I decided to check out IVCF's International Fellowship at UW-Madison and discovered that it's dominated by East Asians. About two-thirds were mainland Chinese, plus a few Taiwanese. Phew. Most of them seem to be doing Masters or PhDs in biology-related stuff.

I was talking to one of the Chinese women when a familiar accent made me turn around. It was a young guy talking to a middle-aged woman with a baby. His accent didn't sound Chinese, so when the lady left I said:

"Hi! Where are you from?" (I need to work on starting conversations more politely)

"Singapore."

"OH CHEH that's why your accent sounded familiar."

"Singaporean?"

"Malaysian."

"How come you're by yourself? Malaysians tend to travel in herds. Usually about five or six, but at least three or four people." [This is why you shouldn't go to, say, CMU or Australia if you want to meet people from other cultures.]

"Oh, I just moved here, haven't run into any others yet." [And I'm from a tiny college where there were two Malaysians and one Singaporean.]

"I can put you in touch with some people. There's a Malaysian Students' Association, MSA, but they don't do anything. Now there's a Malaysian Chinese Students' Association [wahlau...sounds like MCA] which the Chinese students started because they were fed up with MSA not doing anything. MCSA has things like international dinners, Taste of Malaysia...then the Indian and Malay students joined because MSA still wasn't doing anything."

I asked him whether he was a grad student or an undergrad. "Undergrad...I've been here two years."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-four. It's because of NS. Oh yeah, Malaysia has NS now too, but it's only six months."

"I don't like to disparage my country, but our NS is ridiculous."

"I don't like to disparage my country, but at least your NS has gender equality."

"So? Complaining because NS got no chicks ah?"

"Not just that, but when you get out, the girl who was two years your junior is now your senior, and it's like that all the way up, later they become your bosses."

I told him all my sibs were in Singapore, and that the eldest after me had done O-levels, JC, and is now in NUS: "Hah! Sorry, you're never going to see them again. They're not coming back."

"You guys are stealing our brains!"

"Yeah, I've been writing letters to my government telling them 'We should encourage Malaysia in its bumiputra policy.'"

Haha. Geez. Now that TA isn't nearby, it's nice to run into someone who can talk about all this stuff.