Recently I received an unsolicited invitation to a one-week ‘international student conference’ in Singapore. The sender had hijacked a facebook group for another student conference I had attended and spammed its list of members with this invitation. Prima facie, the invitation looked pretty good. They offered to pay return airfare to Singapore for all participants, and international travel is typically the largest cost component of participating in these kinds of events (the rest is usually sponsored).

The invitation then added a brief note that participants would be responsible for other fees, conveniently omitting that these fees were around USD 4000 (about twice as much as a comparable two-week summer program at the local public university). The invitation then included a short paragraph explaining that blogging about them would be met with legal action under Singapore’s infamous defamation laws.

Reading their website didn’t inspire much confidence. The site design was almost identical, down to the very source code, to the sites of certain government agencies and academic institutions. Some of their documents were word-for-word the same as those for other conferences. I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this was really inexcusable.

After tracking him/her down, I confronted the organizer of this conference with these. His/her reply (verbatim):

I am [person’s name], the overall in charge of the organizing committee for the [fancy name of conference]. I am also the Chairperson of the [conference].

Firstly, I wish to let you know that i am an undergraduate student, currently at [good university], previously from [good high school]. The entire project is funded by [some official-sounding organization]. The entire organizing committee, who are also undergraduates coming from universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford etc and are very grateful for the opportunity that [some organization] has been providing us, as well as the opportunity to work with international students in year 2010. If you can help us with that, that will be good. But the committee do not welcome any undue obstacles especially after hearing from our student ambassador, [other person], who is a close friend of mine, being interrogated by some unknown authority.

Honestly speaking, the conference aims to create thus opportunity for high school and undergraduates to tackle global issues. From day 1 of the conference, defining the problems and proposing resolutions, then day 2 is already about creating the logo of the organizations that students will be going ahead with the proposed resolutions. The entire conference is task oriented. We are daring to make a move on this, and wish to have this opportunity to work this out. [some organization] has given us this opportunity, so has all the invited speakers, [local university VIP] and the rest who wish to see the potential development in the conference proposals and putting them immediately into work.

Just sit and watch how we can deliver the standards. Personally, i don’t like the kind of tone and your style of writing. Truely exceptional students want to do something to help and contribute to the betterment of this world, not to deter such change. I believe you want to do something that changes the world for the better as well. We have already started, thus finding the opportunity to do so. I do not want to kill an idea we have built from last year till now, and hope you are not the cause that make us lose that opportunity.

I believe no matter what kind of organizations, be it private limited company, sole proprietor, public or non-profit organization, if you are doing something that contributes to the betterment of the society or nation, then the end result is worth commendation. There is a regulatory authority that keep track of the things and systems that would need to fall in place. I believe it is not the job of anybody who wish to be that authority. After the conference, the fundings will go into scholarship to be given to students who come from poor backgrounds and also to fund the resolution projects initiated by the students attending the conference. Why not you wait for the post conference press release?

Returning back to you regarding the Defamation act, it was an initiative by us, the organizing committee, because we foresee difficulty while countering the fact that the conference is being held in singapore for the first time. A comment posted online will tarnish the reputation of all relevant organizations involved, so we took the safe approach to prevent anyone posting the same. That is to be fair to all relevant organizations as well. You cannot underestimate things that have unlimited complications. The posted comment online will be there forever, thats why legal actions to retrieve back such erosion to all cooperating organizations is necessary. Singapore government has been practising that as well. I am sure you are well informed about the regulatory freedom of speech in singapore. We have consulted a lawyer, father of one of the organizing committee, that this could be one way to prevent unwanted and irresponsible comments. The committee wish to focus on the operations, and deliver a good conference. Thus, we feel such Act reminds people to be responsible for their actions. I mean, if you say things that cause undue complications for others, undue obstacles that people need to spend extra effort to overcome, then be responsible to cover the consequence with justice.

Join us if you want to be part of the team to initiate changes in the world. For i believe you are also a talent, and someone who have a passion in the things that you do. From your followed ups with [other person] via emails, we can tell that you have the best interest at heart. You must have also sacrificed lots of your valuable time too. Join us and be the change.

You just can’t make this stuff up – shameless self-promotion and unwarranted indignation is truly a winning combination. The frightening thing is that he/she, in all likelihood, sincerely believes that they have done nothing wrong or improper, and are doing everyone a great service. Would make a great future bureaucrat, and an even better politician. Keep your eyes on this one!

