Category Archives: Commentary

Maundy Thursday 2026

A year ago, I reflected on Maundy Thursday and also shared about what this word ‘maundy’ was referring to. Maundy refers to the command – and this command was to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The focus of this term was not so much on the last supper, nor the betrayal of Jesus, but on the washing of the disciples’ feet.

There is always a lot to unpack within the gospel for the record, leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in these two days. But we continue to focus on this feet-washing matter. What does it mean, why does it matter and what of this experience did the disciples take away?

On one hand, Jesus washing of the disciples’ feet is a matter of service. He was demonstrating to the disciples the level of humility that they are all called to. John the Baptist said that he was not worthy to loose/untie the sandal strap of Jesus (John 1:27) and yet here was Jesus, washing the feet of His disciples. And in John 13:14-17, Jesus clearly expects that the example he set will make a strong impression in the disciples to follow his example of love and service. The mandate to love one another then follows from there.

On the other hand, we got to peer even more deeply into the spiritual meaning of feet-washing from the perspective of those whose feet are being washed. This is perhaps thanks to Peter, who tried to ask Jesus to wash his head and hands after Jesus said that Peter had no part with Him if He didn’t wash Peter’s feet. Peter probably tries to say that all of him is with Jesus and therefore asks to be washed fully. But Jesus explains further that ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean’ (John 13:10). So the feet washing is not just symbolic of the loving and serving of the one who washes. There was a separate point being brought up.

And this is the point that daily cleansing of the filth from the world (sanctification) is needed, even when we have been cleansed through salvation. There will always be influences from the world that draws us to sin and we would have our personal struggles that we are dealing with – the daily cleansing, with the Lord’s word, with prayer, mutual encouragement and service (which can come through a gentle rebuke, or holding one another accountable) will allow us to sanctify one another to the Lord.

All of these mattered to Jesus at the point before His betrayal and crucifixion (noting the way John wrote verses 2-3). This was almost the last time the disciples gathered together, and Jesus was certainly teaching them the final lessons He could share and leave with them directly before His death. There’s one common misunderstanding that I’d like to tidy up before finishing this post. The question is whether Judas’ feet were washed. Given that Jesus alluded to the fact that Judas was ‘unclean’ in John 13:10-11. The difficulty of John 13’s record is that verses 1-17 about feet washing comes first but then verses 18-30 where Jesus identifies his betrayer comes later. So there’s this impression that Jesus washed the feet of all his disciples and then subsequently Judas left.

But if you read verse 2 carefully, you realise that the elements of the flowing prose from verses 1-30 isn’t chronologically ordered. The foot washing took place immediately after supper. Whereas verses 18-38 was almost like a flashback to the times the supper when Jesus and his disciples were still eating, and then Judas went out from them and Jesus continued teaching, giving the command to love, and then predicting Peter’s denial.

I have not looked into why John wrote the way he did but I had thought that John must have been so deeply impacted by having his feet washed by Jesus and he wanted to write about that and show how Jesus lived out this ‘mandate’ while he was alive, and also how this related to the cleansing the disciples needed vis-a-vis the one they already had (salvation received in their hearts). By sharing this experience first and then unpacking the rest in the next couple of chapters, John was prefacing Jesus’ teachings with first the revelation of who His person was like from His action.

To be a Christian, the person of Jesus needs to hit us, the manner He taught with His life and not just His words. It is the consciousness of His life that enables us to cling on to His words.

Live energy experiments

For as long as I can remember, people have complained about the cost of being green when it comes to sustainability and energy use. And then gas prices spike, and suddenly green gas (eg, biomethane) becomes worthwhile. There are countries in the world like Brazil, which took a very concerted effort to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels by investing heavily into biofuels and developing a local ecosystem for it. Their energy costs becomes less correlated with what the world is going through. And during certain times, they can gain a competitive advantage.

At the same time, we might have heard that countries forced to adopt sustainability measures can end up less competitive. This is probably frequently referenced when discussing European giants subject to strict EU regulations. Other times, there are concerns about demand destruction and shrinkage of businesses when stricter environmental rules are being enforced.

Today, as we face rising energy prices due to developments in the Middle East, we are seeing countries ration fuel, express concern about fuel trade across markets, and tighten their belts to prepare for further cost increases. The question is, why are we waiting for these things to happen before responding this way? Why not tighten our belts to put more resources into renewables, focus on growing our economy through less energy-intensive approaches, and identify new areas to enable economic growth?

