New Nation

But analysts predict what straw poll revealed: It could be a close fight.

Will Prof Daniel Goh (left) give hipster MP Chen Show Mao a run for his money?

National University of Singapore sociologist Prof Daniel Goh made his maiden speech at an election rally on Wednesday night, formally announcing that he has become a Workers’ Party member.

His unveiling was met with waves of cooing and oohing all over Singapore as many see Prof Goh’s participation in politics as a sign that another heavyweight has thrown his name into the hat.

And PAP could be up for some serious competition (read: ass-whooping) come GE2016.

However, a straw poll with 15,000 Singaporeans reveal that Aljunied GRC MP Chen Show Mao is still pretty much in the lead, if ever there was a straight fight between him and Prof Daniel Goh for the prime ministry.

Hipster MP Chen Show Mao came out with 60.1 percent of all votes while Prof Daniel Goh goes away with 39.9 percent.

Self-styled political pundit, Eric de Yaya, said: “Chen Show Mao has always been seen as the future prime minister. But Prof Daniel Goh will no doubt give him a run for his money.”

And there are some who view Prof Daniel Goh’s participation as highly valuable for NUS, because it increases the institution of higher education’s street cred. And prove that academics can go from pontificating behind closed doors in a class room to being the change they want to see in the world.

New Nation editor, Belmont Lay, said: “Knowing that Prof Goh has officially become a WP member makes me proud to announce to people from now on that NUS is actually my alma mater. Feels good to be associated with NUS now. Although I’ve never even attended a single class by him.”

Other NUS undergrads that New Nation spoke too were also cooing and oohing, while getting moist and swollen.

Wo Xi Huan, a second-year sociology major said: “Mmmm Prof Goh is so boyish and freedom fighting… Mmmm in baby blue… His modules confirm bid until siao one next semester…”

Poly grad denied entry into NUS Computer Science, starts personal appeal website.

By Belmont Lay

If you’ve had enough of all that doom and gloom about our MRT system going tits up even as COE prices breached the stratosphere, on top of the overwrought sex scandal involving a truckload of men that has become nothing less than a grotesque public spectacle, here’s something to lighten your mood and perhaps restore your faith in humanity before this week comes to a close.

Alvin Wang started a personal appeal website to up his chances of getting into NUS. What's your excuse again?

Here goes: A very tech-savvy 21-year-old, by the name of Alvin Wang, has started a personal online appeal page called “Help Alvin Get Into School“.

His story is fairly straightforward: Alvin graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic with a Diploma in Information Technology two years ago.

But the deal is, his application to pursue a degree in Computer Science at National University of Singapore was rejected.

Instead of feeling disheartened and end up peddling his story anonymously to some sad sack website or Internet forum that blames foreigners for everything, he uses his God-give initiative to start his own personal appeal page to garner support, and hence, a better shot at completing his tertiary education.

The question is: Will he stand a better chance of getting into NUS when he applies again just because of this appeal site? (As of April 20, 2012 @ 2 a.m., there are 3,000 Likes.)

Will NUS buy this sort of antics?

Hey, who knows? Even Alvin himself sounds sceptical about his chances.

But you got to love this kid for trying!

He is gunning to become a developer, is obviously in love with his craft and appears technically competent – given that his website is eye-catching, fuss-free and funky without all that jazz and overkill.

So, to all of you who are reading this, please share this story far and wide.

“Like” Alvin’s appeal website on Facebook. Spread the word so it gets around.

I’ll use whatever means I have at my disposal to get your website noticed by the Dean, ok?

This guy deserves a shot at getting into university!

Because even though jumping up and down all the time blaming everything and everyone for our lot in life might be an option or something we are getting used to, I think it is obvious that we also have the choice of proactively doing something – even if it’s just this once – to help one fellow out.

Someone, someday might just repay you that favour.

Exchange student Walker Vincoli has “academic freedom” explained to him by a letter writer.

Dear New Nation editor,

Recently, an exchange student who spent two semesters in NUS went back to his home country in the West and wrote a disparaging article criticising NUS’ lack of “academic freedom”.

I don’t know about this Walker Vincoli guy who wrote the article suggesting that NUS, its students and teaching staff, are into self-censorship.