Those of my readers from Singapore or familiar with its customs should be aware of a particular social institution known as, among other similar names, the ‘government scholarship’. However, this term is highly misleading, not only to foreign observers but also many Singaporeans, as the institution has only a passing resemblance to what the rest of the world understands the term ‘scholarship’ to mean. Here I propose a different name.

First note that the first part of its name is accurate. The ‘government scholarship’ is administered by several branches of the state bureaucracy, that is, the various ministries, the subministerial agencies (known as ‘statutory boards’, a peculiar term I have not found elsewhere), and the state-owned enterprises, by which I include the so-called ‘government-linked companies’ i.e. firms partly owned by the state investment vehicle, Temasek Holdings, or its subsidiaries. Some of which were originally subministerial agencies subsequently ‘privatized’, some of which were originally ‘private’, insofar as a large local firm can be said to be private. Which large local firms are private in the sense of being independent from the state I leave as an exercise for the reader. Those thus considered private which may offer a similar ‘scholarship’ only do so to compete with the state’s recruitment practices. My point here is that the social institution is primarily the domain of the state, and it is generally funded directly or indirectly with taxpayer money. There is an entire branch of the state whose sole function is to administer it.

Since the agencies that offer this ‘scholarship’ are numerous and go by many names, and the precise terms and conditions offered by each will vary, I will offer a generic description that should apply to most cases. Typically, prospective candidates apply shortly after the release of the A-level examination results to their organization of choice. Those selected sign a contract to work for the respective agency for a period of four to six years after graduation. The contract stipulates that the agency will cover full undergraduate tuition fees and related expenses at most universities around the world. Some will even cover graduate school.

The actual amount payable depends on which university the agency has decided the prospective candidate will attend. Some are offered coverage at universities abroad (e.g. ‘overseas merit scholarship’) and some at the local public universities (e.g. ‘local study award’). If the terms are acceptable, the contract is signed, and the new hire proceeds to university. For male citizen hires, some state agencies (the ministries) facilitate a deferment of conscription to after graduation, and include the term of military service within the service obligation. For male non-citizens, the contract includes acquiring citizenship and serving the draft first.*

Sound like a good deal? It does to many, and many apply. Thus the selection process must begin with a screening phase, to reduce the number of applications to a manageable level. This screening mechanism is academic merit, that is, A-level results. Those that make the first cut are called for interviews to assess their personal characteristics. Final offers are made to those candidates perceived most suitable for employment, and conversely, accepted by candidates with preferences for a career with that agency, with all its contractual benefits, relative to all other possible careers.

As the primary criteria for being a ‘government scholar’ is not academic merit or personal achievement but career preference, I believe the term ‘scholarship’ is inappropriate. It more closely resembles a practice in recruitment known as the signing bonus, and is better understood as such.

Signing bonuses are typically part of recruitment strategies where firms competing for new hires, but their compensation packages do not differ very much. The signing bonus, a one-time payment, provides an additional incentive for the candidate to choose firm X over firms Y and Z, which could be the make or break factor if everything else is similar. A one-time payment is much easier and less of a risk than raising the offered wages (due to wage stickiness) and benefits, or improving the working conditions, company culture etc.

Similarly, the ‘government scholarship’ is a signing bonus. Since government compensation packages are more heavily weighted on benefits than wages, and the culture and internal practices of a large bureaucracy are usually harder to change, this is the easiest way to incentivize candidates to choose the civil service over all other possible employers in the world. For the scholars pursuing their undergraduate degrees in the US, it’s a ~200,000 USD taxpayer-funded signing bonus paid out over four years before the first day at work. In comparison, the typical signing bonus for entry-level investment bankers was about 10,000 USD during the good years.

Whether such large signing bonuses are a sound use of taxpayer money is beyond the scope of this post, and I leave it as an exercise for the reader. Many others have written extensively on the benefits and harms of this social institution, and I will discuss my perspectives on those at some other time.

Stop calling it a scholarship! Now that I have divined its true name, my hope is that people will start using it, and that when they do they will notice the absence of anything resembling a real scholarship in Singapore, that is, one awarded purely on merit alone, or on financial need – see my previous post on means-testing.

In the interests of full disclosure, I did apply to a few agencies with my peers, and being a slow kid did not even make it to the interview phase. As you can tell, I’m still pretty slow.

Update: Mo-ha-med asks about the up-front military service requirement for male non-citizens. This may seem like a horribly unattractive deal, but it is not intended for foreigners who would otherwise have no obligation to Singapore, but male 2nd generation permanent residents born and raised on the island, who would have the same military service liability as natural born citizens.

