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Showing posts from 2021

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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Vignette No. 2 / London

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It’s 7:45 pm on the 7 th of November. Autumn is noticeably giving way to winter, with the sun setting at half past four and temperatures hovering around 10°C. I am sitting at Table 53 at the Goodman’s Field Wetherspoons after having a grilled chicken burger for dinner. Since I moved to London a month and a half ago, I never felt the serendipity and inspiration to write. But as I sip at my pint, the vibes are pushing me in the right direction. Earlier today, I booked my Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) flight to Singapore for the December break. The cheapest option for my travel dates was on Air France via Paris. Not bad, I thought; a croissant and coffee within the Charles de Gaulle transit area would be nice. So, I booked it and set myself up for two and a half weeks back on my tropical island catching up with friends and family; maybe studying at the National Library in preparation for the January exams. This past week was Reading Week, which I spent on a trip to Málaga, Spain, with som
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A New Identity

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Identities, even in the form of an email address, assure me of my place in the world and motivate me. It is an inspiring privilege to wear the weight of an institution like an Athenian himation. Do not underestimate the power exuded by meagre glyphs in the address bar; it invites others to pause and pay attention. I was formerly 131416w@student.hci.edu.sg and quince_yq_pan@spf.gov.sg . Since Tuesday, 17 August 2021, I took on a new identity. Neither the anonymous qp8888@ox.ac.uk nor the look-at-my-matriculation-year quince.pan.21@ucl.ac.uk  — phantoms of what could have been. But the legitimate, professional, proper  quince.pan@kcl.ac.uk . One cannot distinguish between student and staff as the email address nomenclature is the same. This is immensely invigorating. Every time I open Outlook, I am reminded that the professors and I are the same in style, if not substance. I can achieve whatever they have achieved. I’ve got one foot in the door, and that fact is stamped on every
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Recreational Mathematics, 16 June 2021

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On 16 June 2021, I did some mathematics for fun and obtained this result. I explained the proof to my viewers on Instagram Stories that same day, but I only decided to publish it here on my blog today. MathJax works wonders! Consider \(a,b,k \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}\) with \(a < b \). We observe that: \begin{equation*} \begin{split} \sum_{k=a}^{b-1} \sqrt{\frac{1}{k}} - \sum_{k=a+1}^{b} \sqrt{\frac{1}{k}} = \sqrt{\frac{1}{a}} - \sqrt{\frac{1}{b}} \end{split} \end{equation*} By trapezoidal approximation and the convexity of \(\sqrt{\frac{1}{x}}\), \(\forall x \in \mathbb{R}\) and \(\forall n \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}\), \begin{equation*} \begin{split} \int_{n}^{n+1}\sqrt{\frac{1}{x}} \; \mathrm{d}x < \frac{1}{2} \Bigg ( \sqrt{\frac{1}{n}} + \sqrt{\frac{1}{n+1}} \Bigg ) \end{split} \end{equation*} Therefore, \begin{equation*} \begin{split} \int_{a}^{b}\sqrt{\frac{1}{x}} \; \mathrm{d}x < \frac{1}{2} \Bigg ( \sum_{k=a}^{b-1} \sqrt{\frac{1}{k}} + \sum_{k=a+1}^{b} \sqrt{\frac{1}{k}} \Big
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Review of “Moving Audiovisual Pictures” by Jason P. Leddington (Bucknell University)

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I am honoured to be able to contribute an article review to the  Sound Pictures Conference organised by the Centre for Philosophy and Visual Arts (CPVA) at King’s College London even before I matriculate! It felt great to continue doing what was essentially a KI Paper 2 analysis three years after I left Hwa Chong. The review is capped at 200 words and is appended here. ∎ In “Moving Audiovisual Pictures” , Jason P. Leddington argues that film is an essentially audiovisual art using a Heidegger-inspired Event-Property View (EPV) of diegetic (“in-scene”) sound in film. He rebuts yet develops the rival predominant Berkeleyan view of sound to show that it is a troubled albeit plausible alternative foundation of the same thesis. Marshalling the voices of other philosophers, psychologists, film theorists and editors, Leddington levels criticism against the visuocentric paradigm in analytic aesthetics, which insists that film is essentially visual and nothing more. Indeed, the inclusion of
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The 47th International Hume Society Conference 2021

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I attended the 47 th International Hume Society Conference organised by the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, from 6 July 2021 to 11 July 2021. Typically exclusive to members of the Hume Society, this year’s conference was atypical in that it was made accessible by the COVID-19 pandemic. Registration was free and open to the public. It was held virtually on Zoom too, so you could tune in from anywhere in the world. As far as I know, I was the only (incoming!) undergraduate present. It was pretty cool to see Hume scholars of all levels in action: PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and professors, among whom big names in philosophical world, including Brown’s Paul Guyer, Oxford’s Peter Millican and NYU’s Don Garrett. Oh, and I LOVE the graphic design. Hume on the hills of Bogotá holding a teacup with a Colombian coffee bean painted on it. I need to try Colombian coffee one day! ∎ Conference Programme (UTC-5) Day 1 — Tuesday, 6 July 2021 8:30 - 9:00 Opening Remarks.
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Hokkien, Hypothetically and Humorously

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As you may know, I started researching Hokkien in 2013 together with one of my closest friends,  Lee Xuan Jin , when I was in Secondary One. We started Hok Heng — The Revival  in 2014 for the HCI Projects Competition. Our Penang counterparts at Speak Hokkien Campaign have been posting flashcards for a few years now, trying to find Chinese-character transliterations of Penang Hokkien terms, especially Malay loanwords. For fun, I decided to invent a new Chinese character for “bus”, for which no existing character fits the bill due to phonological and morphological disparities. ∎
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