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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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Hi there, I'm Quince!

I created this blog:
  1. To chronicle my thoughts, true to the origins of blogging.
  2. To be a place where I dump more thoughtful/serious/lengthy/substantiated pieces which I feel would be misplaced if they were published on other platforms.
  3. To facilitate future recollection and reflection.

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Analysis of "This I Fear Most" by Ng Yi-Sheng

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When I first found this gem of a poem in "A Book of Hims", I knew it would be my favourite for a long time. The poem is so sweet, it's ridiculous. If Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" was a sonnet, this would be it. This I Fear Most Ng Yi-Sheng That I am not a light to guide you home, No shining beacon and no candle flame. That I am but a ragged burden thrown Against the bony shoulders of your frame, And every path you tread into the night I do encumber. That I do mistake That sunny grin for spirit and delight, Though it is worn to better bear the ache. This I fear most. So I command you: should You tire of me, strip me from your back And burn me like a hecatomb of wood. With raging heat, the heavens I’ll attack Until the dark dissolves away like foam. Then step ahead. My light shall guide you home. Analysis "This I Fear Most" by Ng Yi-Sheng is a Shakespearean sonnet about the selfless nature of love and the re...
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H2 Knowledge and Inquiry (KI): Should You Take It?

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Choosing your A Level subject combination can be quite a nerve-racking experience, especially if you don't have any strong interest in particular subjects. The stakes are high too: it's the A Levels, the culmination of 12 years of formal education. No one wants to screw up and pick the wrong combination that will lead to 2 years of extra suffering. I faced the same problem after I graduated from the High School section. Physics, Math, Literature and KI was the combination of my dreams, but it wasn't a standard combination the College section offered. I made a compromise and chose the closest combination on the standard list: KI, Literature, Math and Economics (KILME). When I tell people I take KILME, they usually respond with confusion or shock. "Harh, simi combi is that?" "You take KI?!?!?!" These reactions are basically caused by the mystery that is KI. It's a phantom subject: one that has no textbook, no published notes, ...
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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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