I want to complain against him because he is dead wrong.

I don’t know what modules he was taking, (apparently they were political science modules), but those I took were always quite fun.

I was majoring in Comunications, for the record.

Let me say one thing: I spent four years inside the Arts faculty. And every minute I was there, I was free as a bird.

Academic freedom was real.

Believe me, NUS students have a lot of freedom.

When in class, they are free to answer questions or remain quiet.

So when the tutor asks questions, most will look at the floor and avoid eye contact.

In other country’s universities, I heard it can be quite chaotic. People getting into arguments about some esoteric subject or cannot stand being criticised for the weaker but finer points of the argument.

And then they take things outside.

Here in Singapore, we are free to choose. It is our right within the confines of academia. So we choose what is called a “Quiet Democracy”.

Let me explain: Mostly, NUS students remain quiet because Singaporeans are introverted. And not because we choose to be.

Last time, about 5 years ago, SDP opposition politics mentor Chee Soon Juan came to the NUS Kent Ridge campus to pay a visit and eat at the canteen.

Everyone freely ignored him.

No one bothered to stop and stare because students were too busy spending their free time in the canteen eating and having conversations about nothing among themselves.

And partly because no one recognised him.

The freedom to choose to know who is your opposition political figurehead is a right in itself that is underrated.

Moreover, NUS culture is so free to the extent that you don’t even have to attend lectures. All you need to do is just to show up for the exams.

So not surprising, lecturers are also free to give grades. Except that at the end of each semester, he plots all the grades according to the bell curve.

So even if your numerical grade is 99.5, you might have effectively scored a B+.

Partly because that module has plenty of students from China taking it.

But hear me out, all work and no play makes everyone dull. (I knew of a lot of overseas scholars who looked pasty and spent too much time in the library.)

Hence, NUS offers students a lot of free time.

In any given week, you are in school about three days the most.

Academic freedom, hence, is the right to stay away from touching your books when you don’t feel like it.

The girls in NUS are also very free, judging by the way they dress. Ok, regarding this point, I speak for the girls in the Arts faculty.

Their make-up is always very thick, their skirt is reluctantly very short (as I noticed they spend a lot of time trying to hold it down when they sit or navigate the endless flights of stairs uphill and downhill) and their perfume is inclined to be very strong.

They probably take 2 hours to get ready for a tutorial that last 45 minutes the most.

So, as you can see, NUS students express themselves in many different non-verbal ways.

And this in itself is highly politically charged.

Because have you heard of this mantra “the personal is political”?

Well, NUS students are political alright. Their bodies are the domain of politics. They are the poletariats relinquinshing their Foucaultian chains as they resist the Marxist superstructures that control the means of production.

They embody the politics of sexiness.

If you did not understand the previous two paragraphs, then I’m truly sorry, you have not understood our politics of covert-overt expression that goes beyond the academic or textbook.

Needless to say, this brings me on to my next point: I can assure you NUS is very free.

You can go to Vivo City during any weekday, and the place is reeking of NUS students.

And trust me, any student is free to talk politics in any class, even when it is not a political science module.

Just that when you relate, for example, everything in the module (be it history of Southeast Asian art or intro to game theory) back to Lim Chin Siong or Singapore’s hardline censorship stance, you will have no friends and be forever alone.

You will also be ostracised for politicising everything.

But I understand this causes some problems: A lot of people complain that NUS students these days are apolitical and apathetic.

I disagree. This is a gross misrepresentation and an outright injustice.

NUS students are, in fact, being objective.

They refuse to allow politics to cloud their judgement. Or occupy thoughts, if any, in their mind.

You see, when politics get in the way, you wouldn’t have enough focus. And when you don’t have enough focus, you cannot ensure you will not miss out on any online sprees or spot Forever21 sale items.

I still believe NUS students are free to talk about anything they want. That’s why you see them sitting around campus all the time talking about stuff. With their laptops open.

And when NUS students do engage in real work, they are free to pursue their interests in all areas.

To conduct research, students read a lot of papers and articles written by people no one outside of university has ever heard of and write and submit essays citing even more obscure sources that eventually no one ever reads.

This is the pinnacle of scholarly pursuits.

And all these can be very stressful.

