First Week of Class

I started class this Monday, July 26th and I wasn't ready yet. I'm not sure I would have been ready at any point soon because I'm still having  trouble sleeping at night.

Monday I had my first class at 9:30 am. There were readings we were supposed to have completed but I was unable to do them as I was looking for a place to live. The one good thing was that even though we didn't find a place to stay on Sunday. There were a couple of possibilities.

View from the Marriot hotel in Orchard Street

My first class is "Problems in Combating Insurgency and Terrorism". It is taught by a professor from Georgetown University, Bruce Hoffman. I might have dropped the class after the first day if I had not known what his name on my transcript would do. The course is divided into two parts one which Bruce Hoffman teaches and the other half taught by Gérard Chaliand. It is kind of strange to have the course divided like that but both of them are specialist in their areas. On Wednesday, the class became much more interesting to me as we moved away from the US and started really looking at who the individuals who perpetrated the terrorist events. This was really interesting as they are not what you would expect them to be. 

Orchard Road area. View from Marriot Hotel

Catholic Church near Raffels hotel

My second course on Monday was my International Relations required course. "The Study of International Relations" It is going to be mostly a theory class, which looks like it might be review from my undergraduate studies. I'm hoping that we go into more depth.

View from Campus of the other buildings.

After class, I met up with Jan, another Rotary scholar, and Daniel, a student in the same program. We are going to be living together. We went to look at looked at another apartment. We saw one apartment which we really liked however it didn't have A/C. We made an offer which was dependent on them putting in A/C. They didn't take our offer but gave us a counter offer which we accepted. Now we are waiting for the Housing Development Board (HDB) to approve us. We should know by Friday what the outcome is. When we parted on Monday we agreed to meet on Tuesday with the agent again and look at one more place and at the same time to pass over the good faith deposit. 


Tuesday Jan and I went to the center of town on Orchard Street. It is defiantly a shopping center. After Orchard we went to the area around Raffels hotel. When we looked at the other place it was also a pretty good location for us. It smelled like chocolate as there was a chocolate factory near by. If we are not approved on Friday by the HDB we will apply for this other apartment. 

Area in Clementi where I live

On Wednesday I had class again. 'Problems in Combating Insurgency and Terrorism' got much more interesting. I had a lot of time when I didn't have anything to do so I tried to read on campus outside.

My last new class is Professional Skills Enrichment. It looks like it might be an interesting class. I like that it is being taught by many different professors. 

The View from my room on 2 Taman Mas Merah

Today was a slow day for me. I thought about going to Boon Lay over by campus but decided to just walk to the grocery store near where I live. I got some food. I cooked a pizza in the little toaster oven and it was really good. It was really good to have gotten food and to have a day were I didn't have to do anything.