As an economist, I’m think it is fascinating that these price shocks are enabling us to see what will happen if regulations forces prices up in order to reduce carbon emissions. For example, we see jet fuel prices doubling and that is translating to about 20-30% rises in ticket prices on average (some routes right now are also increasing cost because of the need to make longer detours but this is not factored into our analysis); and that can lead to demand destruction of about 20-25%. So the international aviation market shrinks by almost a quarter if we were to force all international travel to use only Sustainable Aviation Fuel.

All that assumes the pricing is just 2x the traditional jet fuel cost, which is unlikely, as we try to use different feedstocks and more sophisticated tech pathways. But in reality, the SAF mandates in EU or other parts of the world isn’t quite as severe in the beginning so realistically, the demand destruction might be just a few percentage points even as we step up more blending. The question is whether the world can stomach that?

Probably without much of a hitch.

Yet we kick up a big fuss on such regulation and change. Meanwhile, we allow climate change risks to accumulate and manifest in more costly disasters down the line. Our short-termism is really killing us.

Quick note on the statistics above: most of the elasticity figures and price changes are summaries based on search on Google Gemini. While it draws upon some of the news articles and research based on SAF levies and perhaps some recent price changes, more intensive research on jet fuel pricing and air ticket prices is necessary to establish the actual correlations and elasticities.

Biomethane reducing energy fragility

I spent the last three years of my life almost evangelising about biomethane and more broadly, biofuels. Perhaps that is not the right word given that I am a Christian but basically I was trying to get people more aware about biomethane because of the benefits it could bring to the energy transition. It was something that was overlooked during the course of the hydrogen hype, and there had been very aggressive lobbying and campaigning against biomethane for some political and emotional reasons.

In the backdrop of the wars that are taking place in the Middle East now, the potential impacts on energy systems and markets, I want to revisit the whole biomethane story, sharing the good, and explaining some of the concerns away, while also identifying the concerns that remain, which won’t be dealt with by biomethane.

The Good

Biomethane is produced from anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic matter. It is a natural process though it can be rushed and optimised through temperature and humidity control as well as careful management of the substrate (whatever organic feedstock) put together under those conditions.

Left alone, these organic stuff would have produced carbon dioxide and methane anyways. The carbon dioxide is biogenic so it doesn’t add to global warming potential, but the methane does (and it’s 28 times more potent). So by capturing this methane, we are already reducing emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG).

But what’s even better comes when this captured methane is actually used to displace fossil fuel. And it does so in two ways. Remember I mention it the AD process produces carbon dioxide and methane? The carbon dioxide can be used in industries for making dry ice, for cleaning purposes, and even used as feedstock for some specialty chemicals. Traditionally, these carbon dioxide are from fossil sources, so getting it from biogenic sources reduces final emissions. At the same time, when biomethane is displacing the fossil methane, we further reduce final emissions when we combust it for energy or consume it for other processes.

That is quite a bit of GHG emission reduction isn’t it?

The Better

It doesn’t just stop there. The biogenic carbon dioxide can be used to produce other e-fuels including e-methane that will help increase the methane yield of the feedstock. The other chemical process pathways like gasification, methanation and all will play a role in enabling this. This provides a suitable commercial pathway for green hydrogen to help contribute to energy transition at this stage without having to refit the demand-side equipment. It helps kickstart the market without the transport logistics and infrastructure in place yet.

There’s more. AD produces a liquid slurry that is called digestate as a residue in the reactors. These are remaining organic matter that has been mainly stripped of the carbon content, but other nutrient content remains, making it suitable for use as a fertiliser. Traditionally, fertiliser is made using synthetic ingredients, including ammonium salts, featuring natural gas as a feedstock to the chemical process. By using AD digestate to make up for part of the fertiliser, we are reducing the use of fossil fertiliser and once again reducing final emissions.

As energy security and food security become a more relevant topic, we begin to see how biomethane wonderfully contributes to both the energy and food ecosystems. While we all wonder when the holdup at the Straits of Hormuz is going to end, we can start investing in the right areas that will help create the biomethane ecosystem, which can enhance our energy security and resilience, rather than squandering further resources trying to backstop our fragility.