That is why to make their lives more interesting, a lot of female NUS students end up becoming blogshop models.

They say the money is good and they get to express themselves aesthetically.

Which is political.

And this is the most free they have ever felt their entire lives.

Yours sincerely,
Tok Kin Kok
NUS Alumni
Class of 2009

P.S. If you all want, you all talking Singlish in the comment section, ho seh boh? Liddat, all the chao ang moh reading this overseas catch no ball! On boh? Simi lan jiao wei also kong, can?

Oh wow, why didn’t I think of that?

This was an article published in The Straits Times on Dec. 28 about the Liat Towers being inundated by flood waters.

One of the people quoted for the article is Assistant Professor Vivien Chua of the National University of Singapore’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who spent a good part of her life getting a PhD.

She was quoted as saying:

Targeted approach to pinpoint the worst English speakers and writers. And then everyone else.

A poor grasp of English is like writing with a blunt pencil. It is pointless and grating.

Under the diktat of National University of Singapore provost Tan Eng Chye, the university will force 1,500 of its freshmen to take compulsory writing modules from August next year.

These writing modules are targeted at students who cannot speak English properly without fudging the words that are coming out of their mouths or make decent eye contact during oral presentations.

Eng Chye witnessed these instances first-hand, as well as students who cannot even take meeting minutes properly, and so he’s bent on fixing this perceived problem.

Since there are 6,500 freshmen entering NUS each year, the 1,500 selected initially – representing a quarter of new students – must eventually be chosen based on a supposedly lottery-style selection.

Well, sort of.

The students forced to take the compulsory writing modules will either come from a big faculty or from several smaller faculties, Eng Chye said.

Therefore, although unspoken, it can be understood with a tinge of implicit knowledge that a “big faculty” normally refers to the Engineering faculty or Science faculty, while a “small faculty” would target the School of Computing.

And if you’re laughing to yourself thinking that this doublespeak is funny and these are the faculties targeted because they are typically known to consist of non-Singaporean (read: foreign) students, then you are probably right, being racist or both.

The real reason is because Engineering and Science students communicate in an efficient language that typically makes use of a mix of arcane Greek symbols and Arabic numerals resembling chicken scratching, but are otherwise, highly effective in expressing non-linear streams of information in linear-looking equations.

They can communicate through this method effectively with little room for error while applying zero non-verbal cues and certainly with none or very little English. (Because, if you think about it, a Chinese engineer must be able to tell an Indian engineer how to get the bridge built even when no English is exchanged, otherwise we’re all screwed.)

Computing students, on the other hand, tend to speak Python or some variant. (Which to you and me, could very well be Klingon or Na’vi.)

For proof that this is the case, Eng Chye wrote in his blog earlier this month on Oct. 18 that the current pilot writing modules launched so far have not been attracting much interest from Science, Engineering and Computing students.

And there’s the caveat to Eng Chye’s point: Engineering, Science and Computing students need the writing modules more badly than anyone else because they have “far less opportunity to develop language and communications skills through their disciplinary modules”.

But Eng Chye also told The Straits Times about his concern regarding the nuances of the problem: “You can have students who can write grammatically but cannot express their main ideas in a succinct and direct manner. They just ramble on.”

Which is why this article is a 60-reduction of the originally very lengthy, meandering, pointless and space-wasting front page piece that appeared in The Straits Times on Oct. 31. Yawn.

Editor’s note: I think what Eng Chye really is out to cultivate at NUS are Steve Jobs: People who can think English, speak technology, minimally. No?

You know guys, The Old Man really just wants to retire. Cut him some slack.

By Fang Shihan

He came, he croaked and he curtly rasped his way around questions from all directions. Not that you would expect anything less from Former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who was at the receiving end of the Q&A session organized by the Lee Kuan Yew School of public policy on Wednesday.

The grandfather of Singapore stands tall at 88 years old this year and is clearly still very influential as an international thinker – but reluctantly so.

This was Lee just three years ago with Fareed Zakaria:

A far cry from the disengaged grandaddy that he personified during the Q&A when answers were filled with awkward silences as moderator Kishore Mahbubani struggled to figure out if he’d actually finished his answer.

