These are posts aimed to be more serious: usually commentaries of what I notice in the news recently, or criticisms and insights about the societal problems. I try my best not to limit these topics to the Singaporean society only, but I am of course plagued by my myopic tendencies (both literally and figuratively).

It should be noted that my opinions are my own.

  • Feb 27, 2024 Opinions - Contentious and Values

    It is one thing to teach history, another to teach values through history, and yet another to teach values through current affairs bound by the unfortunate ties of history. The latter is the attempt of the Ministry of Education (MOE) to teach empathy through Character and Citizenship Education (CCE).

  • Feb 14, 2024 Opinions - What it means to fail

    A teaching platitude is a truism arising from the hackneying of beliefs and of values central to what is commonly understood to be the ideal attitudes governing learning. And there are many we are familiar, for instance, in failure. Failure is part of success, as they say. But if you have never failed, would you be considered to be successful?

  • Jan 10, 2024 Opinions - The Minister's Pleasure

    I don’t recall a single policy so vexing that led me to pen down my kneejerk reactions and emotions, but alas we are here. The recently-announced Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection (SEPP), see CNA’s coverage, for example.

  • Dec 18, 2023 Opinions - Things That Fly Don't Need Wings

    National history is the past of a nation, while national memory is what citizens make of it - it is founded upon common experiences and culture. In his work “Les Lieux de Memoire”, Pierra Nora raises a curious remark about the “distance between national history and what we may now call national memory”. Singapore has a unified national history and a national memory, only that it is united through its democratised form where Singaporeans get to say what Singapore is to them. It is trite that our national history is rich, but we cannot say the same for our national memory. As it stands, our breakneck pace of growth nets us no time to leave our mark.

  • Sep 1, 2023 Opinions - The Prima Facie Case of Trust

    The case of interpersonal trust is inherently unfair. It is difficult to build, yet easy to break: brittle, if I may. Moreover, dependency may not be even, for instance, in the case of parent-child relations where the young is solely dependent on his parent.

  • Jul 20, 2023 Opinions - Some Thoughts on IMO 2023

    It’s that time of the year where I get to pull out my tinfoil hat as a wannabe-contestant and loudly declare which problems I would be able to solve in contest. Fortunately for someone too old (and unqualified) for it, I have all the latitude to give my armchair thoughts and analysis. After a week or so, I give my thoughts and writeups on three problems, in the order I solved them in.

  • Jul 1, 2023 Opinions - The only thing unmeritocratic is our expectations

    Meritocracy is the promise that you are rewarded solely based on skill and effort, hence the word merit, as in meritocracy. Perhaps the most harmful societal ideal, meritocracy is the elephant in the room. People grow up being told that the system is fair, yet they learn otherwise. Personally, I don’t put my faith in such an ideal, nor do I attempt to place it in disrepute. As it stands, the modern appearance of meritocracy has deviated from what it initially set out to be, and in turn, became whatever we unmeritoriously wished it were.

  • Jan 12, 2023 Opinions - Time to get a watch

    For all the burgeoning motivations, whatever it may be, the start of any year is certainly a good moment for personal reflection, for reminiscing how the past year went by in a jiffy, or for the setting of (mostly unrealistic) aspirations. Curiously, the time at the start of the year is no different than the time elsewhere throughout the year, perhaps only in value. In any case, With optimism, I suppose that time is valuable to you, the reader.

  • Nov 5, 2022 Math - Some Musings for October

    The USEMO 2022 happened just last month - and it so happened that it’s my first time penning down some thoughts and commentaries about the problems (and also first occurrence of a math post on this blog!). As grading comes to an end, I thought it’d be a novel attempt for me to do so.

  • Oct 21, 2022 Opinion - In Support of Learning Useless Things

    If you couldn’t already tell, most things you learn in school are completely useless, at least in the pragmatic sense. And from experience, schools get this terribly wrong.

  • Sep 28, 2022 Opinion - Modern disdain

    The car, cash, credit card, condominium and country club originally started as a tongue-in-cheek mantra to represent “The Singaporean Dream” but now represents a pious desire along the Singaporean pipeline.

  • Jul 28, 2022 Opinion - Paranormal Texting

    I decided to scroll through most of my (few) texting channels and I did just realise that I forgot to reply to quite a few conversations (oops). Sorry to these unlucky people placed on the ghosting list, but perhaps just proclaiming that I was preoccupied with other priorities isn’t as good of a reason after the third or fourth time. I was pretty torn between replying, three or four days after the initial message, or not at all, and of course I conveniently chose the latter for all but one party (lucky you!).

  • Jul 20, 2022 Opinion - The Singaporean Mindset

    The gift of sentience is also a pain, I was quite occupied in the past week, although I have found the time to further my commitment to this blog. While on the bus this morning I was particularly inspired by this Reddit thread on r/askSingapore that questioned the suffocating feeling of the “Singaporean Mindset”. I should clarify: the Singaporean Mindset has been increasingly used to describe Singaporeans cursed (and blessed) with a cookie cutter personality, plagued with narrow-mindedness and lathered with a generous amount of materialism as a result of the country’s governance.

  • Jul 10, 2022 Opinion - Morals in Our Hands

    Just 3 weeks ago was the resonant overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) that was at the helm of the push for womens’ rights and autonomy in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled 49 years ago that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteed a “right to privacy”, which in turn affirmed womens’ right to abortion. And, even back then, the ruling was just as controversial as today’s overruling after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022).