Gap

I have to say sorry for the late to post on our block blog. As the only international student in our blockcomm, I felt really thankful for your help and care in the first semister. It seems our happy memory of ours in sem1 has been mentioned enough by other members. To be different, I would like to say something that you may not know and something I still don't understand.

Firstly I need to declare that what I mention later is just for a better communication. I always trust that all misunderstanding can be dismissed by speaking out what you really think, rather than hide your mind to meet others' expectation.

The first interesting thing coming to my mind is the relationship between local and chinese. If you are in my position, you will feel interested too. On one hand, I see you guys are so kindly trying your best to help chinese students to be part of your activities. On the other hand, I will hear many discussion from chinese students about how to avoid joining the activities. Please don't say that chinese are so ideologism and selfish. Let me tell u the reason in my mind.

Although I have tried to deny, but I finally admit the culture gap between chinese and singaporeans is huge. Actually around half of the chinese students would like to join your life when they first come to NUS. They desire to 'try' your life, know your culture and even be part of your 'gangs'. While, as the time goes by, more and more Chinese students find they cannot keep going to their hope when they find they need to sacrifice night by night to be with you guys to show 'we are a team'. In our opinion, mostly, one should follow his or her heart in university life. We all experience around 10-year chinese education in which our personality are somehow restricted and our life are always arranged by our parents and our teachers. So we expect we can schedule our life in the university. However, the point is that sometimes local students tend to judge whether one person is friendly by whether he or she would like to join you. It seems reasonable since our real friends do be with us in the past. But I think(only my opinion), university students need a more mature relationship in which people need to respect the difference. This is not only useful to deal with the relationship between chinese and locals, but also realistic for everyone around us.

I still remember each time we join people for our activities, we may meet some embarrassed situation. You will find not all people would like to share their time with you, both for local and chinese. Furthermore, you always add "pls tell the valid reason if you cannot make it' when call for meeting. While, I have to say I really don't like this sentence. University activities, in my opinion, is not compulsory. Indeed, it is where you can continue your hobbies, where you can meet more people and where you enrich your life. You will always choose your activities based on your liking. I don't mean that we don't need to be responsible to our comm. That's totally wrong. What I'm trying to say is we need to figure out what is the 'valid reason'. If I feel really tired, is it a valid reason? If I felt what we do is not meaningful, should I keep doing and say nothing? If I felt our residentants have the power to choose whether they would like to join our activities, should I continue persuading them and make them embarrased? Frankly, we need to think whether the activities will benefit our friends or waste their time and then decide whether we have enough reason to persuade them to join us. That's what friends should do. Blockcom is a service agency, rather than an adminstrant. We can only to advertise to attract people. And most importantly, people have right to choose.

I admitted I'm in a bad mood when I write this one. But what I write is what I thought when I finish sem1. It may be a good chance to understand each other better for us. Hopefully, you can read my article in a positive way!!! You know, we never give up!!! We can be better!!!