A tale of 3 cities in Canada- Prologue

The road trip to Ottawa, Quebec and Montreal has officially begun. Despite the initial wave of exuberant, we soon recalled that the road trip is a grueling 15 hours bus ride from London to Quebec City (our first pit stop for this road trip), and that alone was sufficient enough to dampen some of the excitement. Familiar to most inhabitants of the Northeastern region of Canada, Grey Hound is probably the largest bus service that caters to the travel needs of Canadians in that region. Hence, we purchased the bus tickets for this trip a month prior to setting off from Grey Hound. Below is the itinerary of our bus journey to the Northeastern region of Canada: (for the records, we left London at 430 pm)

1) From London to Toronto (approximate travel time: 2 hours) - Notwithstanding of the precariously tight bus schedules, Allan and Jiahao had somehow managed to squeeze in a shopping escapade at Toronto's famed Dixie Mall.

2) Toronto to Ottawa (approximate travel time: 8 hours) - After the shopping frenzy at Dixie's Mall (we got ourselves a pair of Levi's jeans each at the price of CAD$30+, a bargain only matched by those in New York), we caught a late dinner at 10 pm, before boarding the bus to Ottawa at 11. Here, the most excruiating part of our road trip unfolded. The long journey coupled with the unchanging landscape (imagine flat plains running through both flanks of the highway with the occasional sightings of featureless factory buildings were the only scenery that greeted me for the entire length of this trip), thoroughly dampened my mood. As I stared at the barren stretch of plains, a sudden tinge of home-sickness began to well up. To make things worse, no matter how hard I tried to sleep during this stretch of the journey, the uncomfortable seat thwarted my every attempt. When we finally arrived in Ottawa, I was half dead from weariness.

3) Ottawa to Montreal (approximate travel time: 3 hours) - Since the Parliament building at Ottawa was the only distinct tourist attraction, we spent a mere 3 hours in Ottawa before heading of to Montreal. On a brighter note, the female Grey Hound staffs at the bus terminal were dressed in kinky Christmas costumes, handing out free gingerbread to all the passengers (damn! I would have taken pictures with them if I was not overwhelmed by fatigue from all that travelling!)

4) Montreal to Quebec City (approximate travel time: 2 hours): Our first pit stop for this road trip. The first thing we planned on doing after we arrived was to immediately check into Auberge Internationale de Quebec without delay, a hostel we had booked in advance.


The Grey Hound bus terminal at London, a transit service that I had come to develop a love-hate relationship with...

Packing up and leaving Med-Syd

The residence's moving out policy required us to vacate our rooms 24 hours after our last paper for the semester, with the primary reason that other fellow residents need to study for the remainder of their exams. Hence, with each following day, the number of students staying in the residence (and indeed our floor) dwindled. Not surprisingly, we were among the last to leave the residence, but fortunately enough, not the last. Thankfully, Sarah (Denmark) had her last paper on the same date with Allan's, and we were able to have a much needed company for our meals. Before we vacate our rooms the next day, we decided in the 'good old' fashion Singaporean way of celebrating the end of our exams by having a feast that evening at Xing's place. Profound thanks must be given to Kawei and his girl friend Vivian (a.k.a Vivi) for so diligently volunteering to buy all the food for the steam boat, and undertaking the ardous task of bringing all the necessary utensils required for the steam boat. Before heading off for my paper, we went around the residence to take some photos with friends we have made since we first arrived at Med-Syd.



With Jean and Sarah (she lives at Elgin Residence, just opposite Med-Syd), who dropped by to say goodbye. They were among the first international students whom we got to know in UWO.


Yassar is a first year health science student I got to know at the residence's gym when I was running the threadmill. An extremely studious and generous person, he gave me plenty of winter clothings when he learnt that this was my first trip to a temperate country. For that, I am deeply grateful and will treasure this friendship always.


With Dave, the maintenance staff of our residence, an extremely cheerful and friendly fellow.


Our favourite cafeteria staff (actually, she's Allan's favourite, we kept speculating whether Allan will be her prospective son-in- law), and no surprise, she's a chinese!

After we finished our final paper (World Cities) in record time (the paper was 3 hours, but I finished it in less than an hour), me and Jiahao rushed to Xing's place for the much anticipated steam boat dinner. I guess we could call it supper, since it was already 9pm when we started preparing the food. This time, we invited the Danes and Benjamin (a fellow resident on our floor) for the dinner.


The sumptous spread that was laid out at Xing's apartment, and like all steam boat dinner, the amount of food was too much for us to finish even though there were 10 of us.


The Danish guests we invited over for the dinner/supper, from left: Sarah, Marie and Minna.


Marie and Minna, they always had me roll on floor laughing with their comedic descriptions on any uneventful encounters they had with the Canadian or in school.