Having them serve the draft up front, instead of the usual practice of deferring scholar draft terms to after graduation, is 1) due to the perception that male 2GPRs have a lower ‘loyalty/patriotism/no alternative’ threshold to well, dodging the draft and ‘running off with the money’, than natural born citizens do (I don’t know if this perception is justified), and 2) to assuage popular grouses that non-citizens get all the benefits of residency without paying in as much (this perception being somewhat justified).

Does the up-front service clause dissuade male 2GPRs? Probably not, they would have had to serve it out anyway, and a 200,000 USD signing bonus may well be worth the delayed suffering foregone. Anecdotally, I know several male 2GPRs who signed up.

Two years ago around this time, shortly after my stint at a DC think-tank and a public policy summer camp, I wrote my first op-ed on higher education subsidies in Singapore, and it got some attention from legislators and published in the state media.

The subsidy, the Tuition Grant Scheme administered by the education ministry, is not means-tested and subsidy amounts depend on the specific university and field of study, and is fairly substantial – as much as 75% of full tuition. It is also tied not to citizenship or residency (as is common elsewhere) but to attendance at certain schools in Singapore, namely the local public universities and the vocational and trade schools (the polytechnics and other diploma providers). I use the term public because all of them also receive operating subsidies via the education ministry. Anyone who attends these schools is eligible for the subsidy – rich or poor, citizen or foreign national – but these schools only. I am primarily concerned with its provision at the undergraduate level though in principle my arguments extend also to the vocational and trade schools.*

*While not too familiar with the vocational schools, I understand that the p.a. subsidy can be as much as 85% of full fees, though the shorter duration of vocational schooling means that the total subsidy per student is lower than in the universities. While the same arguments for means-testing apply, my guess is that with the income distribution in vocational schools almost all their students would be eligible for some level of means-tested subsidy.

What’s new?
Two years on, not much has changed. Subsidies have been extended to certain programs at one more school, UniSIM/SIM University, a continuing education provider, but the amounts are not as extensive (40%) and limited to the domestically accredited programs, arguably not their historical core competence.* More generally, residents and foreign nationals now receive a lower amount of subsidy though the amount is still fairly substantial.** While I am tempted to claim some credit for making this happen, subsidies are still not available for students who choose to study at any other university course in Singapore or elsewhere.

*UnISIM was previously the Singapore Institute of Management, primarily a local distributor of distance courses, first from the Open University and later a number of distance programs from the US/UK/AUS. The rebranded name reflects the wider breadth of programs on offer and also distinguishes the (now subsidized) domestic-accredited programs from the foreign-accredited distance courses. More about this later.

**Excluding residents and foreign nationals from subsidies was never my intent! My original op-ed makes that clear. Pointing out that they received subsidies too was merely to demonstrate how unfair the (not means-tested) policy was then, and still is now. I hope that the subsidies withdrawn from foreign nationals will be replaced with an equivalent amount of merit-based scholarships for them.

I proposed two changes in subsidy policy. First, to means-test the subsidy. Second, to make Singapore citizens eligible wherever they choose to enroll and whatever they choose to study. The two are closely related, because (I suspect) lower SES students are more likely to enroll in the less competitive local private schools and thus miss out on subsidies altogether.* But I will discuss the first component of my proposal, because it is the less contested one.

*My guess here is that lower SES students tend to pursue vocational schooling instead of the academic track (A-levels, then university), not because they don’t make the grade for the academic track (at least not only because), but as a choice to enter the workforce faster and with lower fees paid up front. Case 1: They then hit some kind of glass ceiling (real or perceived) on diploma holders sometime after entering the workforce, perhaps in the transition to managerial roles or in the kinds of professions and industries available. For example, the ceiling between paralegal and barrister/solicitor for those who took a legal studies diploma course. To attempt to break through the ceiling they opt for part-time continuing education, which until now wasn’t subsidized. Even now that it is (at UniSIM), the total costs incurred of vocational schooling and continuing education will be greater relative to the academic track. Case 2: If they anticipate this problem, vocational students will then opt to attend (the subsidized) local universities instead of entering the workforce directly, where they will enjoy advanced standing, but I haven’t seen detailed data on how many actually do so. My impression is that a good proportion of those who opt for this circuitous route will get crowded out by the academic track cohort, and go elsewhere (i.e. AUS) paying full fees. If either case is true, then our current subsidy policy is regressive.