Arriving onstage with a bandage on his middle finger (we figure he cut  himself while giving the finger to hordes of mangy journalists. Just because he’s badass), wearing office socks paired with a pair of Nike Free running shoes, The Old Man, as he’s fondly known, candidly batted off questions he thought were irrelevant and gave his honest disclaimer about issues he felt he wouldn’t be an expert on.

“If he’s from Sri Lanka then he’ll know more about Sri Lanka than I do,” he replied to a person who wrote in asking about the post-conflict country.

Still, the questions on international relations kept coming, and the fortune cookie insights from the oracle who transformed a tiny rock to a metropolitan city, continued to wow the audience and created headlines.

Not that he appreciated it. At one point, it almost felt like he became increasingly exasperated with the adulation – or maybe it was a case of same set of shitty questions on a different day.

He did however, confidently say that he was an expert on Singapore issues. And this is where New Nation comes in.

We asked him if his public appearances during the general elections affected PM Lee’s chances of winning. To which he chuckled:

wHy dO YoU ALL tHiNk I hAvE aLL tHe AnsWeRs???

“I did not appear so often anyway. I have stood down and I don’t know who gave you the impression I appeared so frequently. I have stood down and I am off the press as a focus of attention, and off the electronic media.”

Now the written word doesn’t do him justice. He might sound pompous or even scathing in the reply but in reality, Big Scary former MM Lee Kuan Yew was just one “Girl ar…” short of sounding like any other 88 year old grandfather.

A grandfather that has seen a country from its squalid post-war beginnings to its current cosmopolitan state. Oh and a grandfather that single-handedly destroyed Singapore’s opposition prior to independence.

“Conditions change,” he says. “After long period of quiet, confident rule, a generation that grows up in a period of affluence believes that we have arrived. And as the saying goes, a first world parliament must have a first world opposition. So the restlessness. whether that leads to better governance we have to wait and see.”

So the old man still has problems with a non-one party state, saying that Singapore does not have the critical mass to produce two A-grade political teams.

But grumble as he may – and with that growl of a voice, amplified by the microphone close to his throat it certainly sounded unhappy – he made it clear that his time is over and that Singapore is in the hands of the next generation.

He says, “The vision has to be your vision, not my vision. I’ve lived my life, I’m 88. I’m strolling into the sunset, maybe I’ll stumble towards the end. But you have to have a vision of the kind of Singapore you want and you got to crystallize that and get your leaders to adopt your vision.”

Paraphrased: “I’m done with this shit. It’s your problem now. Let me retire in peace.”

So cut him some slack guys.

Listening to minority views to shut down Tan Tock Seng Hospital during SARS crisis in 2003 now an internationally lauded decision.

When severe acute respiratory syndrome began spreading in Singapore in 2003, there were calls by a small group of people to shut down Tan Tock Seng hospital to all but those with the virus.

While this seemingly radical call to quarantine patients were largely ignored by others, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, then head of medical sciences at the Ministry of Health in 2003, decided to listen to this suggestion and implemented it.

The current president of the National University of Singapore, giving the third in an annual series of four leadership lectures yesterday at the Fullerton Hotel, said he had to make high-stakes decisions with incomplete information during that period of “crisis leadership”.

The result? On hindsight, the idea stemming from a minority and contrarian group to shut down one of Singapore’s public hospitals has become an internationally lauded decision to contain the spread of the virus.

Tan even received the Public Service Star award in 2003 for leading the public health response to the Sars crisis which started in February 2003, when an infected woman returned to Singapore from overseas and the virus infected 238 people, killing 33 before it was contained in May.

Tan also said seemingly useless pursuits such as art and travel gave him a multidimensionality that translated into important traits of self-knowledge, self-reliance, resourcefulness and resilience that allowed him to weigh different views, even those in the minority.

He said, “The value of things like art and travel should not be seen in utilitarian terms of how it helped your career – but whether it made your life richer, more interesting, and more enjoyable”

This lecture series is given by alumni of St. Joseph Institute who have made an impact locally. Previous two speakers included National Kidney Foundation chairman Gerard Ee and DBS bank chairman Peter Seah.

The more thorough the explanations seem, the more you need to roll your eyes and disbelieve it.