Sarah is our fellow resident at Med-Syd. We always had our meals together whenever possible, and stayed for lengthy talking cock sessions after that. The best part was always supper, nobody yearns to go back to their rooms after supper during the exams period, because we know that once we step back to our room, the mugging will begin. I'm gonna miss Sarah so much when we leave for our respective home country, she's such a good person to talk cock with.


The guy in red is Benjamin, a fellow resident staying on the same floor as me and Jiahao. It was glad to have his company for the 3 and a half months during my stay in Med-Syd as we often had basketball sessions together.


Kawei and Vivi, the golden couple that prepared all the steam boat for us. Vivi is a Canadian who migrated from Hong Kong, and for that, I'm deeply impressed by their long distance relationship.



Minna caught red-handed when she tried to pinch on the food!


And she got away with it by flashing us a smile almost too innocent for us to convict her!



And the feast begins, mutton, beef, dumplings, mushrooms, prawns and so much more. It was really a banquet that was worthy of a post examination celebration. Minna was quite amazed that we actually have to cook the lettuce we bought during the steam boat before we eat it. To the Danes, lettuce, the ubiquitous vegetable used in salad was eaten raw. Marie surprised everyone when she used her pair of chopsticks to perfection, as she revealed that she had been to several parts of Asia before.


Preparing the fruits for fondue. We had fondue for dessert after the steam boat, a luxurious way to end the feast.


Though paled in comparison to Nelly's fondue party, it was a treat to remember as the fondue brought the feast to an elegant end.



10 very well fed friends posing for the picture that will bring them fond memories of that night for many years to come.

After the feast, we went back to our respective residence to embark on the unglamorous task of packing up our luggages. It was a heart wrenching event, knowing that our stay in Canada is approaching an end. But still, what needs to be done has to be done, and we made ready the preparation for our road trip to Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec and New York.



Packing our luggages, notice how empty the room has become. Allison (Jiahao's peer guide) had generously agreed to let us deposit any unnecessary or excess luggages that we did not want to bring along with us during our road trip. She's an angel.


On my desk doing some last minute blogging. Notice the calender on the top left portion of my desk, it had brought me both joy and frustrations with the numerous markings on the dates fraud with quizzes, midterms, project and assignment deadlines.


In the final stages of packing, notice how depressingly bare my desk has become... This was the last picture that the 3 of us took in our room.

Nelly, Pauline and Emma surprised us by dropping by to join us for lunch before we moved out of our residence, it was so sweet of them. Already, I could feel a slight tingling sensation in my stomach and the increasing difficulty of fighting back the tears that were threatening to well up. Since when have I become so emotional?


Pauline and Emma, doing their pose while we wrote testimonials on their dairies.


Emma is my supposed and scandalous wife wedded during Nelly's fondue party. I will be missing her a lot when I return home.


Nelly and Emma, since when did Emma became the daughter of William Tell? Au revoir, mes chers amis...


All packed and ready to go at the bus stop that will bring us to Gray Hound's main station, the bus service that will ferry us during our road trip.


Coincidentally, Nicholas (French) ran into us when we were about to board the bus, he was on his way to take his exams.

With that, our much anticipated road trip has begun. Although I was looking forward to going on this road trip, I couldn't help but feel melancholic at the same time. Nevertheless, our adventure from this point onwards marks a new beginning, and that alone is a comforting thought enough.

End of exams, an end to our stay in Med-Syd and a new beginning to the next stage of our adventure

4 exams in 5 days was an experience to remember. With the exception of the management module MOS 101a, the rest of the modules were suffocatingly packed into 5 days. As if this was not enough, MME 303a (killer module Fluids 2) was rescheduled to a Sunday morning due to a snow storm a week before. I have never had an examination in my entire academic life on a Saturday, much less on a Sunday! Hence, you can imagine the vexing frustration me and Jiahao went through during the preparation for our exams. Despite the ridiculous schedule, we did managed to pull through this trying period somehow. But with the end of the examinations, so was the end of our 3 and a half months stay in the alluringly charming residence of Sydenham. Knowing that our exchange was about to come to an end, fellow residents of our floor surprised us with a bagful of souvenirs each during our final floor meeting. The gifts probably did not cost a lot of money, but the memories that these fellow residents had provided us for the past three and a half months were priceless...


Floor meeting at the Jay-Hen, our floor Don's room (in case you were wondering that, "Hey! Isn't a Don the moniker for a mafia boss?" That's what I thought too, but his/her role is really the chief administrator of the entire floor and makes sure that harmony reigns between residents). Me and Jiahao always had a good laugh at these floor meetings from the spontaneity and in your face remarks made every single time the Don tried to make an announcement. Notice that 2 very unattentive souls at the floor meeting were posing for our camera: that guy's Shawn, one of the funniest person of our floor and Miss Congeniality, Margot who hails from United States Pennsylvannia.


