Vijay in Singapore!

Vijay was here!! Hee.. took a day off work to hang out with him in town..

For the not-so-informed.. Vijay was my roommate at Stanford! He's an Indian from India, who had been in America 5 years when I met him. Still remember, when my mom heard that my roommate was Indian, her questions were things like, does he stink?

Hahaha.. well, not that I'm entirely faultless of the curse of racism.. Anyway, Vijay's the fourth (set of) roommate(s) I've had. First was in KR, some nameless PSC scholar who didn't even stay. Then in Birmingham with Chunzhi, Louis, Yewei, Kok Sung.. and that was fun! Followed by Bristol with Pierre, Ivy, Noelle, which was cool (especially the pool table!) But Vijay was by far the best roommate I've ever had. We didn't start out with a whole lot of common interests, and kind of different diets. But over the course of a year, we shared interests, teaching each other about pool, astronomy, anime, Bollywood, throwing parties together, travelling together, drinking beer together, doing movie nights, joining up with each other's social circles.

In my book, Vijay is the ideal in terms of how a student should live when studying overseas. He maintains contact with his countrymen, but doesn't make the mistake of isolating himself from the locals. He hangs out with people of all nations and cultures, making friends easily and introducing those friends to each other, helping to broaden everyone's horizons. Hanging out with him was easy!

So we spent hours at Cafe Cartel and Pacific Coffee Club, watched Howl's Moving Castle and played Time Crisis 2 at CineLeisure, had chicken rice at Selegie. Talked about each other's goings-on, and shared about our girlfriends and good friends... Turns out he's still watching anime, even joining the Stanford Anime Club. :> Makes me feel good!

I think the most flattering thing for me was how we were talking about how much we enjoyed those times.. (even now I'm reminded of getting rainchecks for Post Cereal... ) It's a deep compliment for me that Vijay found me to be a good roommate too.. :>

Well.. I'm hoping that I'll get to visit him soon, or that he'll really do like what he said and come to Singapore to work too!