Although there are a good amount of Singaporeans at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, most of my classmates are students who came here from all over China. Being that China is a huge country with billions of people, it's impossible to briefly describe their entity. However, there's one thing that I can share that holds true with all my classmates. I think tells a lot about the Chinese people and their overall outlook on life.

When preparing for something important, (in our case at music school, most often a performance), instead of saying "Good luck!", Chinese say "Jia you!" (pronounced jya yo). Directly translated, it means "add oil!" Instead of telling you to depend on luck to get you through, they are wishing for you to run like a well-oiled machine. If they translate "jia you" into an English word, they don't say "good luck" even then. Instead, they say "fighting!" What a country! Full of people who never believe in giving up, never encourage relaxation, instead try to help give you power to fight till the very end.

That being said, I have been receiving a lot of "Jia you!"'s lately for my upcoming graduate diploma recital! It's funny that my final recital in Singapore is in just one week, when in many ways I feel like I just got here. I can't even begin to describe how different of a violinist I am now than when I arrived here. All the opportunities given to me, from competitions to masterclasses to different performances, have helped me more than I could have possibly imagined. Even just today, I got the opportunity to observe a rehearsal with world-renowned violinist Cho-Liang Lin and Albert Tiu, one of the two distinguished piano faculty members of the school.

Here's just two recent performance pictures. I will upload more later!

All students from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, having dinner with our conductor after playing in the pit orchestra for Singapore Lyric Opera's "La Boheme"

Classmates after another orchestra concert.

And one more thing of interest, I just found this link: 50 reasons why Singapore is the greatest city in the world . It's kind of hokey, but maybe gives a bit more info about this little sunny island! For me, the ones that ring true especially are: 1,6,8,10,14(!!!), 19,22,32(!), 43,45(!), 49.