Monday, February 26, 2007
America!!!
Im back! After two whole weeks of staying in America, finally Im back home in sunny Singapore. Am missing the States very badly. This is so weird. At first, I wasnt that keen to go there. I was only interested in attending the conference only since I knew that it would have been an eye-opener. Basically, I wasnt really excited abou the holiday trip after the conference. But wow... Darling was right after all! Ayuni is back home, loving America! Seriously, every pessimistic thing that I have ever heard about America is just dead wrong. Most of them were just mere speculations which do not hold much truth in them. The people are really friendly. Everyone on the streets smile and greet each other even though they are strangers. Walking in the streets seem like a very enjoyable experience.
We met numerous people from various colourful backgrouds. It seems pretty easy to get to know people in America. Some of the people that Dhilla and I befriended, were not even in our SPECPOL committee for the HNMUN. It may be some random guy that we often met in the lobby and conversations start to flow. Thats how friendly the people are. Honestly, you can never do that in Singapore. People may think that youre some crazy girl who is so in love with them just because you smile at them. -Rolls eyes-
The conference was really unusually interesting. I just realize how insignificant Singapore is on the world map. We are certainly just a little red dot on the world map where others do not really care about us. Heck, some of the people even thought that Singapore is a part of China! Plus, they were extremely surprise that we can speak good English. Clearly, I was annoyed. "Duhz... English is our first language and we speak English most of the time!" Dhilla and I have to keep on pushing for Singapore's stance regarding the Iraq issue. Just like the real Singapore diplomats, we allied ourselves with the Great Powers such as China and UK. I dont mind thou. The guys representing such countries are really cute! At the same time, we maintained good relations with the ASEAN countries. Hehe... it was really fun! Its true that Singapore needs to be extra aggresive so that other countries will take notice of us because we are actually a nobody at the international level. In order for people to notice us, we need to stay relevant. After a long hard fight, we managed to make people to remember us and listen to us. It was tough work since our committee is in the GA and thus, it was really difficult to stand out. Nevertheless, the whole conference was really an invaluable experience for me.
We had a trip to Harvard Uni after the conference. Gosh, I just love the place! The Harvard people are really great and we managed to click well with them. Shu Ming, a President Scholar from Singapore was our tour guide and a very wonderful one indeed. His friends are really great too. We were lucky because we were able to mingle with the people as they were having some housewarming event at a professor's place. The food was good. Homecooked rapberry pie with ice-cream and truffles. I managed to interact well with some of the people there. It was a pleasant surprise because I always thought that students from top universities such as Harvard are snobs. Clearly, they are not. Instead, they are more friendly than NUS students!
Our NYC trip was splendid. We went to the UN headquarter, Statue of Liberty and Times Square. We walked around lower Manhattan and mid Manhattan. I love the shopping scene. Everything was really cheap and there was a wide variety of choices. One thing for sure, you need to have the cool hard cash in order to enjoy the real NYC experience. Dhilla and I hang out with the German and Dutch people during most of our trip in NYC. They are fun people who can get quite rowdy sometimes. However, we had good times together. Kind of missing them actually but hopefully, we will meet them again soon.
Hmmm... Ive been writing a lot. Let me stop here and let pictures do the rest of the talking for me. Hoping to get more pictures from others in my team. Update again yah... ¶ 11:57 PM
We met numerous people from various colourful backgrouds. It seems pretty easy to get to know people in America. Some of the people that Dhilla and I befriended, were not even in our SPECPOL committee for the HNMUN. It may be some random guy that we often met in the lobby and conversations start to flow. Thats how friendly the people are. Honestly, you can never do that in Singapore. People may think that youre some crazy girl who is so in love with them just because you smile at them. -Rolls eyes-
The conference was really unusually interesting. I just realize how insignificant Singapore is on the world map. We are certainly just a little red dot on the world map where others do not really care about us. Heck, some of the people even thought that Singapore is a part of China! Plus, they were extremely surprise that we can speak good English. Clearly, I was annoyed. "Duhz... English is our first language and we speak English most of the time!" Dhilla and I have to keep on pushing for Singapore's stance regarding the Iraq issue. Just like the real Singapore diplomats, we allied ourselves with the Great Powers such as China and UK. I dont mind thou. The guys representing such countries are really cute! At the same time, we maintained good relations with the ASEAN countries. Hehe... it was really fun! Its true that Singapore needs to be extra aggresive so that other countries will take notice of us because we are actually a nobody at the international level. In order for people to notice us, we need to stay relevant. After a long hard fight, we managed to make people to remember us and listen to us. It was tough work since our committee is in the GA and thus, it was really difficult to stand out. Nevertheless, the whole conference was really an invaluable experience for me.
We had a trip to Harvard Uni after the conference. Gosh, I just love the place! The Harvard people are really great and we managed to click well with them. Shu Ming, a President Scholar from Singapore was our tour guide and a very wonderful one indeed. His friends are really great too. We were lucky because we were able to mingle with the people as they were having some housewarming event at a professor's place. The food was good. Homecooked rapberry pie with ice-cream and truffles. I managed to interact well with some of the people there. It was a pleasant surprise because I always thought that students from top universities such as Harvard are snobs. Clearly, they are not. Instead, they are more friendly than NUS students!
Our NYC trip was splendid. We went to the UN headquarter, Statue of Liberty and Times Square. We walked around lower Manhattan and mid Manhattan. I love the shopping scene. Everything was really cheap and there was a wide variety of choices. One thing for sure, you need to have the cool hard cash in order to enjoy the real NYC experience. Dhilla and I hang out with the German and Dutch people during most of our trip in NYC. They are fun people who can get quite rowdy sometimes. However, we had good times together. Kind of missing them actually but hopefully, we will meet them again soon.
Hmmm... Ive been writing a lot. Let me stop here and let pictures do the rest of the talking for me. Hoping to get more pictures from others in my team. Update again yah... ¶ 11:57 PM