Means-testing
A means-tested undergraduate tuition subsidy would give eligible students a subsidy whose amount would depend only on the individual’s financial need. It could range from a small discount to a full ride plus stipend. Let’s assume away the second part of my proposal, ie. assume that the status quo of preferential treatment for the local public universities prevails.

Apart from the local public universities, those whose interests are harmed by a means-tested tuition subsidy are those students with the means to pay. This is the Singapore upper-middle class and above. The median household earned income was 46320 SGD per annum in 2005. (Mean is 65400 SGD but median is more appropriate because of the fat tails in the distribution). I will demonstrate below that the full p.a. cost of undergraduate tuition is about 75% of this annual median income, so only upper-middle class and above households should be means-tested out.

How much does it cost to attend a local public university?
Let us first consider the cost to Singapore citizens, since they make up the majority of students at the local universities. Residents and foreign nationals pay 10% and 50% more respectively, and those of you interested can mentally adjust accordingly. I will focus on tuition fees at Singapore National. Comparable tuition fees at Nanyang Tech and Singapore Management are about the same.

The heavily subsidized tuition fees for most disciplines at NUS are fairly similar, the major outliers being medicine and dentistry*. It’s about 7K SGD p.a. or 15% of the median household income . But if we look at the full unsubsidized amounts, we see that engineering/science is more expensive, and so is music. There’s a lot of variation in the current subsidy amount based on discipline. For example, some taxpayers may wish to know why music is subsidized twice as much as law. But those questions are beyond the scope of my present inquiry.

*The unsubsidized fees for medicine and dentistry are 100K SGD p.a., for six and four years respectively, which probably reflect the cost of education and the earnings potential afterwards. Whether these fields deserve an additional subsidy over and above the means-tested grant is also beyond the scope of my present inquiry. It would depend on many things including labor force requirements in the healthcare sector, etc.

Excluding the outliers music, medicine and dentistry, we see that the unsubsidized tuition fees at NUS range from 26-33K SGD p.a.. There are some additional university-specific fees (NUS ‘modules’?) and I welcome comments on how much these amount to. Living expenses are harder to compute an average for since most Singapore citizens who attend local schools live at home, and this varies a lot from household to household.

How much does it cost to go elsewhere?
The appropriate comparison of costs when deciding whether or not to go overseas, is to compare total costs of attendance. However, since I can’t readily compute university-specific averages and living expenses when student live at home, here I compare tuition fees alone. Readers can make the mental adjustment to factor in other expenses, cost of living etc.

Australia. Undergraduate tuition fees at UNSW Sydney for foreign students in comparable disciplines range from 20-26k AUD = 23-30K SGD. Note that UNSW Asia charged 26-29K SGD p.a.
UK. Tuition fees at Cambridge for non-EU/UK nationals for non-clinical studies range from £10-13k = 23-30K SGD.
US. Undergraduate tuition at Harvard is $33,696 USD p.a. = 48546 SGD. (I assume that upper-middle class Singapore citizens will generally not qualify for financial aid).

Do note that living expenses can vary substantially, and that cost is not the only criteria relevant to decision-making (value is). I welcome comments from readers about whether the fees listed above are representative. Now that we know the cost of going elsewhere, what can we expect to happen if subsidies are means-tested?

Expected Effects
First consider those excluded by means-testing, the students who can afford to pay full fees. There are 3 possible categories thereof:

1. Those who choose to attend local universities. The money saved on subsidizing them goes to other uses, like improving our universities teaching, no-strings merit scholarships etc.
2. Those who choose to go elsewhere, because they do not consider local universities worth the full cost relative to alternative options.
3. Those who forego university altogether and opt for vocational education, direct entry to workforce, or NEET status.

Since I believe the 3rd group to be a null set, the 2nd group will determine the changes caused in enrolment in the local universities. How large it is will depend on the current income distribution in the local universities, and the perceived relative value of a local university education.

I welcome readers’ comments on the former. I suspect the majority of students at our local universities can afford full fees, since SES strongly correlates with academic achievement, but I haven’t found a breakdown of students at NUS/NTU/SMU by household income. That would be pretty interesting to see, especially a year-by-year breakdown by discipline. It would be really useful for estimating the causal impact of particular majors.

As for the latter, I can’t comment on since I don’t attend a local university, except to note that they will have to compete harder to attract and retain the 2nd group under means-testing, and that the incentive structure under competition tends to raise quality and customer satisfaction for everyone. With the caveat in the picture above.

