Friday, September 29, 2006

welcome to iuj

Hey people! I'm writing this for the first time from my new place here in IUJ. Am currently living in the dorms and have met some of the most interesting people ever. Looks like everyone is someone in their own fields. Or are at least amazingly talented in some area. And the best thing is we all speak English here.

Shifted in here over last Friday and Saturday. And ever since then, have been swamped with workshops and briefings non-stop. FYI, the semester hasn't started yet. I'm still bewildered at the busyness of my 1 week here. The only time I get to be back in the room is to bathe and sleep.

We've had career workshops which will definitely help in our job hunting, good start to the semester as we'd be too busy to think about applying for jobs once classes begin. There are also pre-course workshops which I thought was helpful in jogging the memory in subjects like statistics.

In the midst of all these, we had our opening ceremony at the Sawarabi community hall. Everyone looked so smart all dressed up. Picture here taken with the rest of the Monbusho scholars, except for Daniel who had not checked in yet.



Right after the ceremony, I took a qualifying Jap test and my initial plan was to take up the Basic/Elementary track. But for the fun of it, I sat for the Intermediate test just to see where I stood. I only knew like half of the kanji in the list they gave and still had lots to go in my verb conjugations. So it wouldn't be surprising if I failed.

That night itself, as I loitered around the notice boards, Takeuchi sensei came out with the results list and pasted the results for the Intermediate test. Surprise surprise! I passed! I not only double-checked, but triple checked and came back again the next day to see if it really was my ID on that list. Now I'm in a dilemma, whether to take up the Intermediate which might take a toll on my Masters course, or to take it easy and do the Elementary track.

And if that wasn't enough, I also signed up with 4 other guys to take up the Innovation Challenge. I've always had a tinge of interest in these sorta stuff but never met anyone who'd be keen to take it up. Since we're all 1st year students and competing against the geniuses from the best MBA schools around the world, it would definitely be an interesting challenge.

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