My First Day in NUS

Well, yesterday was my registration day for my Masters (Research) in History at NUS. After taking a direct Bus No. 151 (45 mins) from my house, I finally alighted in NUS and quickly found Sports Hall 1 and was stunned to see the long crowd of undergraduates waiting to register for their courses. Fortunately, the queue for Graduate Studies (Masters and PhD), which I am enrolling in, was so much shorter and faster. It was like we were in the express lane as there were not that many people doing Masters and PhD obviously. The whole process was like visiting a doctor in the polyclinic - first take a queue number and take a seat and then your number will be flashed on the billboard with the counter number.

While waiting for my turn, I accidentally overheard two people talking about the teaching profession. Apparently, one of the man was bonded to MOE for teaching. I immediately introduced myself as a former teacher! It turned out that Brandon, a fresh Honours graduate from NUS was bonded to MOE but had deferred for two years to do his Masters in History (same course as me). I told him straight away that history teachers are in high demand nationwide and narrated some memorable aspects of my teaching job to him. We immediately hit it off, excited that we would be coursemates! I soon learnt that Brandon's history research thesis topic is something so theological in nature, that I thought that he should have enrolled in a Bible College - Historiography of Gnosticism! As a believer in Christ, he undoubtedly must have been prompted to do research on the controversial Gnostic community (a group of people in 2nd century AD Middle East who claimed to have writings that had equal spiritual authority with the Bible even though these were written many decades later than the Bible) due to the wild and absurd claims made by Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" novel and movie (which is based on information given in the Gnostic writings).

After both our registration, Brandon later brought me via the shortest way to the History Department. There I met his supervisor, Dr Bruce Lockhart, a former missionary to Indochina, who now specialises in Thai and Indochinese history. I found out that Dr Brian Farrell would be my supervisor. I was delighted, as Dr Farrell is one of the most eminent scholar in military history in the region. Subsequently, Brandon then brought me to the workroom cum lounge for graduate students (Masters and PhD). It was like a much smaller version of my previous staffroom in BSS with tables and chairs, PCs and printers. My senior Masters students there were friendly and gave me much valuable information about my course. I found out that I was the oldest amongst them (even amongst my "seniors"). Most of them did the course straight after graduation. It was here that I learnt that most of them were under NUS scholarships which paid for their tuition fees and living expenses for two years. In return, they had to do tutoring of undergraduates. I was one of the few self-financing students, which also meant that I could potentially finish the course faster (hopefully within one to one and a half years). I was quite excited when they mentioned that it was possible to apply for subsidies from NUS for overseas research. This would come in very handy for me as I plan to do research in Britain's Public Records Office, Colonial Office, Imperial War Museum and their Army Museum next year as part of my thesis writing (my topic being the military history of the Second World War in Malaya and Singapore). All in all, it was a good start to my first semester in NUS! Thanks Brandon for the unofficial orientation!