I'm super late in writing this weekly update, but that's mostly because I haven't been doing anything particularly out of the ordinary outside of work. I had a ton of work to do in the past one and a half week, and I still do, which has kept me really busy from when I wake up to when I sleep.
Last week, Dr Chan, Sharon, Mervyn and Edmund from NUS Enterprise visited Tel Aviv. They were interested to know all that we'd been doing in Israel and we had quite a few meetings with them. We also pitched startup ideas to them that we'd been working on in our entrepreneurship classes. I ended up pitching my edtech project, which is always fun. We did the pitching in front of all our company's founders or supervisors at a farewell lunch. Even Singapore's ambassador to Israel was there! I've never pitched at a lunch before. Anyway I had fun doing it. I love public speaking, so even though it was a bit stressful to prepare, refine and practice the pitch in addition to the usual work, it went well. Also, this was the first time ever that I was pitching not an idea but a product. In the past, all my pitches have been about ideas that aren't yet products. So I learnt how to present a product and data from users with Liat and Natali's help (my instructors from IDC). I also learnt more about powerpoint design from my friend Ding YI who pitched with me!
Yesterday, we also had farewell drinks in which we met some more IDC students and re-met our instructors and course organisers. While it was farewell drinks for my Singaporean friends, it wasn't really farewell for me. A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to stay longer in Israel, so I applied for a study abroad at IDC next semester through Yale-NUS, and I got accepted to it! So I'll probably be back here when the next semester starts in March. While I'm not looking forward to studying again, I'm looking forward to having more control over my time and more flexibility. I remember how much easier it was to work on my project and other things I'm interested in alongside school. Also, it's just really nice to be around students and new people. I'm not going to be living in Tel Aviv any longer-I'm going to be in an outskirt town called Herziliya (which is where the university is). This is the longest time I'll be spending in a non metropolitan city, and I'm quite looking forward to that. I think it's important to live in different types of places just to see the kind of person you become by living in each of those places.
I got to hang out with some friends last week, but not really all that much. I'm generally a bit less social these days and spend most of my non work time either sleeping, eating or reading. I've been reading Memoirs of a Geisha. Love that book! People say its not very accurate (also, it's written by a non-japanese), but I actually think its not so far from the truth based on what I learnt from my summer in Japan. If you have the time and know a bit about Japan, I would highly recommend it.
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