The feedstock concerns

One of the most common issues around biomethane or biofuels in general is the challenge of having enough feedstocks. At Blunomy, I’ve conducted many feedstock studies and mapped feedstocks. The truth is that we probably won’t be able to meet all the gas demand through the biomethane that we can produce from existing feedstocks. But neither should we.

Just as we should not be relying on a single gas field or a single strait to transport all our gas. Biomethane feedstocks are naturally diversified from various sources, and policies could encourage more organic waste or residue to be properly managed upstream to produce more biomethane.

Moreover, we have not even begun exploring the possibility of growing novel crop feedstocks on marginal land that can be dedicated to energy. These crops serve to rehabilitate the soil, the land ecosystems while contributing to energy. The concern about feedstock limitations should not even feature at this moment when we have not even exploited a tiny fraction of it.

Perpetuating oil & gas interest?

Another political and emotive concern raised is that biomethane will allow the energy industry to maintain oil & gas infrastructure, further entrenching our capture by these companies. We should not perpetuate gas infrastructure and entrench ourselves in the fossil ecosystem.

More often than not, the infrastructure is regulated, and we simply need to have the right policy and governance in place to push them to serve the interests of the energy transition rather than the status quo. In many countries that have started introducing blending mandates for biomethane in the gas networks and pipelines, the largest gas consumers and even fuel suppliers have become the biggest customers for biomethane!

The methane slip concerns

So the feedstock limitation or concern around energy industry interests, isn’t something to fuss over. What we can and ought to fuss over, is the fugitive emissions, and methane leakages from continuing to use of methane for energy in the existing infrastructure. Biomethane is still methane, so while combusting it produces biogenic carbon dioxide, which we consider non-additive GHG, the release of biomethane into the atmosphere itself is still a GHG emission.

This continues to be a challenge and certainly contributes to rising GHG emissions. What we cannot always agree on is whether pushing to end the use of methane entirely is worthwhile.

There is greater consciousness of methane leakages precisely because monitoring has improved, sensing equipment is now more broadly available, and I believe the technology to upkeep the infrastructure has also improved. This is an issue to be resolved through better infrastructure, better management and better systems to ensure accountability, compliance and monitoring.

Biomethane will not resolve the issue of methane leakages, but I am not sure if this problem should be stopping us from exploring biomethane as a solution to all the other above issues that I raised. Natural gas continues to be broadly use, and the huge amount of gas infrastructure already invested into could rightly be used to serve the transition if we are willing to build this biomethane ecosystem.

I hope you’re convinced biomethane is something worth working hard to make manifest in the future we are all working for. It’s worth wondering, when we pay for energy, what are we actually buying? And whether cheap energy comes at the cost of fragility, environmental harm, lower end-use efficiency, and reduced resilience. Are we exhausting our resources, and the environment for what really matters to us?

Update (26 March, 11:18am): Initially the post mentioned methane is 12 times more potent than CO2 in global warming potential but that has been corrected to 28 times.

Arguments for renewable fuels

As part of an assignment for an online course, I developed an article arguing for the role of renewable fuels in the low-carbon economy of the future. I reproduce the full final draft here for my blog readers.

Climate change is a real, global catastrophe that needs urgent and immediate action. 2024 marks the first full year of warming above 1.5 deg C, determined by scientists as the climate change threshold. The Paris agreements were designed to ensure that the long-term average temperatures towards the year 2050 do not exceed this threshold. Breaching this threshold portends irreversible ecosystem damage and more dangerous climate conditions worldwide.

A huge part of climate action involves decarbonising our energy systems, which are responsible for nearly 90% of all anthropogenic carbon emissions. The rapid deployment of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and combined with giant battery energy storage systems and pumped hydro energy storage systems, is supporting the decarbonisation of electricity grids and systems. While they are aiming to displace current fossil fuel-based systems, running on fossil coal, oil and gas, there are severe limitations and significant. Only about 20-22% of final energy consumption takes the form of electricity, which means that direct fuel consumption is still the main approach for the consumption of energy.

The solution to this conundrum is renewable fuels; first in the form of biofuels and, subsequently, a combination of biofuels and synthetic fuels produced through various chemical processes, some of which involve renewable electricity as well. Renewable fuels are not transition fuels. They will continue being carriers of energy in the future and serve as an important decarbonisation solution for industries that need to be supported and scaled up.

