First alumni meeting in Singapore
In the beginning of november, Uppsala University held its first alumni reception in Singapore. Around 20 people with degrees from Uppsala University were there to mingle and eat dinner with alumni from Stockholm University, KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Chalmers University of Technology (Göteborg), Linköping University and Lund University.
It was the first time an alumni meeting was arranged along with the other six higher education institutions and the idea seemed to be a hit with the alumni. All together there were around 140 people who attended the evening event.
“It is very nice to get an opportunity to meet others who studied in Uppsala. Uppsala is a lovely city and a place which really allows you to think. I would like to go back there at some time in the future,” says Linyan Xue who did Peace and Conflict Studies in Uppsala between 2009 and 2011.
She was born in China but fairly soon after graduating she found work at the Asia- Europe Foundation in Singapore.
“The study programme in Uppsala really helped me. I had heard very good things about it before I applied and its good reputation turned out to be deserved. It is very much due to my studies that I got a job so quickly.”
Both Swedes who work in Singapore and international students who did part or all of the higher education in Uppsala met at the reception.
Peter Den Daas from the Netherlands is a reporter for the Dutch Financial Daily in China but heard about the alumni meeting in Singapore. He took the opportunity to travel there to meet both alumni and researchers from Uppsala University.
“I studied both in Uppsala and in Groningen and have a double degree in Financial Management. I had a very good time in Uppsala and it is fun to come to Singapore to meet others who were also there,” he says.
Magnus Lundgren has worked at DBS Bank in Singapore for over ten years. He graduated in Physics in 1990.
“I very much like living here in Singapore. I usually call it ‘Asia light’. Most things run very smoothly and living here is easy.”
The dinner was rounded off with a lecture titled Amazing Space by Christer Fuglesang – Sweden’s only astronaut to date. He talked about what it was like to prepare for space travel and how it felt to be launched into space by rocket:
“It shook me up, both physically and mentally, but most of all it made me feel happy.”
He also talked about day-to-day living on the space shuttle:
“As soon as we reached space and unbuckled our safety harnesses, we just drifted around laughing in the zero gravity. Then we got down to the work we had to do.”
Sarah Havrén Schütz, alumni co-ordinator at Uppsala University, was happy with the evening:
“This was our first alumni meeting in Singapore. At present, there is no Alumni Chapter here but now we have made a start which we can build upon. Our alumni are, after all, our best ambassadors, both when it comes to recruiting students and spreading the University’s good reputation,” says Sarah.
Josefin Svensson