and the tendency of singing hits by Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera during lectures really showed me a different side of Jiahao. Even to this day, Jiahao continues to surprise me periodically with his weird behavior. But there are still some redeeming qualities in Jiahao, for example, he remains to be the helpful companion that one can always rely on. Yes, he sings out of tune during lecture, but he more than make up for it by drawing laughter in an otherwise boring lecture. Yes, he can sleep a full 24 hours, but that is really none of my business isn’t it? Except that I am amazed by this feat. More importantly, I know that he is reliable and responsible when he single handedly did the preparation for the paperwork in the application of this exchange. Needless to say, he makes a good traveling companion (just that I have to invest in a pair really good earplug to spare my ears from his singing).

A couple of weeks after the successful application, we managed to contact one of the EEE guys called Allan who is going for this exchange as well. Jiahao got to know him through a friend, and we were formally introduced to each other when we submitted some verification forms to the International Relations Office (IRO) in the campus. As benign and docile looking as Jiahao, I secretly hoped that Allan does not pack the same crazy antics as Jiahao. After all, there is only so much nonsense I can take from one person. 2 will drive me crazy. The three of us decided to plan our trip to Canada together and through their eyes, I could see that there was an unspoken agreement that we will look after each other in this trip to a distant land. Hence, a fellowship of 3 has been formed and for 4 whole months, we’ll be sharing thick and thin together.

(In case you were wondering what about the other 2 students from EEE, they are both Malaysian chinese who could not be contacted during the school's vacation. Hence, we are going to UWO in 2 seperate groups.)