Met my 'son' today.

I met one of my post-grad kids today. He was supposed to come in Michaelmas but had to postpone his admission till now because of bureaucratic problems with the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. He is under their scholarship. He is one year older than me, but he thought that I was 30+!! !!!! !!!!!

Anyway, I learnt a few new things from him. I found out that a visa application now costs RM 700+ in Malaysia. Damn, I used to only pay RM 200+ only. It costs GBP 250 over here though. So, it's still cheaper to do it in Malaysia. Damn, need to extend my visa for a bit more since it's expiring at the end of this year. I might be able to get away with the additional 6 months of tourist visa. But I think that it's probably a better idea to just extend it.

Another thing that I've learnt is the possibility of deferment. According to him, he knows a lot of other PhDs under MOSTI who have deferred their bond. After finishing their PhD, they just wrote to MOSTI to apply for a deferment so that they can work overseas to gain some extra experience. This was allowed. So, this might be a useful avenue for me to pursue. If I get a job overseas, I might want to defer my bond instead of breaking it outright.

So, it was useful meeting this kid of mine. I had been conversing with him as I was the CUMAS postgrad rep at the time. So, I handled all the PG new entries. However, I don't think that he'll be interested in mixing with the undergrads though. So, I guess that he'll mix around with other PG then. He's in a mature college afterall. So, he'll probably have no problems finding mature people to talk to.