Renewable fuels are an essential complement to renewable electricity. Not all energy users are served by the electricity grid. The majority of the transport sector, as well as heavy industries, rely on fuels because of mobility or scale requirements. While battery technologies are catching up and have experienced a phenomenal decrease in costs, there are still operational limitations for many use cases. Long-haul heavy transport, due to its energy consumption and mobility, does not lend itself to battery systems. Therefore, even with electrical power production completely decarbonised, significant energy consumption in fuels will still need to be decarbonised. Renewable fuel represents such a solution that will enable low-carbon aviation, maritime transportation, mining and steelmaking to give a few sectors as examples. These sectors are not going away; they will play vital roles in the low-carbon economy of the future.

Renewable fuel contributes to energy resilience and security for countries and industries. Electricity cannot be stored for the long term across seasons except in pumped hydro storage, which requires specific geological features that are not present everywhere. Producing renewable fuels and storing them enables much longer-term energy storage, which can contribute to energy security in times of instability or when supply disruptions occur within the electricity system. This is because fuels are much more stable and transportable, and energy can be released on demand. For example, data centers’ backup power could be a huge battery energy storage system but without an additional source of energy, the batteries would eventually drain down to zero. Renewable fuel can be continuously supplied to the site, and power operations can be operated continuously.

There may be the view that once everything is electrified, only solar, wind and other renewable power generation sources are needed. As mentioned, renewable fuels provide an essential source of energy for mobility and several other sectors that are challenging to electrify and would still require fuel as a backup and for resilience. Moreover, renewable fuels are molecules used not only for energy but also in other chemical industries as chemical feedstocks. Dealing with climate change will require a shift away from fossil-based chemical feedstocks towards low-carbon ones which can be unlock from renewable fuels.

Recognising the role of renewable fuels in the climate transition is just the first step. The next would be to call upon policy actions, advocacy and industrial adoption to ensure the commercial viability. Renewable fuel technologies are available and established. To get to palatable levels of cost for the market, world-scale production needs to be established. That will require industries and energy users to provide unequivocal support for adoption. This is can only be possible with strong policy action to price carbon emissions, mandate blending and adoption; driving demand expansion serves also to expand production and enable economies of scale necessary to make renewable fuels a cost-effective solution for decarbonisation. The low-carbon future is not possible without renewable fuels; and renewable fuels will not enter the equation without policy action.

The Albatross

Being the fanboy I was of Dr Goh Keng Swee, I visited the Albatross File exhibition soon after it was inaugurated. I’m really thankful for SM Lee’s efforts to get it declassified and made public. After 60 years of nationhood, it is great to let out this ‘secret’ that our founding fathers kept about our separation from Malaysia. The truths revealed explains in part why Singapore had gone through a referendum to become part of the Malaysia Federation but could become an independent sovereign city state without any democratic process. Even Lee Kuan Yew described it as a bloodless coup. It was actually pretty much a coup, but of course, it was politically expedient for all at that point to describe Singapore as having been ejected from Malaysia.

Photo by me, taken at the NLB exhibition

The storytelling through the exhibition was great and it enabled me to digest a fair bit of content within a short time and appreciate the story line pieced together by Susan Sim and her team. It was a great work though given the somewhat sensitivity of the topic, there is very little doubt there had to be a lot of checks for political sensitivity and alignment to the historical narrative of Singapore.

I think this exhibition does a lot to prepare the public for the eventual launch of the founders’ memorial in 2028. For me personally, it was never really a question of whether it makes sense for our country to spend money on building the founders’ memorial, but more about how we can ensure that the generations that follow can remember and appreciate the miracle that is Singapore. This exceptionalism cannot be reduced to a single person or a particular set of circumstances. And many more stories need to be told, not just in history textbooks but passed down within families, between generations and across communities.

Our founding fathers were brilliant politicians and strategists, not just operators who kept the city-state running and punching above its weight. It would be dangerous to think there is nothing too hard for us now; or to throw up our arms in despair because of the difficulties of the conditions we are subject to globally, especially now.

I eventually bought the book which I’m looking forward to dive into.

Carbon capture

I think there is a place for carbon capture and utilisation. But just not the way we have been thinking or approaching it. Carbon capture and storage in some kind of cavern or project and expecting it to hold on to the carbon dioxide does not make sense. But many other carbon sequestration approaches do: applying biochar to ground, injecting carbon dioxide into cement to strengthen the concrete, or any processes that somehow mineralises carbon dioxide into some kind of other compounds including carbonates.

