These days, I’m primarily occupied with…
Mathematics
Philosophy
Teaching
&
My Academic Background
I’m lucky to have been quite academically inclined growing up, which has been of great help in successfully navigating Singapore’s academic system, allowing me access to various opportunities and resources that have developed my mind in wonderful ways.
I was able to study in Hwa Chong Institution under its Science and Mathematics Talent Program, eventually receiving perfect grades across all subjects and a Distinction for H3 Mathematics in my A Level exams. Having topped the cohort for H2 and H3 Mathematics, I received a prize after graduation for being one of the top students in the Science stream in my cohort (pictured left). I was also granted the Lee Kuan Yew Award for Math & Science.
I had the chance to participate in various academic competitions during my schooling, which I enjoyed and had some success in. Most significantly, I represented Singapore in the Asian Physics Olympiad (APhO), where I placed top 100 internationally. I also attained a few Gold Medals at the Singapore Math Olympiad (SMO) and Singapore Physics Olympiad (SPhO), along with placing 7th nationally in the Singapore Astronomy Olympiad (SAO). With only three members out of the allowed five, my team also managed to place 3rd in one of the first editions of the Singapore Physics League (SPhL), a competition started by my seniors.
I also did some mathematics research projects for my own amusement while I was a student. I received a Special Award for Ingenuity at the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair, for my work on functional equations with permutations of finite order.
After graduation, I continued to engage with JC students through my work as the trainer of the HCI SPhO team (2023—2024). At the invitation of an MOE officer, I have also helped to train the national Singapore Physics Olympiad Training team, lecturing at NUS.
My interests:
I am very much into pure mathematics.
This subject has a certain ability to train and develop the mind’s logical thinking ability through the posing and solution of difficult problems… The feeling of being faced with a difficult problem, struggling through it, and then the feeling of euphoria at the end when one suddenly realises how everything falls into place as though one’s newfound understanding propels one into a higher plane of existence… Yeah, that’s how the subject can feel like, and I suppose this is how I got addicted.
What I love the most about math is its ability to find connections between vastly disparate fields. The deeply general ideas that find miraculous applications and can, therefore, make one who came up with the idea for such an application feel like a genius in some moments. The feeling of excitement and discovery and independent exploration, I think, is harder to find in other subjects for me.
I was always decent at mathematics since young, but I really started to take off in Secondary 1 (at 13) when I discovered MIT’s Calculus lectures online. I managed to finish those in a month, and their Multivariable Calculus course in another. From there, my view of higher mathematics was opened and my learning took of exponentially through the myriad textbooks and lectures online.
At the moment, the “deepest” subject I have learnt properly is probably homology theory and the associated abstract nonsense in category theory. But I still don’t get the Yoneda Lemma. :(
My interests also branch out, in a more casual way, to
Physics & Astronomy.
Math is the language of physics, and physics is the language of the universe. So my mathematical abilities served as excellent foundation for understanding some cool ideas in physics and astronomy too, which is really quite lucky — buy one get two free!
Of course, physics is not just applied math, and the physicist way of thinking is quite different than the mathematician way of thinking. Mathematicians are interested in logical, precise proof, while physicists just want to get the answer regarding how their physical system behaves. So I had to get used to equalities that are just approximations, and to understand when an approximation is good and when it’s not good enough… And to get used to “proofs” that rely on physical intuition.
The beauty in the subject, though, shone through once I had gotten used to those things. Indeed, what you can say about how the universe behaves using little initial information is quite wonderful. I also deeply appreciated learning about the process by which the great physicists came up with their famous theories — how Schrodinger came up with quantum theory helped by the wave equation, how Boltzmann invented statistical mechanics, how de Broglie “discovered” his famous momentum equation just by declaring it as so! The theory-building way of thinking had a great impact on me.
Most of this was done in preparation for the Singapore Physics Olympiad, and then the Asian Physics Olympiad once I got the chance to represent the country. This was one of the highlights of my JC days. Now that’s over, however, my interests turn more towards math and other endeavours.
Mathematics
And other Academic Pursuits
Projective Geometry
Elliptic Curves
Philosophy
I started to engage more with philosophical thinking after I had left school, and started to need to navigate the world myself. I found that whilst I had developed an incredible academic ability, I was entirely unprepared for real world decisions. I didn’t know how to be responsible for my own life now that there was no safe structure to protect me. So I started thinking, a lot… Most of it turned out to be unhelpful, but a bit of it was, and that was important.
Eventually, with life experience and the help of others, I managed to somewhat understand how to live life. I had discovered, also, some understanding of the wisdom contained in many of the world’s religions, especially Buddhism and (to a lesser extent) Taoism and Christianity.
Much of the insight I’ve developed in this process can be expressed in philosophical terms, and that’s what I’ve now begun to do. While academic philosophy and living wisdom can often have nothing to do with each other, there is some significant overlap — and this overlap is what I’m into.
You can probably tell then that, for me, the most essential point of doing philosophy is to figure out how to live a good life. Everything else is just intellectual entertainment, and if I wanted that, I would just go and do math!
My main methodology is that of phenomenology. The subject matter I’m working on right now includes the phenomena of love and kindness, human learning and thinking, and the development of ideas via Hegelian dialectics.
Teaching
I’ve done a lot of teaching over the years, in various forms and for various reasons. In general, all of this has been motivated by a desire to use whatever abilities I happen to find myself with in the service of other people.
For most of my life, this has been in the form of academic understanding. For whatever reason — some may say talent, hard work, really lucky educational conditions growing up, or just an unreal level of obsession — I’ve somehow developed a really good understanding of and incredible passion for certain academic subjects. I’ve found it very fulfilling to then try to share this ability with other people, and to try to help them to see the wonderful and beautiful view that I saw of some of those subjects I was most passionate about. It is with this motivation that I lectured for the HCI SMTP-GATE students in a school physics lesson when I was a student myself (pictured left), and that I subsequently took on the role as trainer of the HCI Singapore Physics Olympiad team after graduation (pictured top).
More recently, though, I’ve found that not everyone is interested in my personal academic passions, and of course that’s totally natural and okay. Yet there are many who suffer out of a lack of ability to learn things in general. In life, that’s a tremendous handicap.
So, I’ve now left behind my role as trainer of the HCI SPhO team and transitioned to working more with private students on a 1-1 basis, where my primary goal for all my students is to maximise their learning ability, as opposed to understanding any particular piece of content or doing well on any particular competition or exam. I find that this is the way I can make the greatest impact on any particular student, something that can hopefully really affect the course of their life in the long run — whether I’m working with an already-extraordinary student and trying to help them maximise their tremendous potential, or just helping a struggling kid find a way to learn properly so that they do not start thinking they’re doomed to failure in school and in life!