In my first year at Raffles Junior College, I volunteered to take charge of producing Save The Gryphon, an original musical created for my school’s 190th anniversary. While musicals are a tradition in American high schools, they are a rarity in public high schools in Singapore where the various performing arts seldom have a chance to interact. I wanted to do something new: combine the aural beauty of choral music with the visual excitement of theatre. Together with my...

In October 2014, I spent a week visiting a close friend of mine — then a current Fourth Year undergraduate majoring in Economics in the College — and seized this opportunity to sit in on a few lectures. I wanted to get a taste of what studying in the University of Chicago would be like. With my interest in urban studies and urban sociology, I decided to attend a class titled “Historical Geography of the United States.” Right from the start, Professor Conzen...

Favorite Book: My favorite book is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a historical fiction novel by David Mitchell. This story is set on the tiny, artificial island of Dejima just off the coast of Nagasaki at the turn of the 18th Century. For two centuries, this piece of land measuring 120m across was Europe’s sole gateway into the secretive Japanese Empire. Through the eyes of a Dutch clerk working for the Dutch East India Company, I bear...

A rain tree spreads its majestic wings over us as my grandmother and I sit by the Singapore River. I gaze upon the row of colonial-era buildings along Empress Place, transfixed by their imposing grandeur and beauty. The Victoria Concert Hall, Old Supreme Court, and City Hall: their stately facades seem to bear witness to history and time. My grandmother holds my hand as she begins to regale me with stories from the past. I picture rows of sampans moored...