As Charles Murray notes, assessing the value of a bachelor’s degree is pretty difficult. I would also like to see a greater focus on objective measures of quality of education (such as detailed career placement statistics) rather than the usual methodologically-murky international rankings. For example, Singapore Management could import another practice from their model school, the on-campus recruitment survey. We can’t improve quality without measuring it, and we need to measure the right thing. Competition only improves quality if customers can measure quality effectively, and fact is, a lot of parents and students out there are pretty clueless about the value of degrees. These academic ‘rankings’ are so irrelevant, whereas I think students will care more about future earnings projections. This is where the state can come in, in requiring all the schools that receive operating and tuition subsidies through the education ministry to comply with a simple transparency initiative to publish their placement records.

Why don’t we have a means-tested system yet?
Entrenched interests, policy inertia and upper-middle class sense of entitlement aside, means-testing is difficult to implement. As my friend Ringisei notes:

Household income. I suppose this will be income tax data but this is notoriously inaccurate as IRAS does not tax income accruing from foreign sources. This has applied very much to the business community here – those whose businesses extend beyond Singapore. And increasingly applies to many professionals who get posted to KL, Beijing/Shanghai, Jakarta, Bangkok etc and have their salaries paid out of there instead of Singapore. Which is why the government tends to prefer using the annual value of a person/household’s primary residence as the proxy measure of income/wealth – but that, as you well know, presents its own set of problems.

Difficult but not impossible. We already means-test healthcare, housing, and various cash handouts. No reason why we can’t means-test university tuition either.

Extending Subsidies
Let’s now consider the second component of my proposal, making the means-tested subsidy available to Singapore citizens wherever they choose to enroll and whatever they choose to study.

From the list of education providers in Singapore, you can tell that the vast majority ineligible for the subsidy are local distributors of foreign-accredited distance courses, much like UniSIM’s parent business model. Many of these programs tend to be in continuing education. There are also the local satellites of foreign universities, though they tend to be smaller in scale unlike the late UNSW Asia.

Recall subsidies are limited to UniSIM’s domestic-accredited programs, but not its foreign-accredited ones. This recent policy suggests the reason why subsidies are limited to local public schools. My interpretation is this: It is the industrial policy of the state to support domestic brands, and not domestic firms per se. The firm itself (UniSIM) may be based locally, owned by locals, fully staffed by locals, and the services provided primarily to locals, but because the product on offer is essentially foreign (accreditation from Open University et al) it is therefore not in the interest of the state to promote it.

I don’t agree with this because I do believe it is in the interest of the state to make the playing field level, so that new entrants have a fair chance against incumbents, who have to compete harder for customers. A lot of you have told me that you have no desire to subsidize degree mills and predators on less-savvy paper-hungry students. Neither do I. But the current population of private providers in the education market isn’t representative of what we would expect in a competitive one. The state has crowded out everyone who isn’t low-cost. How could UNSW Asia compete for students who can go to NUS for a quarter of the price? It couldn’t.

Singapore Management is a good example of why it makes sense to welcome foreign competition. SMU is basically a Wharton replicate, from the curriculum to the joint programs to the scholarship modeled on IS&B to the pervasive investment banking / management consulting culture. That was its main selling point back when it first got started – a brand-name foreign-style education available locally. SMU students were eligible for subsidies from the beginning. But nobody thinks that subsidizing SMU diluted the Singapore brand. If anything, it made Singapore a more attractive place to go to school, and gave students more choices. It might’ve also motivated NUS and NTU’s business programs to improve.

However, the degree of competition unleashed by extending subsidies to all undergraduate programs in Singapore will always be limited by the fact that starting a new (comprehensive) university in Singapore, even with subsidies from the state, is a massive endeavor fraught with risk, and the market cannot support an infinite number of players. It also takes years to establish one – the fourth public university is now under construction, and nobody knows if it will succeed or not. Competitive forces will have a glacial pace. But there are hundreds of universities abroad that our local players might compete with, and if citizens eligible for the means-tested subsidy could take it anywhere they chose to go, competition will be that much more perfect.

My little cousin recently received her O-level grades, which were disappointing to say the least. I wasn’t close to her, but I did try my best to make a difference: I emphasized the importance of attending a good JC and getting grades at least good enough to ensure admission to the highly subsidized local universities, if not secure a taxpayer-funded ride to the Ivy schools. I even gave her my extensive collection of college admissions guides – yes, I was that insane about it.