Our floor Don, Blake. From they way he posed and dressed, you guessed it, he's a rocker and a lead guitarist in his own band! Cool dude eh?


Our Residence Advisor (RA) Galia (a.k.a Rant) with Jiahao. We always thought that she resembles a penguin!


At the residence's hall taking our floor pictures with Miss Congeniality Margot. I'm gonna miss having the days we had lunch and dinner together at the residence's cafeteria.


Mitra (of Philipino heritage), a cool dude on our floor, check out the add-ons to the ridiculous costume.


The theme for our floor photo was to drape everyone in black thrash bag (some kinda theme...), hence, the explanation for our weird costumes. From left: Yours truly me, Ilona (of Finnish heritage), Kim (coincidentally she lives in Singapore at the 6th Avenue and flies back to our little island during the summer holidays!), our floor rep Terone and Dana.


Our Floor Rep Terone (a.k.a T-bone) from the Bermudas. A charmer with the ladies (I wonder why) and perpetually flashing a wide grin, he will forever be remembered for saying, "Wassup?" whenever he runs into me.


The rest but not all of JN-2 (our floor's residence),
Top (from left to right): Shawn, Greg and Adam (Greg's roomie).
Bottom (likewise): Erin, Allie, Terone and Margot's boyfriend, the wildly hilarious Lenny.


Our floor's Soph (Sophomores are second year students) Chuck and freshman Harley (he's the floor appointed fire warden).


Our floor's cleaner Christine, a nice and sweet lady from Poland who always had plenty to chat with us when we asked her about her country. Gonna miss her alot too! Could never thank her enough for keeping our floor spick and span every single day despite the mess we made when we were drunk. Love you Christine!

Although Allan lives in Med-Syd with me and Jiahao, he was assigned to a different wing in the residence. Hence, let me introduce some of his interesting fellow residents from his wing.


Allan with his Floor Rep Itai.


Allan with his floor, full of whacky and quirky folks as shown in this picture.


This picture is wrong in every sense! Feel like retching out my meals every time I see it!


There're actually quite alot of Asians living in Canada. This Korean freshman (don't know his name at all) lives just right next to Allan.


Allan with Med-Syd's Academic Programmer (apparently, his job as a soph is to organize study group or self-improvement study methods talk) James.


Allan's RA Elena from Kazakhstan. She's got the demure damsel in distress look when she's wearing her glasses.

Floor meetings were held every week on a Tuesday to announce important floor or residence events and build the entire floor's cohesiveness. It is pretty strange for 3 twenty three year olds to mingle with a bunch of 18 year old freshman, not to mention that the floor Don (a final year student) is only twenty two years old. Therefore, we are considered as the 'senior citizens' of our repective floor. However, our fellow residences thought that like them, we're only a trio of 18 year old freshmen. You can imagine their expressions when we revealed our age (Rant gasped, "No way!" when she learnt that me and Jiahao were already 23). Before these floor meetings, Tuesday was to me a mundane and monotonous midweek menace that was standing between me and my weekends. But floor meetings, no matter how time consuming they were, always managed to bring me much needed respite for the entirety of the week, with the numerous hilarious exchange of words between these freshies. For that, I thank Jay-Hen for this lasting memory.

The calm before the storm: Bowling our stress away

With the exams a little more than a week away, Jiahao's peer guide Allison (see entry: Gibbons Park) organized a bowling trip for quite possibly our last gathering in Canada. Despite having tons of assignments to hand in and project deadlines to meet, the three of us just could not care less, and decided that we must bowl at all cost. Allison was an angel of a peer guide, always organizing ice cream trips for her peers and even invited them to her home on one occassion for movies and pizzas (really regretted alot for not making it to that movie she organized! Damn!), she really deserved the 'Peer Guide of the Year' award if there ever was one. Did I mention that she's a hot and smart blond (sounds like an oxymoron eh? Not a chance, she's planning on doing medicine after her final year). Adam (Allison's boy friend, a well built macho hunk who's a wrestling fan, so any male blog readers who are already having designs on Allison, please don't. It's for your own good ) gave us a ride to the bowling alley. There were 7 of us in a Chevrolet 4-seater, but somehow, we managed to squeeze everyone into the car. The front passenger seat was built for one only, that day, we challenged norms, designer's limitations and more importantly, traffic rules by seating 2 people in that very passenger seat. They say good souls come to good end, and all of us did manage to make it safely to the bowling alley.


Jiahao, Allan and me on one team (Team Singapore of course), while Allison (blond in this picture), Adam, Sappho (long hair brunette from France) and Wang Can (sweet law graduate from china) were another team. Well known for our prowess in this sport, we were preparing for nothing less than a win.


Jiahao's expression when he scored a strike.


Bowlers from right: Adam, Allison, me (I kept holding up bowling balls and irritated everyone by saying, "Look! There're holes in my balls!"), Sappho (I have mentioned before in previous entries that she looks like Sadako from 'The Ring', judge for yourself!), Allan, Jiahao and finally, Wang Can.

