I kept it on the down-low at the time, but a few months ago, quite a few of the exchange here decide to apply for work placements here, for the beginning of summer. This was mainly to make the most of Singapore being a business hub, and gain some insight into what it would be like to have an international career. I have absolutely LOVED studying abroad, so now I want to the take next logically step forward and look into actually working abroad. Obviously, to do so, my career would need to be with a company which would allow me to take a seat abroad in one of their foreign offices. As I’m studying law, this is slightly problematic for me, since none of the Scottish law firms are “international” firms per se, and the furthest away office any of them have is in London. So to get future international opportunities, I’ll really need to convert to English law, and then get a job in London, and then look to be transferred abroad. I couldn’t go straight to working in say, Singapore, without first being qualified in Singaporean law – and that’s another 4 years of uni.

I would definitely, without doubt, love to come back to Singapore to work in the future, but it involves a lot of effort to do so. However, I’m willing to pull through and get here, since I have just loved this new life out here. It did take a while to get used to it, but life here is so much more relaxed, exotic and exciting. I can’t imagine not being in the sunshine everyday, it seems to just make everything less stressful and make everyone more happy!

BUT I have to make sure it’s 100% what I want to do before I make the drastic move. I will obviously take a long time to decide, and I quite possibly will end up staying in the UK. But to explore all options, as I said at the beginning, several of us applied to all the international law firms in order to get some work experience out here and really see, first hand, what it would be like.

Sooo starting from tomorrow I’ve got a short work placement with a big firm, in their Singapore office. I’m so excited, but also so nervous… What should I wear? How should I act? What do I need to do? What if I can’t understand the tasks I’m assigned? What if I look completely stupid? What if I’m late? So tonight I’m going to have an early night, make sure I’m up in time to leave at 8 o clock, since business in Singapore doesn’t start until 9.30am. That’s quite a lot of time, but I’m just too scared about missing the bus which takes me to the MRT (equivalent of London underground). Commuting won’t be too bad, it should really only take about 25 mins… so clearly I’m just being super eager, but it’s my first day at work so I guess that’s not exactly a bad thing. The MRT is really equivalent and during peak hours a train completely every minute! But the most annoying bit of the journey, any journey into town, is that from campus we have to catch a stupid bus to actually get to the nearest MRT station. And the bus times are…. non existent. Yes, how annoying. So you just have to guess when a bus will be coming, which means you could be waiting up to half an hour for one! So on top of all my other stresses for starting my work placement tomorrow, the bus is just another addition to the list. Once I’m on that bus and headed for the MRT station, I’ll be SLIGHTLY more relaxed… Well, we’ll see how it all goes tomorrow morning!