All of the approaches where carbon dioxide is somehow transform into some other form which is more permanent and serves a function make sense. The technologies involve in terms of filtering the carbon dioxide to a certain level of purity, conveying it and handling it, will play important role in the low-carbon economy.

The reason is that carbon dioxide is still an essential part of many industrial production processes. In any case, the main challenge of climate change isn’t really the presence of carbon dioxide – it is the fact that we are taking out fossil carbon and then turning it into carbon dioxide, releasing it into the atmosphere faster than it can be cycled back into other parts of nature. This build-up of carbon dioxide, strengthens the greenhouse effect, making things really nutty for the climate.

But when we are taking biogenic carbon dioxide and using it, there is nothing wrong because the carbon was sequestered from present carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Using it merely ‘recycles’ the carbon around. Human systems that does carbon capture can play that same recycling role. Take for example the capture of biogas from the anaerobic breakdown of organic matter. That is a mix of methane and carbon dioxide gas; the carbon dioxide gas can be filtered out and then used for industrial processes, while the pure methane (or biomethane as we call it) can be used for energy purposes – combustion to produce heat and drive turbines to produce electricity.

Moreover, the carbon dioxide produced from combustion can be captured, purified, and utilised just like the carbon dioxide filtered out from the biogas. This carbon dioxide can actually be combined with green hydrogen to form many other hydrocarbon molecules that act as our more familiar fuels that are compatible with many of the engines and systems we have. Not just that, the combusted fuel will emit that same ‘biogenic’ carbon dioxide, which would not count as greenhouse emissions because they are in the short-term cycle. Nevertheless, we can still capture that carbon dioxide and then return it to those uses we talked about.

To me, that’s the role of carbon capture in the future – it is really to recycle the carbon just as nature already does it. It is not to erase the carbon dioxide that has already been emitted. It is really naive to think that spending more energy trying to capture the emitted carbon dioxide can be more worthwhile than using alternative forms of energy that do not emit so much carbon dioxide in the process. That would be the role of these technologies in the future.

Decarbonising Singapore’s power sector

Singapore’s power sector is responsible for about 40% of the total emissions of Singapore (NCCS, 2022) and in 2024, almost 95% of the power produced in Singapore was generated using Natural gas (EMA, 2025). I estimated that we consume about 300 PJ of natural gas just for power production alone, assuming that gas power generation on average is at about 60% efficiency. And from that same dataset you’d also realise we have 0.9% of coal-fired power in the mix.

The recent EMA announcement about the 300MW biomethane pilot for power plants (EMA, 2025) implies a 3% reduction in fossil natural gas use, replaced by biogenic carbon dioxide from the combustion of biomethane, which is not considered a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Assuming this quota and capacity is used in full, it should lead to about 740 ktCO2e of GHG emissions abated.

Another news was about Tuas Power replacing all of its coal with biomass for power generation by 2028 (Tuas Power, 2025). This implies that the 0.9% of coal contributes to the fuel mix will no longer be emitting carbon dioxide. I did some back of envelope calculation on the emissions from the coal power generation and estimated it to be at around 300tCO2e per annum only. This is likely because the plant’s capacity factor isn’t very high. If the 133 MW capacity was firing in full all the time, they should be emitting around 700tCO2e.

Now if we follow the 2022 emission profile figures, the power sector is responsible for about 21MtCO2e of emissions from Singapore. Those reductions of about 0.75MtCO2e of emissions seem relatively insignificant. Indeed, it looks like only 3.5% of the total emissions will be reduced in the grand scheme of things.

Sure, we are going to import more renewable energy and as a proportion of total power generated, we will increase the percentage figure. The grid emissions factor will probably decrease especially since we are going to have more MWh of green electricity. But for the existing power generation capacity to decarbonise in the short term, biomass and biomethane remain the more readily available solution. Those pilots and announcements may herald the beginning of greater ambitions.

Blunomy & bioenergy

My blog has always been relatively free of direct stuff on my work but here’s just a post where I wanted to document some of the work that the Blunomy/Enea team had worked on over the past couple of years.