By Belmont Lay

Jonathan Eyal's special report in The Sunday Times on Aug. 14 ran the gamut of explanations for the British riots. Result? When the cause of event is unknown or non-existent, it is easy to invest political meaning into it.

Wanton destruction. Widespread looting. Deep social disease.

Yes, Britain has gone to the dogs.

Well, at least according to Jonathan Eyal, who is The Straits Times Europe Correspondent writing in The Sunday Times special report this week (pages 20 and 21).

So what exactly did he propose was the cause of all these mayhem with regards to the recent riots in Britain?

In precise order, this was pretty much what he stated: Police brutality. Poverty. Welfare state. Culture of entitlement. Single mothers. Teenage pregnancy. Absent fathers. Truancy. Illiteracy. Read the full story

Valedictorians have a lot to live up to. You just upped the ante.

By Belmont Lay

The view from the stage is surprisingly good. You can tell who is actually sleeping or iPhoning.

Hello Trinetta, you seriously did a John Cleese!

With just one word, you managed to turn cultured, sterile and dreary pomposity on its head.

And provided a spot of fun and spontaneity to the proceedings.

I should know because three weeks ago, I was invited back to NUS (my alma mater) to sit on stage and watch this year’s commencement ceremony.

Despite me being a dunce, the organisers made me wear a Zorro-meets-burrito-seller hat and shoulder-padded blue graduation gown, which was what the rest of the uberacademics and professors were wearing (in some form or another).

Sharing the dubious and undeserved honour of being on stage with all these beautiful minds made it fun and novel for me!

But can I say everyone else in that auditorium being a graduand or watching the commencement was having a ball of a time as well?

Certainly not!

From where I was seated on stage, I could see the audience in various states of concussion, with many others passing in and out of consciousness.

And this was only after the first invited speaker took over the microphone!

Many others were madly molesting their iPhones, obviously Angry Birding.

Still more others were in a state of fantasy, while several were displaying classic signs of incontinence: Fidgety, crossing their legs and trying not to grimace.

Last but not least, I could tell from the faces of some who were trying to will themselves to die or for the ceiling to collapse. So they could find an excuse to leave.

But because of valedictorians like you, you turned uneventful into memorable.

I remember two years ago when I was attending my commencement ceremony, the valedictorian from my batch executed a sleight of hand.

He had submitted his pre-written speech for vetting to whoever gets paid in the university to vet stuff, abiding by the standard protocol.

But being the cheeky bastard he is, he did the classic switcheroo: He pulled another script from his pants on the actual day of commencement and went on stage to give a speech that was completely different from what had been pre-written and approved. (Now I’m seriously thinking this kind of thing happens more often than people realise.)

The point is that he knew he could get away with it, saying what was not pre-arranged, veering away from the beaten path of approved boringness.

And there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it.

Think about it: When given the chance to amaze, bamboozle, showboat and wow the bejesus out of your audience, why would anyone play it THAT safe?

What was the Dean to do? Withhold his degree? Call the police? Radio campus security?

Think about it: When given the chance to amaze, bamboozle, showboat and wow the bejesus out of your audience, why would anyone play it THAT safe?

Isn’t it worse to bore your listeners to death? Isn’t that a greater disservice?

Boredom is offensive to people, especially those like me, you know.

Boredom is the most intolerable form of death besides being burnt at the stake.

If I had to choose between death by boredom or castration, I’m inclined to pick the latter.

Even better still: Lock me in a room facing a wall for 24 hours with only bread and a dish of water as accompaniment.

And if you dare let me out: I’ll cave in and admit with gay abundance to all 17 counts of unsolved homosexual rape in the last five years.

Simply because I hate catching a case of boredom. It’s more deplorable than Ebola.

Therefore, what’s wrong with pushing the envelope and being spontaneous?

Some people, like this Bennie Cheok guy find time in their day to be professionally displeased enough to write to The Straits Times forum page decrying how using an expletive is “unnecessary”.

I believe Siew Kum Hong said the same too when interviewed by The New Paper.

Whether it is “necessary” or not is besides the point!

Come on! How many things in life are truly necessary besides breathing, drinking and eating?

I say: Blurting out what traditionally shouldn’t be said or done should be the new tradition set by valedictorians.

If you can’t or wouldn’t do it, you shall be roundly booed off stage by your peers.

