Fields Medal
One of the biggest stories in mathematics when I was in secondary school was hearing that there was this guy in Princeton called Andrew Wiles who had been working very long and hard on Fermat's Last...
View ArticleWorld Cup Cinderellas
There are some teams which capture the imagination of the world at a major footballing event. In 1990, it was Cameroon. In 1994, we had a few, because traditional powers like England and France didn't...
View ArticleUSA World Cup
USA 94 was a weird World Cup. In the end, it was the first “expansion” World Cup to be held in a place where football had yet to take root. People might question the wisdom of holding the World Cup...
View ArticleArsenal Champions
It wasn't easy, but Arsenal finally got over the line. Man City looked to have clawed their way back to parity at one point, closing a 9 point gap (albeit one with a game to spare). But they could not...
View ArticleTitle Chasers
I think about all the time when I followed a football team as they went through a league title challenge. One of the most amazing title challenges was in 1989, and that was immortalized in the book and...
View ArticleMusings on the Hormuz crisis
Decline of the USA One of the things that I learnt today is that the USA has this policy called the petrodollar. It means that oil is bought in US dollars. This creates an artificial demand for US...
View ArticleArsenal's Narrowing Lead
I'm always rooting for Arsenal to win the English Premier League again. They won in 1998, 2002 and 2004. The first 2 of these wins were very closely fought. In 97-98, the title fight went to the last...
View ArticleSingapore's history of new world orders
Singapore's history has been marked by larger geopolitical events. Transitions between eras.Singapore's founding has been about Raffles having a turf war with the Dutch, trying to land grab parts of...
View ArticleBad Transfer Windows and Liverpool
It's happening to Liverpool. I realise that a lot of their downfalls have to do with bad recruitment. Every time the Livepool football takes a turn for the worse, it's because of one or two infamously...
View ArticleMegacity - World of Strangers
There are two dichotomies that came oto my attention recently. People are classified according to whether they are settlers or nomads. Alternately, settlers are farmers and nomads are hunters. One of...
View ArticleNew World Order of the Global South
The Global South vs the Washington ConsensusThe relationship between the West and the Global South is a little like the relationship between family members of different generations. We always hope that...
View ArticleRussia the Decadent
There was a school of thought that said that NATO expansion was the root cause of the confrontation between Russia and the West. Mearsheimer is one of the principal exponents of this view.The West has...
View ArticleWestern military powers in East Asia
There are important lessons to be learnt in the Malayan campaign, and it is an essential part of the history lessons for Singaporean students including myself, I grew up in Singapore. The larger...
View ArticleGeneral Elections 2025
One of the most interesting things that's happened in the elections is WP not contesting in Marine Parade. There have been various reasons given for Marine Parade not being contested. One of them is...
View ArticleAmerica's relationship with Asia
America is, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, big. After starting to see Singapore from the perspective of outsiders, I came to see Singapore from the outside. Singapore is basically a Chinatown with an...
View ArticleRetrospective on the 2024 US Presidential Election campaign.
There's finally a chance to see the election in some perspective. Each of Donald Trump's elections have been nail-biting. For me, the trouble started with Joe Biden's nomination in 2020. He wasn't...
View ArticleMan U fandom
I met a friend who was wondering what happened to Man U... he got upset that people always made fun of Man U. I never truly understood the fandom business.For me the Man U thing started to go south...
View ArticleNewcastle vs Liverpool
Last weekend I took the long trip (isn't that long these days but back then it was really long) trip to the old army camp where I lived in for 1-2 months in 1996. They were probably the longest part of...
View ArticleNeverkusen
There are teams which are “Neverkusens”. This was the derisive nickname given to teams which got close to winning the league title, but never did. There was Roma, who after their title win in 2001...
View ArticleEmotional Distance
I thought about the last few years. Something has changed, and one of the biggest things is that I stopped being very emotionally involved with people. It is an exaggeration to say that I no longer...
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