The game ended with Team Singapore claiming a hard fought victory *sniggers*, but there was no hard feelings at all, just plenty of fooling around and thrash talking. I guess we all owe it to Jiahao's good fortune to have such a wonderful peer guide, adding much more fun and insight to our stay in Canada. Despite spending the entire Sunday at the bowling alley, I did not feel the least worried about the tons of revisions I have to do. Instead, I was in a tremendously good mood as I had never experience such a stress-free state of mind during a pre-examination period. Already, there's a small tinge of sadness starting to fester in the deepest reaches of my heart. Because I know for sure that when all these are over, I will miss this place and more so, the friends I have made here for quite possibly the rest of my life. I don't want to bid them adieu...

Examination in Western: The hour of reckoning

I was wondering what I have been doing for the past 3 months since I arrived in Canada, and during that process, tallied the amount of hours I have spent on studying. The grand total came up to a miserable and utterly dismal figure of course, since most of my time was whiled away on play instead. Hence, with a total lack of preparedness, the panick attack that strucked me was almost too much to bear as I counted down to D-day. Below is the assessment of how I will fare for each individual modules registered for this exchange:

1) MME 303a - Fluid Mechanics:
Touted as the 'killer' module, this module boasts a failure rate of 30% from the previous semester. The sheer amount of calculus involved in this engineering module is mind boggling, with partial differentiation proving to be the main obstacle in this course. Despite having a certain amount of confidence on my knowledge of calculus, the concepts for the physics on fluids (i.e. the theory) is difficult to grasp at best.
Prediction: Would be contented with a pass for this module. It's like a division one team playing an EPL team, they will be mad with joy by forcing a draw for that match.

2) MME 450a - System Controls
Let's just say that this course is an enigma. No, I do not mean it as a meterphor, it is literal. After attending 3 months of lectures and tutorials, my understanding for this particular module is an abysmal 40% at most... Quite frankly, plotting the roots locus of a feedback system (the most important part of this module, in fact, the crux of what this entire module is all about), remains to be an unsolvable mystery to me. To cap things off, half the class's consist of graduate students doing their Masters/pHd, talk about a level playing field. I will be minced meat even before the exams start.
Prediction: Can you spell disaster in capital letter? It will take more than just divine intervention for me to scrap through this course, and gasp, it's worth 4 AUs (academic units) in NTU. If I screw up this module in Canada, I will have packed 'Western' food to bring back to Singapore...

3) MME 259a - Design & Manufacturing
Hugely project based module, with the final exams contributing a measely 40% to the entire outcome. Although the results for our project remained undisclosed, I'm pretty sure I won't take a hit for this module.
Prediction: As long as I write some nonsense for the exams, they will be forced to give me some sympathy marks and save me from failure.

4) MOS 101a - Management and Organizational Studies
Arguably the most tedious module of this semester, fraught with written assignments, read-ups and a 2 and a half hour mid term (that's like an exam by itself back in NTU, wtf?!). Despite the onslaught of these odds, it proved to be a mere nuisance to yours truly, since the art of dispensing crap during written assignments has always been my proud achievements. Though shallow in my arguments in these essays, they can at least assure me a modest grade.
Prediction: Will pull through with some work.

5) GEO 155a- World Cities
This module remains to be a paradox even on the last lecture. For starters, the lecturer is a 70 plus year old 'veteran' if you will, of the teaching profession. 'Finding Forrester', 'Dead Poet's Society' and even 'GTO' comes to mind when Prof Cecil is mentioned to any student that took this module. Strangely enough, despite the 2 written assignments required to be handed up in this course, I enjoyed this module thoroughly. As the course's title suggests, this module introduces different cities around the world and sought to explain the development and history of these cities. Gained plenty of general knowledge in this course and attended every single lecture even though the lecture begins at 7pm on a monday (my first lesson for monday is 0830am and ends at 9pm!). To top it off, the examination format is MCQ, therefore, an element of chance is factored into the final results.
Prediction: With a myriad of possibilities, the examination could swing both way. Should Lady Luck frowns on me, the results would of course be disastrous, and failing the module may not be entirely impossible. However, if fate is kind, an A is not hard to achieve either. Hence, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for now.


The seats and tables look familiar in every aspect with regards to those in NTU. It proved my point that taking examination is the same whether you're in Canada or Singapore. Be it Caucasians or Asians seating by your flanks or front or back, it makes no difference, the feeling of dread is ominipresent. At this point, that dread is maddeningly frightening, but listening to the song Sangatsu Kokonoka from 1 liter of tears, my feelings were set at ease somewhat. Recalling that Aya fought the hardships of her disease, suddenly the dread from exam stress seem insignificant. Wish me luck...