While admittedly part of this was projecting my regrets about my first choice colleges onto her, I don’t think my advice was wrong. This is a competitive world we live in, and early choices make a big difference in later outcomes. The subsidized local universities are a very good deal for the price, so demand far exceeds supply.

In retrospect my approach was a failure, because it did not encourage her enough to want it for herself. I failed to communicate the benefits of a competitive education in a way that would relate to her perceived interests. Looking back, the main reason why I studied hard for O-levels had nothing to do with practical considerations about financing college tuition or career prospects. It was simply what was done by those I considered my peers, the scholar-class kids I met during a creative writing summer camp when I was 15.

The reason I applied to the summer camp? Having an crush on a scholar-class girl I met by chance, who had participated in the camp previously and encouraged me to apply. Admission to the program was not very competitive, but it self-selected on the basis of English language ability, upper-middle-class cultural tastes, and personal initiative – all of which are relatively good indicators of academic success. It was there that a boy from a mediocre public school entered the social circles of the gifted program and special assistance plan students – the cream of Singapore’s highly stratified education system. It was a fun summer camp. I enjoyed it very much, and the friends I made there now attend every top university I can think of.

I worked hard at O-levels for their acceptance and respect, not my own career prospects. I knew then that Huntsman and Harvard and Oxbridge were the aspirations of the scholar-class kids, even though I had only a faint understanding what Huntsman et al were at the time. I didn’t even know what Goldman Sachs was until after A-levels. But that aspiration made all the difference.

On a side note: that summer camp is called the Creative Arts Program, and is organized by the Gifted Education branch of the Singapore Education Ministry every year. While in Singapore, I met one of the program administrators, and we discussed how to evaluate the performance of the program. While I am skeptical of whether the program has a significant causal impact on professional literary development, I do believe it has a powerful socialization effect on upward mobility in general, and I hope they will focus their study on that, as they will probably find more significant results than if they concentrate solely on ‘publishing literary work’ as the dependent variable of interest. Though I think it would be difficult to control for the self-selecting bias in the sample, I would also include other measures of upward mobility as possible dependent variables.

Thus in retrospect, I should have encouraged my little cousin to participate in social activities that would have surrounded her with highly-motivated kids, and thus acculturate her in their values of upward mobility. If I hadn’t attended that summer camp back then (or if I hadn’t met that girl), I might have instead adopted the values of my middle school and the culture of entitlement and mediocrity that poisons it. While she wasn’t suited for the summer camp I attended, there are probably many other social activities that would have had the same effect. My advice on college admissions would have been better received at a more mature age, when she is self-motivated to succeed. But by then, it would have been too late. It really sucks to have to learn this the hard way, but I guess some people have to.

While in Singapore I had the chance to visit my grandmothers, who I hadn’t seen for a long while. It was during my study of modern Chinese history last year that I realized I knew very little about my grandparents’ past. There is so much of local history that I never learned, because I had opted for a more Western-centric curriculum during A-levels. I suppose I had been more interested in the future back then, but it was partly due to the generational language barrier. After a summer in China my Mandarin has much improved, though not as much as I would have liked it to, but sufficient for most purposes. So I decided to ask about their past.

My first grandmother tells me her story in a mix of Mandarin, Berhasa and Teochew, the latter two of which I have a very limited understanding of despite years in the military and cannot speak at all. So it may be that some of what I heard may have been misunderstood. She was born in the late 20s, and like many Teochews in the great Diaspora, her family left the misery of the warlord era and came to Malaysia. When she was a teenager, her family was coerced into supporting (i.e. protection money) the Malayan communist front, which at the time was probably sending remittances to finance the civil war against the KMT, which got them in trouble with the colonial government, and she went into hiding. Being caught would have meant repatriation to the mainland.

On a side note, she was probably born around the same time as one Chin Peng a.k.a. the Plen who later became the leader of the communist front and the colonial authorities’ most wanted man. I came across his autobiography at Select bookstore and flipped through it, imagining him coming around my grandmother’s village as a young student leader calling for support for the revolution.

There were more stories from that period about some relative who had been captured by pirates, which I thought was pretty amusing. Another relative did repatriate to the mainland and served in the liberation army, and was posted to Hainan island after the war. Perhaps if I ever have the chance to visit Hainan I shall go find his descendants.

