I am offered today by the teacher the role of honor to answer questions pertaining Singapore from my peers. Apparently the post card of e Esplanade in the Deutch course text book page45 has been quite a point of interest. Being the only tourist attraction from Asia, it stands out conspicuously from the other European counterparts. And to a trained Civil Engineer (like myself...oh well..), e shimmering Theater at e Bay is incontrovertibly an awe-inspiring master piece of structural mechanics. (not to mention all the state-of-arts technology that is embodied in this behemoth, including the solar reflex panel that made up most of the exteriors, which automatically repel off all the dust from the glass panels when there is direct sunlight--and which was from the research effort of a group of proud NUS students.)

While trying to explain how this building imitates the shape of the most famous tropical fruit in Singapore, I literally struck the whole class dumbfound when e word “Durian” was uttered. All my peers were wearing a perplexed look on their face. It would be certainly an even more abstruse task for them to visualize what a halved durian looks like. Despite the fact that the class come from nations all over the Eurasian region, it seems that Durian is still an extremely extraordinary object that seldom cross the pathway of most people inhabiting this planet. (“absolute peregrine” in ancient English). It suddenly dawned on me that I am so very lucky to see e Durian and to taste e Durian almost 15 years ago! It is indeed THE Durian oder “Die Durianfrucht”.

Our teacher confessed that he used to be very very puzzeled over the fact that there is a postcard on Singapore in the text book. All the rest of the tourist attractions are from e neighboring countries of Germany. There is not even China or Japan as the main purpose of the book is to acquaint the students with Deutschland and his close allies by proximity. He has never seen a Singaporean student in the class (true enough, so far I have not encountered any Singaporean in the city as well) ever since he joined this institute. It is certainly more sensible to have postcard of China as there is a handful of mainlanders in the Dortmund city. Now, on this fateful day 11th of August, as if the first gleam of light in the morning shedding through the shutter, he finally have his first Singaporean student (they have been counting me as of China+Singapore dual nationality) to demonstrate that the postcard in the book is indeed not a page filler. Well, what could I say? I am lucky to be his first Singaporean student...as much as he is lucky to be my first Deutsch teacher.

I am extremely packed this week. The teacher has hastened his pace of teaching even further and we gonna adjust accordingly. Nevertheless, I always think that language is the chronicle of human wisdom like fossil coals that have been furnaced and sedimented over millenniums. With the sparks of passion and the freshening of dedication, it will just go blaze and bloom! Let’s both add more oil to our endeavors!

今天应邀回答同学们关于新加坡的问题，主要是书上绍风景名胜的第三章介莫名其妙出现了个新加坡的明信片，上边正是咱的著名建筑物榴莲壳。用“莫名其妙”这个词主要因为本章其他图片都是德国及其邻国的，除了这张外完全没有出现较远国家。当我介绍说这个建筑物形状是仿榴莲时全班同学都大眼瞪小眼不知所云，我班虽然国籍众多背景复杂不过貌似除我外没人见过这玩意，看来偶还挺幸运的，10多年前就亲眼亲口见证了这一伟大的水果！我也就此打住，估计一个榴莲都没见过那切了一半的榴莲就更不知道长啥样了。我们老师也坦白说他曾在过去好多年一直诧异为啥这章课本里会呼啦一下冒出来一张新加坡的照片，他在这个学校从来没见过新加坡人（我到目前为止在本市也还没碰见过），就是放个中国或日本景点的照片都更贴切些，而今天，在这历史性的日子里，终于出现了传说中的新加坡学生（他们一直把我按双国籍算的），证明这张照片不是乱放的！作为他的新加坡学生，同时他也是我第一个德语老师，偶也觉得挺运气的，堪比见过榴莲的经历！

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