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Exciting Life Updates

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I know I haven’t been updating this blog because I’m too lazy. Years 2 and 3 have been an exciting flurry of business (both work and busy-ness). I constantly spew bite-sized thoughts that stream into my mind on Instagram Stories anyway, and I am remarkably easily bored and excitable, so longer, more considered pieces on Blogger aren’t sustainable. I digress. Many exciting life updates! I’m now officially done with my undergraduate PPE programme at King’s College London. I loved every bit of it: the depth, rigour and intellectual intensity of the course, the international student community, the bustling city of London and all the travel opportunities around Europe. Words can’t do justice to the profundity of the experience. In typical Quincean fashion, I milked everything I could out of the three years: went to Cumberland Lodge (for free) as a photographer with the Philosophy Department in Years 1 and 3, clinched the Principal’s Global Leadership Award (PGLA) in my second year (spending...
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Hume on Reason and the Passions — A Reply to Zizai

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The Awkward Yeti on Facebook I thank  Cui Zizai  — my old friend, former classmate, collaborator and interlocutor — for this opportunity to revisit Hume. Zizai sent me an email (one of his periodic circulars on mathematics, politics and philosophy) regarding his take on Hume, in particular the infamous line “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” in Hume’s  A Treatise of Human Nature (“ Treatise ”). Sent 1:28 am, 26 December 2020 (UTC+08:00) Zizai has two concerns which I shall attempt to address: Is the bipartite claim “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” is–ought fallacious? Does Hume offer an argument for his “ought” claim? How can it be justified? Is the bipartite claim “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” is–ought fallacious? Let us refer to Hume’s introduction of the is–ought problem ( Treatise  3.1.1.27 ): I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, per...
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义烈庙 Gī-lia̍t-biō (姑妈宫 Koo-má-king) in Telok Blangah, Singapore

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Yesterday, I did some temple-hunting. While researching the original 义烈庙 Gī-lia̍t-biō (姑妈宫 Koo-má-king) in my maternal ancestral hometown of 峰尾 Phang-bué in 泉港 Tsuân-káng, I discovered a post by my friend, uncle Victor Yue, about a branch of the temple in Singapore. The 义烈庙 Gī-lia̍t-biō (姑妈宫 Koo-má-king) is dedicated to 姑妈娘娘 Koo-má-niû-niû, the apotheosised historical figure 刘益娘 (1499–1518) venerated by 峰尾 Phang-bué locals for her magnanimity and heroism. Apparently, after migrating to Singapore, members of the 峰尾 Phang-bué 刘 Lâu clan founded the Singapore branch at Craig Road. According to this 2005 blog post on  Sin Tua 神坛 in Singapore , the temple’s location is “somewhere in Telok Blangah Crescent”. Refining further, Jeffrey Low’s comment on Victor’s post states that the temple is located at “corner 3 room apartment, 6 storey Blk 6 Telok Blangah Crescent”. Terence Tay’s corrective reply states that “[t]he tua is at Blk 5 telok blangah crescent”. Curious and eager ...
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December 2020

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It’s finally over! Last Tuesday evening (8 December 2020), I completed my final Oxford interview — Politics. It was quite enjoyable. Two years ago on my first attempt, my Politics interview involved graphical data interpretation, so I expected something similar this time around. I was pleasantly surprised when it was a political theory discussion instead. I think I did quite well in Economics and Politics — those interviews were peppered with many moments of enjoyment, wonder and discovery as I stumbled my way through the questions. I screwed up (hence my previous post) the first half of my Philosophy interview because I hadn’t adequately warmed up to translating natural language statements into symbolic logic, in which I think better for puzzles. I’m glad the other Philosophy tutor who took over for Part 2 of the interview sensed my anxiety and made me read through the next question slowly and aloud to confirm that I understood it properly before proceeding with the rest of the interv...
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A Second Chance

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It’s midnight. I made some “Mr Tea” 3-in-1 milk tea I saved from the office pantry. It’s the most siap instant teh I’ve drunk, which made me feel 60 years old immediately upon the first sip. Lovely. Indeed, SPF knows me well and procures excellent welfare items. I am now quite nervous. I am not afraid of failures, but I am afraid of final endings and no more retries. I guess I’ve always screwed things up on the first try but make it up on the second, but being the Humean that I am, I scoff at the apparent regularity. Last week, I received some news. Oriel College, Oxford, has shortlisted me for interviews for Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). Economics is first tomorrow evening, followed by Philosophy next Monday and Politics next Tuesday. This is my final chance, as I am set to start university next year after I ORD. This isn’t my first encounter with the Oxford admissions process. I applied, unsuccessfully, to Oriel two years ago in JC2. I left a couple of questions blank on...
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October 2020

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I can’t believe it has been more than half a year since I last wrote something. I guess it’s just one of the consequences of getting posted to a staff vocation: sitting in the office all day mindlessly switching between Outlook and Excel over and over again, sucking up all energy and motivation to do my personal stuff. Even on the weekends, I just feel like recharging. As this year’s JC2s graduated last week, they flooded my Instagram feed with so many posts. I thought of my own graduation, and how two eventful years flew by. Yes, I miss the physical school. But that isn’t all. During lunch on 6 October, I went to the National Library. As I walked down Purvis Street and the sun shone mightily, I felt this scholarly academic feeling: so many research questions on my mind, the smallness of humanity trying to grapple with the universe. The pursuit of knowledge is inherently child-like, full of wonder and curiosity. Suddenly, I felt at home, despite not being in Hwa Chong. Damn, I really m...
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On Value-Based Debates, or, Why We Talk Past Each Other

