EXCHANGE Student Goes Abroad For Holiday to compete in ESports Championship

Last week, LIER's chief journalist Chester Glyndonson was featured in the Higher Education section of the August 2007 issue of TIEM Magazine for his crackdown on university students who allegedly "go to class". Glyndonson found that "going to class" was just one of many new-age college euphemisms for "going to check my Facebook/MySpace in the school library" and won a Pulitzer's Prize for his feature article. There have been rumours that his article will be made into a Hollywood film.

To continue to trend, this week, Glyndonson is off hunting Generation-Y once again, and this time round, his prey is Chinese foreign exchange student, Cha-Siu Bao. Bao, originally from the island of Hong Kong, attends the University of Kingsfield, Australia and has spent the last 3 years maintaining his GPA of 7.1. When asked to comment on his amazing perseverance, Bao declined to comment, leading us to conclude that he must be a victim of Asian Parenting, a disease that is widespread throughout a large population of Asian youths.

Bao initially turned up to the exchange program information seminar accidentally, after being duped by one of his friends that an extra lecture had been scheduled for his favourite course, ECON1828, Economics for Elitists. After bugging Bao's house and recording his conversations with his parents, we found out that they were very much against the idea of him going overseas to further his study and preferred that he stay in Australia under their watchful eye. Sources tell us that Bao was very upset after the conversation and was in no mood to study that evening. His tantrum almost cost him his perfect GPA and he has since learned his lesson, after being reportedly spanked by his mother.

While he was very excited about going away to study abroad, after discussing the exchange opportunity with a academic advisor, Bao found that he was ineligible for exchange, as he was already under scholarship at UK. In a bid to somehow cheat the system, Bao photoshopped himself a fake birth certificate, a doctored application form and went as far as buying himself a new tie and growing a beard. Several weeks later, Bao presented the relevant documents to his parents and his mother fainted and had to be rushed to hospital. In the chaos that ensued, Bao, who had packed his bags weeks beforehand, took a cab to the airport to catch a flight to Tijuana, the happiest place on earth.

In the following 6 months, the University of Kingsfield became increasingly suspect due to the lack of correspondence from Ashwood University, the institution to which Bao had supposedly applied for exchange. The administration at UK began researching Ashwood University, and were unable to find the institution on the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Upon googling Ashwood University, the administration found that it was simply an Internet based "university" which was in fact just a degree mill that provides degrees with full academic transcripts for just $500 AUD. Realizing they had been duped, the University of Kingsfield began its search for its missing student.

Two months on, the University of Kingsfield and the federal police still believe that Bao is abroad. Their most recent lead traced Bao's location to the center of the Bermuda Triangle and have pronounced him dead. Bao has since continued to elude authorities and was last sighted sipping a Pina Colada on Brisbane's Gold Coast and is due to star in a broadway musical next month.