Greetings

Hello there! I hope this post finds you well!

Some introductions first of course. I'm Ruiwen. I'm currently in my fourth-and-a-half year in SoC, and majoring in ECommerce. I ended up having to extend my studies for another semester to accommodate my stint on the NUS Overseas College programme (I spent a year in Stockholm, Sweden), an work-study-learning programme that I absolutely must, must, must recommend to everyone out there. Go for it, you will never regret it. On the side, I also take an interest in web technology, design and photography.

Today, I get the honour to kick off a week of guest blogging on the NUS SoC blog. Thank you Juliana, once again, for inviting me.

So. Where shall I start? Four and a half years is quite a long time to be part of SoC, and since I won't be part of SoC much longer, perhaps I shall start with reflecting on my journey through the tube.

I'll keep this post short and just introductory though.

Originally, I joined SoC with the intention of doing the then Communication and Media course. Mid-way through, I switched streams to E-Commerce, where I am till today. I joined the E-Commerce stream with the hope of learning more about the business side of technology. Of course, the convenient side-effect of the switch is that I no longer had to take any Math modules, which was good, since I am absolutely horrid at math anyway.

In the beginning of my second year in NUS, a group of friends and I founded the current incarnation of the NUS Linux User Group,  linuxNUS. I say it's the "current incarnation" because there have been Linux User Groups in NUS before, and we're only the most recent. linuxNUS was founded to provide help and support for Linux users in NUS, while at the same time to promote the use of Linux and open source software. <shameless plug>If you'd like to find out more about linuxNUS, do check out our contact page.</shameless plug>

The year after, I applied to, and was accepted into, the NUS Overseas College Programme, and spent a year in the NUS Overseas College in Stockholm, Sweden. There, I worked at Mobile Sorcery, the company behind the cross platform mobile application development tookit, MoSync. I was also a part of nuStart, the student entrepreneurship organisation made up of students in Stockholm on the NOC Programme. nuStart was the organisation behind events in Stockholm featuring Web2.0 (Hej! 2007), mobile convergence (Hubbub 07), virtual reality (Hej Världen!) and the Facebook Garage Stockholm. (However, I was only personally involved with Hej! 2007. The other events were organised by later batches. Job well done, guys!)

I returned from Stockholm to Singapore in August 2007.

In January 2008, I was volunteered for elected Vice-President, Events on the NOC Alumni Executive Committee, in which capacity I serve to this date.

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Well, that was a very short introduction, which would hopefully provide some context to some later posts. Stay tuned!

- Ruiwen