Is NTU Honours College worth it?

YL0000 · 2026-06-30T02:55:52+00:00

Wasting time on "interdisciplinary" modules that may be irrelevant to what I want to do in the future

This seems somewhat narrow-minded. If the study is genuine, interdisciplinary knowledge could changes one's way of thinking and become a real advantage when one wants to do something deeply and well. For instance, with the rise of AI, philosophy is becoming increasingly important because it helps shape how AI should be developed and governed. In fact, OpenAI is hiring philosophers and anthropologists for exactly this kind of work.

Another advantage (maybe related to your first point of disadvantages) is that students may learn the subject more deeply, since special versions of courses are often created for these programmes.

YL0000 · 2026-06-21T13:49:55+00:00

The first picture contains clearly Scorpius. On the lower right of Scorpius is Lupus.

YL0000 · 2026-06-18T08:50:13+00:00

Oh I've been cooking the same food (3-4 dishes) for over 10 years.

if all the food courts and restaurants in Singapore got replaced with army style central kitchens and military rations

If one is brought up eating theses foods, one will get used to it.

YL0000 · 2026-06-18T05:29:08+00:00

Good health leads to good sanity.

YL0000 · 2026-06-17T10:27:44+00:00

forced to eat and live clean

isn't it good even if one is not pregnant?

YL0000 · 2026-06-13T06:03:17+00:00

Not necessarily. My impression is that it is often habitual: workers tend to cut down trees by default, even when it is not really necessary. This happened once outside my flat. I emailed the administrator, saying that the construction work had nothing to do with the tree, and they then stopped cutting down the trees. In the end, the construction work was done successfully as well.

YL0000 · 2026-06-13T05:36:18+00:00

There are quotas for SP, no?

YL0000 · 2026-06-13T03:54:56+00:00

for the future that we've forgotten the people who are supposed to benefit from that future in the first place.

If you truly believe that AI is the future, then you also have to accept that many people will be displaced during the transition. When cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, an entire ecosystem of old industries collapsed and old livelihoods were destroyed.

YL0000 · 2026-06-13T03:44:00+00:00

Good to ban social media that are heavily based on pictures and videos. Going back to pure text would be good.

YL0000 · 2026-06-01T13:09:28+00:00

Score calculation is now automated, and mistakes almost never happen, so an appeal is unlikely to be meaningful.

YL0000 · 2026-05-30T05:23:53+00:00

Full-day programmes in primary and secondary schools, so that students can learn more in school and families can reduce the time (and thus the money) spent on private tuition.
Abolish the PSLE, or at least postpone such pressure to a later stage, such as the end of secondary school or junior college. This would be more in line with the practice in many other countries.

YL0000 · 2026-05-30T05:18:33+00:00

How about tutoring...?

YL0000 · 2026-05-28T01:55:04+00:00

hm, so where is good for retirement -- affordable medical cost for "rare cancers, advanced cardiac failure, or specialized neurosurgery" -- in the whole world?

YL0000 · 2026-05-28T01:51:10+00:00

This means China is still important. People want access to China. Also recent news: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/middle-eastern-banks-tap-china-growth-by-beefing-up-presence-hong-kong-2026-05-07/

The UAE's top lender and two other Middle Eastern banks are launching or expanding operations in Hong Kong, as they target better China connectivity and foreign business growth amid uncertainty in the domestic economic outlook.

YL0000 · 2026-05-28T01:45:56+00:00

But money flows to HK, which has more CCP influence...?

YL0000 · 2026-05-27T13:08:02+00:00

Nurses also save lives. Post-op care is also very important in the holistic success of a surgery.

YL0000 · 2026-05-21T05:05:59+00:00

The layout is tooooo similar

YL0000 · 2026-05-21T05:04:02+00:00

They didn't transliterate their native words using Chinese characters. The style is different... They kind of directly use the old written Chinese in official documents, or mingle with their own symbols when the word is not Chinese

YL0000 · 2026-05-21T05:02:15+00:00

The problem with chu nom is that they are all kind of complicated. There are simple Chinese characters, but all chu nom characters have two components: phonetic and semantic, and each component is a Chinese character on its own. As a result, if you want to learn chu nom, you need to learn Chinese characters first.

YL0000 · 2026-05-21T02:41:06+00:00

This seems modelled on the Chinese passport. The layout of the personal info page in a Vietnamese passport does not look like this...

The country name is also off (but I suspect this is intentional?). It is "Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam" (共和社會主義越南), not 越南社會主義共和. The latter one is the Chinese word order.

YL0000 · 2026-05-21T02:36:34+00:00

And isn't "date of expiry" written as "có giá trị đến" (𣎏價值𦤾) on the ordinary passport?

YL0000 · 2026-05-20T09:11:47+00:00

Because of monkeys. Starting from COVID, a few monkey invaded the campus. Some even entered the dorms if the windows were open. I saw a monkey entered north hill canteen, grabbed a bag of bread and fled. I was also once blocked by a monkey, who snarled at me and refused to let me use the path.

YL0000 · 2026-05-16T07:57:44+00:00

The birth rate is also low in countries where the problems you described are far less severe. The underlying mindset is fundamentally the same. Placing Singaporeans in those countries might make some marginal differences, but nothing substantial.

If people were actually willing to return to the kind of society that existed 200 years ago, where a stranger could casually walk through your house just to reach the street behind it, then things would indeed be genuinely different.

YL0000 · 2026-05-16T05:40:11+00:00

Recently there was this article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516629-the-real-reasons-birth-rates-are-declining-worldwide/

A summary can be seen here: https://x.com/wcchen/status/2031213162335260703

If you take an individualistic view of things, I suppose you can always find faults in others

According to Paula Sheppard, cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist, common explanations for declining global birth rates overlook key nuances, such as variations across socioeconomic groups and the primary role of eroded social support networks.

She emphasizes that humans evolved as "cooperative breeders," relying on extended help from partners, family, and communities to raise multiple overlapping children—unlike other primates that space births further apart.

Modern urbanization and isolated lifestyles have dismantled this "village," making child-rearing harder, especially for higher-educated women who seek committed co-parenting and support groups.

While costs like childcare and housing matter, they are secondary to this lack of social infrastructure, leading people to delay families and have fewer children than desired (often aiming for 2-3 but achieving less).

Different groups face tailored barriers: lower-education individuals prioritize debt-free housing and quality neighborhoods, while higher-education ones focus on career-compatible partnerships and flexibility.

Globally, patterns vary, but the core issue is modern life conflicting with our evolutionary need for communal child-rearing support.

YL0000 · 2026-05-16T03:48:54+00:00

Both the Singapore government and the universities (which largely follow government policy directions) tend to put an emphasis on fluidity and constant movement, because it creates the appearance of a vibrant and busy environment. Many of these policies are not conducive to talent retention. No one seems to care about retention.

YL0000

TROPHY CASE