A typical street scene outside my room in Cambridge

In terms of academics, Cambridge’s students study only their major- a stark contrast to Stanford, where we are encouraged to study “anything under the sun”, and take an open mind to deciding what we eventually want to study. In Cambridge everyone has their own room, while in Stanford my greatest teacher was (admittedly) my room mate.

Yet, Cambridge has many things Stanford lacks. Its placement within a town ensures that it does not become a “college town”; sometimes I think in Stanford we become too immature and playful because we lack contact with the outside world beyond the Stanford bubble. Its system of tutorials and tests ensures some form of academic rigor, as compared to Stanford’s “hit and run” style of modular learning. Cambridge does not have meal plans, and students need to cook for themselves- perhaps a better preparation for life ahead.

I lived for a few days in Cambridge University, visiting many of the Singaporeans there. One of the world’s oldest universities, its halls were once graced by greats such as Newton, Marlowe and so many other legends. It is a charming town full of tradition with little shophouses and narrow, winding streets; and you can hire punts (little gondola-like boats) to float down Cambridge river.

Cambridge is actually not one university but a collection of smaller “colleges” with names like Jesus and Trinity, each with its own little castle guarded by porters (a romanticized version of a security guard cum receptionist), and having the autonomy to name its own school fees, and choose its own students. As a result the Cambridge experience varies from student to student, largely dependent on which college they are in.

Academically, students from Cambridge are admitted solely based on academic achievement, and choose their subject before they enter college. Moreover, places in popular subjects (economics, for example) are limited and one must score above a certain score to be able to do a subject of their choice. Double-majors are rare and there are no such things as minors, thus most students only do one subject for the three years they are in college.

The bar at the May Ball

I was fortunate to be able to attend Magdalene’s (a dorm in Cambridge) May Ball, one of their extravagant end of year celebrations (the one I attended was featured in TIME Magazine). It was an extravagant orgy of free-flow champagne, delicacies and various activities. Magdalene’s attractions included a mini-golf course, shisha tents, a rifle range and unlimited jelly beans (my favourite). Another college (Trinity) had their own fireworks display, while I heard that a few years ago another college flew everyone over by hot air balloon to Paris for breakfast. The dress code for most May Balls was white-tie; I had to spend almost 2 hours learning how to put my suit on from a video on Youtube.

Cambridge is about as different from Stanford as I can imagine- I’ll write more about this later on.

A sign of defeat

Travelled from Stanford to London on the cheapest flight possible- Icelandair. Along the way I had a 10 hour layover in Iceland, and took the opportunity to explore a bit before the flight to London.

Iceland was remarkable because of one thing: it was completely bankrupt. The airport was completely empty save for the time a plane landed.   Staff were there part-time; they came to work only when a plane landed. In the 10 hours of transit I had there I walked in and out of customs completely unchecked, and was considering going out to the runway to touch the wheel of a 737 on the tarmac.

Signs in the airport (like the one above) encouraged people to “take advantage of the current circumstances” to buy from shops in the airport. The cleaner who came to clear up my meal was only 25 years old; in limited English she told me she had a university degree. The gloom of this proud, tall race of blond, blue-eyed, well-dressed people was terrible- they were so thankful for the tips I left them.

Despite all of this Iceland remains somewhat like Singapore- its airline is top-notch, with those snazzy interactive media TVs that keep you entertained, and its airport is well furnished with beautiful architecture. Wikipedia’s entry on it tells me it had one of the highest per capita GDPs (7th) and Human Development Index (1st). In that way it is very much like Singapore. Singapore must never be allowed to fail like it did; a proud nation brought to its knees by a mistake of economy.

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I was backpacking in Europe (UK, Italy, Greece, Croatia) for a few weeks before returning with a group of other Singaporeans. I am indeed fortunate to be able to see the great civilizations I had previously only seen in books and movies- will do a few posts on what I witnessed there in the near future.

Meanwhile, it is nice to be back home, the land of laksa, hokkien mee and HDB flats. How can we make Singapore better? Ideas from abroad? Or innovation from within?