So here’s the point of today’s missive: You just got to know when to break the rules some times.

So Trinetta, all I can say is that you got it refreshingly right (Which is why you got that rapturous applause!).

For that, thank you fucking very much.

The world is hot, flat, crowded… and innovation flocks over to the East.

By Fang Shihan

Get naughty and go green at the same time: here's a vibrator powered by the sun. LIBIDA.COM

SO YOU think you’re going green. You’re eating tofu, you’re building your little attap house in the park while thumbing your nose at pretentious ‘campers’ using plasticky environmentally-unfriendly tents.

You may even have started using vegan condoms and/or solar vibrators. But according to Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, who recently spoke at the University Cultural Centre in NUS, that’s far from being part of a Green Revolution.

That’s just a party.

Of course we’ve all heard the same tired story before. How we can be greener and cleaner; how companies like BP and Exxon Mobil pay lip service to environmentalists while they slowly pollute the sea and whine about not having an off-day (check); how governments must ‘care’ more for mother earth instead of focusing on narrow nationalist interests.

Do I hear you yawning? Yeah, curse those green tree-huggers and their moral high ground.

But what if being Green now meant something concrete: quantifiable in jobs, dollars, and cents?

That was the take home message this week, both from Friedman and Obama, the latter in his state-of the union address.

There is economic and political sense in Green. In Friedman’s words:

“The country that masters Green technology first will control the future of energy production.”

Renewable energy too was mentioned nine times in Obama’s speech, more than twice that of the word “China”, which was mentioned 4 times.

“Clean energy technology”, he says, is “an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”

Yet he cautions that China and India were real competitors for those coveted jobs (the U.S. unemployment rate still stands at a worrying 9%) and China surprisingly, appears to be even Greener than First World USA, scoring vegan brownie points by hosting the world’s largest private solar research facility.

Wait. Really? Those Chinamen? Those sidewalk-spitting, money-grubbing, melamine producing, known-for-being-unethical Chinamen?

Green has ceased to be merely a moral issue. Being the first to own sustainable energy production knowledge, is very concretely monetary and in today’s world, he who hath the dollars, hath the power to shape the world order.

There needn’t be such a disconnect. Gone are the days when the Greens were those who a) wanted to show that they could afford to care about the planet, or b) wanted to show that they had a moral upper hand over capitalist oil-guzzling, meat-eating creeps.

If the drive for renewable energy is powered by business and innovation instead of angst, then there should be no reason why green companies and toxic toy makers shouldn’t exist side by side, in a country that is generally friendly towards businesses. Exactly like China today.

“If only we became China for a day”, laments Friedman, noting that America just needed a kick in the butt, top-down, to start the downward price spiral for green energy.

Commodities like coal and oil can only increase in price as demand increases but technology-based green energy sources like solar and wind power, can only decrease in price as their take-up rate rises.

So how does Singapore fare in the race to create the next Green Google?

Chris Tobias is the managing director of Forward, an enterprise dedicated to sustainability focused projects. He relocated business operations to Singapore, anticipating significant traction in the region in areas like cleantech, food security, and climate change.

In the U.S. you have entrenched industry stalwarts holding up progress, and even in ‘green’ countries like New Zealand there’s a death-by-consensus snailing visionary projects. Singapore is gratefully without many of these obstacles,” he said.

Another innovator, Darrell Zhang, founder of local startup Optiras Pte Ltd, builds energy optimising solutions. His company was funded under a scheme administered by the National Research Foundation (NRF) starting 2010.

“Three out of seven of the NRF-Appointed Incubators offer funding for cleantech-based projects and it definitely bodes well for the potential of this space” he says.

But he also adds that Singapore still lags behind America in terms of innovation, partly because startups here lack mentorship.

Innovation seems to be drifting out from the West to the East. If I could hedge a bet, I’d say Green energy, a sector heavily driven by innovation, would emerge not from the mature startup market in America, but from a country in the grant-rich East with the right ecosystem.

Winning the race to export green energy will determine which powerhouse will win the global economic war. Why? Because Green has ceased to be merely a moral issue. Being the first to own sustainable energy production knowledge, is very concretely monetary and in today’s world, he who hath the dollars, hath the power to shape the world order.