Friday, February 10, 2006

Learning From China

Last week I played badminton wif my Malaysian roomate, his malaysian frens and his china frens. So you can guess ah what language they spoke while playing badminton. Anyway, I enjoyed playing badminton wif them coz they are all above average players. I was wondering.. how come P.R.C (China) students like "appear everywhere". We can see them in Dean's list (top 5% of the students in one major). We can see them in list of IVPs (school players for sport). We can see them in commitee also. One of my maincommitee in NTUSU Welfare commitee is PRC student. How come? So strange leh..

If you like badminton, and you like to watch badminton match, you will get the answer straight away. Look how China players play. Last year I watched a match of China female double players, Gao Ling / Huang Sui (the last name I am not very sure how to spell) against I-dunno-and-dun-care players. The score was 14-3 for the I-dunno-and-dun-care players in the second set and The China players also lost in the first set. But the China players didn't look like they want to give up that match. They played patiently. For them, It was not the end of the game yet. Slowly but sure, they started to gain some points, and I can't imagine that finally they won 17-15. I thought such a story is just for best-seller novel or inspirational story. But the China players had proved me wrong. And the third set is for the China players. They won 15-5.

If you have chance to visit NTU in Singapore, try to visit our cozy reading rooms in every hall. Try to speak English with some of the students there. If you choose 5 students randomly and you can't find China students (you can know them very easily thru their English accent :p), you can call me and I will treat you a McD set meal for free ^^ Reading room is China students' favourite place. Maybe it's like cafe or shopping mall for them. They love books more than anything else in this world. They love studying and will get asthma if they don't study for 5 minutes. Hahaha, I am kidding lah of course. But really, they really love studying (most of them lah at least).

A lot of people are jealous with them. When a lot of students struggle to pass a subject, a China students can get a distinction quite easily (actually not very easy lah, refer to my previous paragraph). But the question is.. Are we willing to pay the price? Are we willing to spend our free time to study, or revise our lecture notes, or do tutorials? China students are willing to pay a very high price for their success, which a lot of students say "No, thanks." No wonder China students are among the best students here. Or maybe all over the world.

No comments: