Vlog | Discover June’s Singaporean Way of Study-Life Balance

跟随镜头，我们出发！今天，让我们和北大留学生 June Tan Rui Min 一起探索新加坡。

Editor's Note

PKU Student Vlogs is a video series depicting the life of Pekingers through their own camera and point of view. The purpose of launching the series is to present diversity and vibrancy of the PKU community to a wider audiance.

Currently, we are CALLING for more PKU students to film "a day in their life" vlogs! For those of you interested in sharing with our audiences a typical day in your PKU student life or any other topics related to PKU, please email to [e-mail] with the subject “PKU vlogs”. Please include your full name, student number, major and WeChat number.

On this episode, PKU international student June Tan Rui Min, with a major in journalism and communications, shares with us her day in the life as well as how she has been coping with online study in Singapore.

■ PKU STUDENT VLOGs 

Earlier this year, Peking University (PKU) put out an advisory to encourage international students who had returned to their home countries during the winter holiday to deter traveling back to China due to the widening COVID-19 pandemic. I was one of the many international students who had unsuspectingly traveled out of China before the COVID-19 outbreak, oblivious to the fact that a global crisis was about to cause major turmoil and disruption to everyone's lives.

Many international students were expecting to return to China as soon as the winter holidays ended. Thus, the next few days consisted of us scrambling to contact our flight agencies to cancel our return flight tickets. I remember heavily contemplating whether or not to change the date of the flight instead of canceling it for I had high hopes that in the following month or so, all of us would be able to embark on our flights and happily return to China. I would have never fathomed that I would be spending almost a year at home with only a month's worth of clothing I packed into my suitcase the night before returning to Singapore. But for someone who ended spending most of their days sitting at home, it turned out to be sufficient! 

A beautiful rainbow spotted in Singapore’s sky when the nation was under lockdown

■ PKU STUDENT VLOGs 

The few months have gone by in a blur. When COVID-19 first broke out, many of us were faced with doubt and confusion. Just like everyone else, I felt as if the virus was putting me in an ultimately uncontrollable situation, altering my life in ways I would not have chosen for myself. There were days where I found myself spending hours and hours asking the world-wide-web questions nobody had a definite answer to, for example, "when can we get vaccinated against COVID-19?", "has the virus peaked?", "when will travel restrictions be lifted?"

Stress baking and quarantine cooking my way through the pandemic

■ PKU STUDENT VLOGs 

Online lessons have become an integral part of school life for international students abroad. Lessons are either conducted via video link or recorded during class and then uploaded onto PKU's student learning platform. While it is inevitable that we face challenges with internet access, stability, and speed, the school has been working hard to improve its online student support services. Teachers have also been making it a point to track our learning process by taking attendance and monitoring the statistical figures behind our student learning platform. 

■ PKU STUDENT VLOGs 

It's been almost 10 months since I returned to Singapore. In the grand scheme of things, these past months have blessed me with much needed quiet and self-contemplation. Around us, the world has also been in a state of deep reflection- people have been experimenting with different ways of living, as well as learning to be with themselves and their family members. 

For someone who has been living abroad for a very long time, this pandemic has given me ample time to bond with my home country

But there are times I find myself going the extra mile to search for comfort foods that remind me of China

I'm glad that life is returning to normal. While I've managed to embrace online learning with the help and support from friends and teachers, I am still very much looking forward to the prospects of returning to China to take physical classes! Hopefully, when everything is over, we'll all be reunited on campus!

It’s been a year since this picture was taken. Looking forward to updating my camera roll with more photos of our beautiful PKU campus! 

Read More

PKU Class of 2020| Lu Fangyuan: Responsibility and Global Vision

Vlog | Discover June’s Singaporean Way of Study-Life Balance

Writer:June Tan Rui Min

Editor:Amanda Hu, Pu Hairui, Xu Haolun

Photo:June Tan Rui Min

Designer:Xu Haolun