My other grandmother speaks almost no Mandarin at all, despite a steady diet of channel 8 soap operas. I tried to speak to her in Mandarin and she replied in Teochew, which I suppose is really my fault for not knowing it. Unfortunately , having been born in Singapore and marrying young she did not have stories as interesting (no pirates or communists), so I asked to see old photographs and documents. This was the first time I saw a birth certificate from the colonial era. It was written and signed in English, and I suppose they had used the services of a writer, or perhaps it was simply transcribed by the colonial clerk. Perhaps if I have more time I will look into the archives.

While in Singapore, I met a friend (local grad) who had recently got a job at a bank, which is quite impressive in this economic climate. However, she does not like it very much, and is looking for a better one – good luck. When I asked her why, she gave me this analogy: “IBD is Orchard Road, PWM is Bukit Timah, and retail banking is HDB.” I guess the prestige-consciousness and status hierarchy of the financial industry has been localized, though I suppose PE isn’t on the radar yet.

I remember the taste of her specialty chicken curry, its rich coconut cream and spices that soak into the thick slices of bread. She would bring bowls of it to me, and Yeo’s drinks, before slipping a red packet into my hands while encouraging me to study hard. I only saw grandaunt once a year, because it was our tradition to visit them on the first day of the lunar new year. I remember the walk up to their three-room flat in an old housing estate, back when it had not been redeveloped yet. Those childhood memories are hazy, but I remember how magical their aquarium seemed, with toys and figures perched around the pond. They said it was good fengshui.

Now I am halfway across the world, after so many red packets and well-wishes to study harder. A month or so ago, during yet another one of the lunar new year visits that I missed, my dad mentioned that grandaunt looked unwell when I called over the weekend. She was admitted to KK for testing, and the extended family was coming back to see her. I hadn’t thought it was serious. Yesterday I got the e-mail that she had passed away. Cancer. It was all just so fast, and I never got to see her before the time. In fact, I haven’t seen her for two years now. And now, I will never taste that chicken curry ever again, if I ever go back for new year’s, which is unlikely until after I graduate.

Distance and time. Out of sight is out of mind. I didn’t wait anxiously for the test results, or sit in the B1-class ward. I didn’t burn paper offerings at the wake, or chant the sutras with the monks. I hadn’t walked behind the procession to the columbarium. All of this had been reduced to Skype and Gmail.

Being halfway across the world means that I’m not there for the ones I love most. I miss birthdays and celebrations and reunion dinners. I miss the daily things, like feeding the cat. Most of all I miss grandma. I worry that I’m missing valuable time with grandma who is getting old, and we don’t have all the time in the world.

I hadn’t planned on going back this summer, but now I will. Even if it’s only for a little while. The airfare, which had been a big concern, now seems so petty. I don’t want to be that economist who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. It seems so silly to want to save the world but forget about the people closest to me.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have stayed in Singapore.

The ST review editor’s stated reason for rejecting it was ‘insufficient detail on policy implementation’ but this piece isn’t any more detailed on implementation, so the real reason must be that 1) someone higher up didn’t like my emphasis that the policy is anticompetitive/protectionist and undermines the global schoolhouse economic development strategy, or that 2) it was too policy-wonky (i.e. contra stated rejection reason), or most likely, that 3) an undergraduate has no business questioning policy.

Yet I don’t really care about getting credit as long as a means-tested university tuition voucher system gets implemented, even though I am not likely to be a beneficiary.

If you can’t read the article, it is also posted here. Unlike most major newspapers, the Straits Times insists on pay-only access to online articles, which makes no sense to me since it is state-owned and presumably less concerned with quarterly profits than say, expanding market share, when the marginally additional revenue from online subscribers is more than offset by the potential increase in circulation. Even if it was privately owned, the value of greater circulation would still greater – NYT doesn’t take losses on the print edition for nothing.

The far more critical piece I wrote for The Online Citizen can be found indirectly here.

On my way to sit in Parliament with David, I took the bus past a local university and saw this billboard, and realized how tragic it is that one of the most fundamental and most precious of civil liberties has been reduced to a marketing gimmick for mobile phones, most ironically, by a telecom firm owned by those who deny it. Perhaps it was most tragic that none of the students there would appreciate the horrible irony.

While in Parliament, I sat in the viewing gallery above. Across the hall in the other gallery was a school group, probably here for some National Education requirement. The middle school kids shuffled into the gallery in groups of twenty, sat down, and looked almost as bored as the MPs below – one opposition member looked like he was asleep, but I don’t blame him since we are all asleep and no one guards the guardians. I wonder if their accompanying teacher had told them how interesting the session was if you knew what to look for, like how one reading of a bill took only thirty minutes or how the speaker would immediately declare that “the ayes have it” a split second after asking for a vote. They might have actually learned something from the field trip then.

