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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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As Year 1 Semester 1 Ends

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Tomorrow’s my Comparative Political Systems (CPS) exam. Well, it’s technically today since it’s 2:30 am now. It’s a 24-hour take-home exam, so I am not particularly worried about it. I don’t regularly maintain this blog; I write whenever I get into a literary mood, and that happens to be now. It’s a season of change: the start of 2022, a new semester, the four-month-old Londoner that I am realising that almost half the academic year is gone.

Semester 1 flew by with moderate success, although I haven’t definitively wrapped it up yet (looking at you, exams). Using just my KI knowledge, extra reading during NS and six years’ worth of research skills I picked up in Hwa Chong, I clinched an 80/100 for my Political and Economic Philosophy (PEP) summative essay on Isaiah Berlin:

Instructor’s Feedback: The author has produced an outstanding piece of work. It is philosophically rigorous, well-argued, and innovative. It reaches well beyond the set texts into the academic debate, and buttresses itself appropriately with references to relevant accompanying philosophical literature. The author’s usage of thought experiments to illustrate their points also demonstrates impressive sophistication and originality of thought. In terms of improving going forward: Firstly I note that the discussion of negative liberty starts to slip into freedom as having options and away from freedom from interference by other persons. For example in the discussion of ‘externalist’ view confinement can arise in circumstances not caused by the interference of other persons (e.g. think of a paraplegic or someone trapped in a cave with food/water). Secondly the author covers a lot of terrain very quickly in moving between Taylor, MacCallum and Dimova-Cookson before concluding that MacCallum is to be preferred. Given MacCallum bears the weight of the author’s conclusions more time should have been devoted to this part of the essay. Still, very well done!

Of course, 胜不骄，败不馁. But hell yeah, ka-ching! Now the challenge is to maintain it. Sigh.

Life is quite good. I’m really fortunate to be living in Urbanest City, which is a brand new student accommodation in a convenient location: between Aldgate and Tower Hill. Whenever I feel lonely, the liveliness of London cheers me back up. The world is so globalised, home is never far away. Last week, I bought a pack of Trung Nguyen G7 3-in-1 coffee for £3. I have been surviving on my Pret a Manger subscription but after four months, I gave in; hazelnut cappuccinos can’t beat a good strong dose of Southeast Asian coffee with condensed milk, even if it comes in a sachet. Anyway, there are quite a few Malaysian/Thai restaurants in Spitalfields, just a 20-minute walk away. I’ve only tried Rosa’s Thai Café so far, and it’s not bad.

Last weekend, a new flatmate, Jack, moved in next door. Our three-room flat is finally full: Pavan (computer science), me (PPE), and now Jack (business), who is on exchange this semester. Most of my friends here at King’s College London are international students. Among them, a few cherished philosophical interlocutors. KCL follows the Oxford model with a touch more flexibility: pick and choose modules as you wish from among Philosophy, Politics and Economics (and other departments too) with one or two interdisciplinary/integrated modules to tie things together. Because of my previous background of KI and H3 Math in Hwa Chong, I already knew which sub-disciplines I wanted to focus on, making our “buffet” style of PPE more suited to me than the more applied programmes at UCL and NUS which focus heavily on prescribed sets of interdisciplinary/integrated modules.

Oh wow, it’s already 3:15 am. Good night. ∎

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