Moreover, it has been over a year since I stepped up to take care of our Renewable Fuels practice at Blunomy for the Asia Pacific. Things have been really challenging and tough on the energy transition front for the world, and for the business of consulting but when I look at these analysis and work we’ve put out, I’m reminded of how far the industry and market has come.

Some of these materials I’m putting links to are available as ‘publications’ on our website, but some of them have been put out by our clients who have decided to make some of our work public.

This corpus of work followed public sentiments and appreciation of biogas and biomethane as a source of energy across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Starting with awareness-building and education on this source of green energy that contributes also to circularity, we went on to develop analytical pieces focusing on feedstocks, understanding feedstock value chains, as well as more advocacy pieces that cuts through the challenges in the industry to recommend suitable policy intervention should the government determine this was a worthy cause to pursue.

Blunomy continues to build upon our experience and expertise. During this period, we also performed due diligence on more than 50 projects across different parts of Europe, looked into impact assessment as well as the help clients develop relevant investment cases for this business. Until biomethane becomes a more mainstream form of green energy, the work will not end. Even at that point, there will be new challenges and issues to overcome.

Media and narratives

I used to love The Economist, and I even used to collect various articles to prescribe them to read for my students whilst I was teaching Economics at A Levels. It’s been a great influence on the way I write and approach sharing my opinion on things, and I enjoyed the dry wit and British humour, but these days I find the anti-China slant a bit uncalled for.

Take the recent report on China’s dominance in renewables. One of the article that talked about the improvement of air quality in China has the headline, ‘China’s air-quality improvements have hastened global warming’. I used to laugh at The Economist’s self-deprecating humour and when they lambasted silly but political manoeuvres of US presidents. When they try to criticise illiberal practices in China, I get it and understand the Western liberal lens that drives those considerations. However, this is a blatant low blow, a stark contrast to the highbrow approach that I would usually associate with The Economist.

The article isn’t even so much about China’s air quality but the science behind how some of the aerosols emitted by coal plants could have helped with cooling the atmosphere and how geo-engineering techniques based on that could play a role in climate change. Though latest studies suggest this will probably not be enough to cope with challenges in the shifting agriculture landscape as a result of climate change.

We are entering a new era where narratives are being distorted by English-language media, and it doesn’t help the rest of the world understand China any better.

I recall in 2018, when The Economist started a new column on China called ‘Chaguan’ (which really means Tea House in Chinese), they wanted to understand China better and to help the world do that. That hadn’t quite work.

Political culture

Woke Salaryman recently posted this comic article in response to comments towards a previous post about workplace ‘politics’. I really like the realism, the clarity and conviction behind their work. I think it is great that they call out the naivety of those who thinks that they can be ‘above’ politics at work but I’m writing this post because I want to add a more nuance layer to the conversation.

I think Singapore, by and large, have always been sensitive to overt kinds of politicking because of the way politics have been portrayed in our history. We take a more superficial view of what politics mean, as though it is all bad and about behaving in deceptive or conniving, self-serving ways.

And in the workplace, we default to thinking that the virtuous approach is simply to bury head and work hard. That can be a great start in a small working team or organisation where visibility isn’t really a problem. It also works well when productivity, key work metrics are not contentious. Then politicking can seem like it’s all about bootlicking, gossiping and acting in the worse, socially destructive ways.

Politics, which is derived from greek words meaning ‘affairs of a city’ is fundamentally relating to governance and interactions between fellow beings living in the same environment, subject to different constraints and influences that are interdependent on one another in the community. The relationship-building, social interactions, tussle for power, influence or mind-share are all part of it. In a workplace, where we are all coming together to achieve something together, it takes effort and the meta-layer of ‘work’ to organise everyone together.

Work today has evolved and become increasingly complex; it is hard to measure individual effort easily, and particularly challenging to identify precisely what the right skillsets are to progress to the next level. It is ultimately the ability to organise others and persuade them to work together that produces value as opposed to working and contributing directly.

There is a role for politics in all of lives, and maybe Singapore needs to build a culture of politcal-awareness and also encourage citizens to appreciate the positive role it can play in society, workplaces. And we may all also learn the right social, emotional intellect needed to handle tricky situations. With the geopolitical climate of the world today, Singapore needs to cultivate more brilliant diplomats than ever before. How else to do so than to help our people recognise the value of such work to the survival and success of a city state nation.