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OC Posted by Matthew Ulyanov on  Saturday, 13 June 2020 The equivocation of descriptive and normative “expectation” has reinforced my belief that normative debates are at best rhetorical and performative, and at worst polemical and polarising. The next productive step, then, is to sort out the practicalities of mediating deep disagreement. This will inevitably shift our focus from the philosophical to the social scientific. ∎
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Vignette No. 1

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I am a nocturnal person. The night is constant — isothermal, isoluminant. This stillness somehow makes me most imaginative and energetic. It is 1:30 am. I sit at my desk with a cup of pu’er I just made. One thing’s for sure: I will definitely have an electric kettle in my future dorm room. I search “pu’er” on Google, then I stumble upon this article by NPR. Down the rabbithole I go. Soon enough, I find myself reading about Himalayan mountain passes and this enthralling  piece of travel writing by Nat Geo. My cup is empty. It’s now 2:30 am. I go to the kitchen to make another brew. Now I’m back in front of my laptop. In this week of post-graduation block leave, I may be short of sleep, but not short of wonder. I think of university, and all the travelling I will do. That Garmin Instinct I have been dreaming of since OBS. My future, perhaps? PPE first, then postgraduate sociology or journalism? That’s the plan. I will not give up mathematics. I will not give up art. ...
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The Pestilence of Spring

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April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. April has come, with pestilence. T. S. Eliot’s iconic lines speak so powerfully now. The continuous tense hangs on the edge of each line, unresolved, imploring you to read on dreadfully. The contradictions confuse. You ask yourself, bewildered: When will this end? This week has been a whirlwind of activity. I finally delivered my jurisprudence presentation on Monday. It brought me much pride and joy because I had burnt my weekend working on it. I also completed my final IPPT on Tuesday morning. Then on Tuesday night, we were told to pack up and stay at home for the rest of the week. Whoosh. Staying at home feels like the OBS Solo again. It also makes me remember my Junior College days when I spent 12 hours every day revising for the A Levels, sat ...
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Romanticism and Leadership

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Back from Pulau Ubin! The 19-day Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) course was an enjoyable experience. I love the great outdoors, having voluntarily facilitated the Secondary One Annual Camp twice and hiked 50 kilometres in Hong Kong’s eastern hills in Spring 2017. So merry it was, sitting on damp leaf litter, journaling my thoughts on Botak Hill, 30 metres above mean sea level, calmly nestled in the island’s northwest. Upon my return on 13 March, I was overwhelmed by shocking new developments regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. I have since cleared my backlog of reading, kept myself updated with the evolving health situation and settled myself back into life in camp. Last month, I set out to “gain a better sense of the tensions between Deneen and the Romantics — and analogously, Confucius and Zhuangzi” through my experience in the wilderness. This was in relation to my attempt to review Patrick J. Deneen’s book, Why Liberalism Failed . After all, Victor Hugo defined Romanticism as “l...
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A Three-Week Hiatus

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Before enlisting, I told myself to balance NS and my intellectual commitments. Faithful to that end, I thoroughly treasure and enjoy the little vignettes in camp when I manage to squeeze in a few pages of reading before physical training or after meals. I am currently halfway through Patrick J. Deneen’s  Why Liberalism Failed , a book which Deneen himself says “has received remarkable attention for a work in political theory” given its publication in 2018. Unfortunately, I will take a three-week hiatus as I embark on a 19-day leadership course at Outward Bound Singapore tomorrow. I will probably finish the book before April, but that is subject to the inevitable vicissitudes of life. (I am a conscript after all.) Nevertheless, I have grasped the key premises Deneen lays out in the first half of the book. I feel that these premises are strong and sweeping enough to undergird the whole text, but of course that depends on what he has to say in the second half. I think Deneen’...
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Appiah on Meritocracy

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“Against Meritocracy” by Kwame Anthony Appiah, retrieved from https://iai.tv/video/against-meritocracy I first came across Kwame Anthony Appiah in 2018, when Teo You Yenn launched her bestselling book,  This Is What Inequality Looks Like . Appiah’s entry into the national discourse that followed Teo’s publication made him a peripheral but relevant figure in the Singapore debate, mainly due to his extensive writing on identity, class and inequality. Perhaps one factor that accounted for this relevance was his British-Ghanaian upbringing, which added some postcolonial spice to his ideas. But one thing’s for sure — Appiah is no stranger to Singapore. He has discussed Singapore’s sociocultural policies in both his 2018 book The Lies That Bind as well as in an op-ed published in The Atlantic that same year. He still strikes me as more of a sociologist than a moral and political philosopher, but that is to be celebrated. The best philosophy, after all, is informed by and compleme...
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Year-End Visit to Hwa Chong, 2019

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On 30 December 2019, I went back to Hwa Chong. It’s really hard to go back to school to catch up with friends and teachers now that I’m back in camp going through residential training. So when block leave was announced, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Coincidentally, it was the last buddies’ training session for the upcoming Secondary One Orientation. Wearing my Advisor shirt, walking up Tan Kah Kee Drive, hearing echoes of cheering coming from the distance… It felt as if the years had never passed. A glorious vista of the clock tower bathed in golden sun greeted me. And those trees! Those yellow-leaved rain trees sparkling like glitter, swaying in the wind! The sheer open expanse (spanning three bus stops) always made you feel that the world’s your oyster, that no dream was beyond your reach. You couldn’t help but think that this was a very special place full of very special people. Such has been the spirit that pervades the air every time I go back. I hummed...
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