Spent a night with a group of students from Harvard coming to Singapore for HCAP (Harvard College in Asia Project). This is my first time meeting students from this renowned university and it is a nice experience.

Most of the delegates from Harvard are ABCs (American Born Chinese). Thus, when a group of them entering University Hall, I can hardly distinguish them from normal NUS students except a few obvious non-Asians. Some guys even have the look that will make people mistaken them as students from China. However, when they started speaking, their strong American accent tells me that they are actually Americans. It is interesting that when I talked to them, I will subconscioulsy adjust my accent to be more Americans... Haven't spoken in such accent for so long (or never?), even I felt surprised to hear me speaking like that...

Talking with a 3rd year English study student in Harvard during the dinner hosted by Prof. Shih, and found out she is actually born in Beijing and went to USA with her parents on the age of 3. When asking whether she can speak Chinese, she laughed, showed me a gesture of leaving a small gap between her thumb and index finger, saying:" I know this much." Then she explained that because her parents did not want her to be left out in the school, only taught her English when she was young. When she is very comfortable with English, she does not want to know Chinese anymore... It is interesting that in her family, her parents speak to her in Chinese, she replies in English and she said this is very common in Chinese families in USA. I think it is what people usually calls a "banana", yellow outside but white inside.

Also, we talked about some serious issues such as George Bush, China vs. Taiwan, and censorship in Singapore. However, most of the time, we were comparing two universities and tried to make fun from it. Finally we found out that USP writing module is directly imported from Harvard!!! Even we have the same book about citation!!!

Accompanied some of them to a small restaurant near Lavender MRT called El-Sheikh after dinner. It is my first time there so that I nearly got lost on the taxi when I was supposedly bring 3 Harvard students there...  It is a shop famous for its waterpipe. Shortly after everyone was there, people start smoking through waterpipe. The room is full of fruity smoke and fragrance. Even I tried some, but really cannot taste much flavor from it... sigh...

It was a night of fun. I'm glad that I have the chance to make more friends, both from Harvard and from USP itself. A few days earlier I was so horrified by the grade I got for my second essay for writing module, joking that I should quit USP. It should still only be a joke. USP is a perfect place to stay if modules are less difficult...

p.s. on the taxi, a Harvard student exclaimed:" I can't believe that I'm here! The other side of the world!"... Hmm, will I have the same feeling when I go to US in May?