I spent far too much time here doing these sorts of things, discussing local politics and affairs with my friends, instead of enjoying my summer vacation. Then I was Hank Rearden, trying to save a decaying society. Now I am John Galt. Let Atlas shrug, let the motor stop by itself. Like Alfian wrote, if you care too much about Singapore she will break your spirit, and then she will break your heart. I think in my case the order was reversed.

* * *

Things fall apart
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have flown Singapore Airlines, which although is very comfortable even in coach, is terribly tiring. I stayed awake almost the whole time watching on-demand in-flight movies and having the attendants bring me a constant stream of orange juice and ice-cream over my sleeping neighbors. I thought Bridge to Terabithia was far too tragic to be a children’s movie. I really liked 茶舞 (English title: One Last Dance) even though it was completely derivative of content and narrative style, because it was executed well. It didn’t seem completely wrong for it to be shot and set in “Uniquely” Singapore although I don’t think we have such cool hitmen.

My parents picked me up from the airport and drove home. Home is familiar, yet also foreign. It seems almost a lifetime ago that I lived here, even though I’ve only been away for less than a year. I sat on my old bed, the one I’ve had since elementary school, and wonder why it feels different. Why does the room I’ve lived in for years feel less like home and more like another temporary place to crash?

The cat sleeps in the back while I watch, her fur seems greyer and her silver whiskers longer. She’s getting old, almost as old as Grandma. I came home to spend more time with grandma since she’s getting old and I only come back once a year, if at all. Even though my mandarin is very poor and it’s hard for us to communicate, I listen to her unload a year’s worth of conversation on me. (So does the cat, in her language of meows) I listen and nod, that is all I can do. Each time I leave I wonder whether it would be the last time I would see Grandma again. I wish there was something I could do, but there isn’t, and that saddens me. I’m halfway across the world, and the digital divide is too great between us.

After a late night of writing, I woke up early to pick up my suit from the dry cleaners before rushing down to Wollman Rink with the guys. We reported to the food i/c and got in position as ushers and crowd regulators, though since we had easy access to the food before the crowds came in, we got breakfast early: kaya toast, prata and murtabak, bah ku teh and chicken rice. Then the lines became insanely long and we waited forever for small servings of carrot cake and laksa. It was ridiculously sunny, almost SG weather, and I hadn’t brought any sunscreen, so now my face and neck are peeling.

Ran into lots of old friends at the place: Nigel from my primary school class, Peishan from my JC class, Mel from AC debate, Yisheng from CAP, Boon leong from YR. Made a lot of new friends too since waiting in line there wasn’t much to do but chat with the people in front of me. I got myself together to talk to the absolute cutest girl in school, which I am rather proud of doing even though I’ve given up on romance, because I should be able to do simple things like that. Met a few ACS alums, who identified themselves by the secret handshake. Dr. Tracy was there to give me health advice.

The entertainment Eric Khoo arranged was pretty good. I think Central Parkers were completely baffled by the ge tai hokkien songs. I really liked the sampler of Singapore musicals, especially the one from Chang & Eng (which perhaps may describe my relationship with my roommate accurately). There was this strange ‘Singapore Dreaming’ parapara-style dance, which was actually very representative of mainstream culture in Singapore. The best bit was when Kit Chan performed Home.

When the Wollman Rink event died down, I made my way to the library at Bryant Park, where the formal dinner was. The organizers assigned me to a table with 2 internal security officers, which was especially ironic since I am probably on several of their dissident lists. We had a good conversation about counterterrorism and corruption in SE Asia. I moved around to different tables to chat with friends also invited to the dinner. The food catered from Goodwood Park and Min Jiang was interesting – they served one of my favorite local desserts, red bean pancakes, with strawberry sauce.

After the formal dinner, we went to Earth, a club in the meatpacking district, for the Mambo party. My knowledge of Zouk-style mambo moves is far less than my appreciation of 80s retro music, a taste for which Grace cultivated in me so long ago. The only song I know all the moves to is Love in the 1st degree. Veteran mamboers Edward and Lionel apparently know *all* the moves to *all* the songs. After they stopped playing mambo songs, the columbia kids left to go to another club, but I decided to go home to sleep.