I primarily spend my time on…

Mathematics
Philosophy
Teaching

&

My Schooling Background

I’m lucky to have had privileged and supportive conditions for the development of my academic ability growing up, allowing me to successfully navigate Singapore’s academic system, and granting 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 nationally in one of the first editions of the Singapore Physics League (SPhL).

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 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’s way of thinking is quite different than the mathematician’s 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. This was tough, at first.

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 a very fulfilling experience for me, not just due to the physics it prompted me to learn along the way, but also due to the feeling of being amongst intellectual peers (or superiors!) which was exciting and not too frequently encountered, for me.

The leadup to the APhO was definitely 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 the unchecked freedom and the tangible consequence of 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.

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. This was an intellectual, as well as practical, pursuit.

Much of the insight I’ve developed in this process can be expressed in philosophical terms, and I’ve now begun to do just that. While academic philosophy and living wisdom can often have little to do with each other, there is some overlap; I have found it productive and helpful to formally conceptualise this overlap in intellectual terms, as it aids one’s ability to communicate valuably with others.

My main approach is that of phenomenology, endeavouring to use a precise examination of first-person experience as the basis for all philosophical reasoning. 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. I am also interested in exploring the intersection of ideas between Buddhist philosophy and the Western phenomenological tradition.

Teaching

A large part of my current understanding of the world is the necessity to cultivate a genuine and wholehearted loving-kindness for others, and to earnestly use one’s abilities in furtherance of the wellbeing not just of oneself, but also of others.

I find myself fortunate that I have been able to develop the mental faculties to thrive in Singapore’s academic environment, and I am thus dedicated to spending much of my conscious effort, now, in trying to share these faculties with students. In particular, I aspire to help my students develop the cognitive skills and also meta-cognitive abilities that are essential for self-directed learning, to help them do better in their academic studies, but also in life subsequently.

Interestingly, despite not too long ago having been a student myself, I have already been teaching (at first informally) for around 8 years. In the earlier years, I was driven primarily by an urge to share my passion for academic subjects, primarily mathematics and astronomy at the time. I would make worksheets and deliver informal lectures to those of my schoolmates who had similar interests, and liked the material enough not to be turned off by my unskillful ramblings! Over time, my teaching grew more ‘formal’, and I would start to pay more attention to and develop my skills of speaking and pedagogical design, and I would regularly deliver lectures and plan worksheets in school for my peers and juniors as part of various interest groups and CCAs. In JC2, owing to my school teacher’s generous kindness and faith in my abilities, I was invited to deliver a Physics Lecture in the official school period (pictured left) to my fellow HCI Science and Math Talent Programme (SMTP) and Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) programme students.

After graduation, I served as one of the main trainers of the HCI Singapore Physics Olympiad training programme for two years (pictured top), which I found as an excellent way to give back to the community that I had gained so much from and develop my own capacities of kindness and giving. During this time, I also paid attention to trying to develop and maintain a culture of graduating seniors volunteering to serve freely as trainers to help junior batches of students. Indeed, I have now stepped down as a trainer and handed the responsibility over to some of my very capable and intelligent juniors, though I still occasionally provide advice.

I am now mostly working with private students, of all levels between P6 Science and SPhO and IPhO-level physics. I mostly teach math and physics. Really, though, teaching the content is not the point of this endeavour for me — developing to whatever effective extent the student’s independent learning ability and love for learning is much more my interest and primary motivation. This is as much the case for students who need help with school subjects, as it is for high-flying overachievers potentially topping the national cohort in their subject’s Olympiad. :)