I was born in Singapore in 1978 and am now working back at the Singapore Embassy in Washington, DC. The site, though, has existed since 2000 i.e. my college days, long before I ever became a diplomat. Its contents are entirely personal, rather than work-related, and everything I say should be taken as my own views, rather than that of any organisation.

Education
I hold an A.B. (magna cum laude) in Economics from Harvard, where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001. My focus was on urban economics, and my senior thesis was on the way income affects the preferences for living in urban areas. I also delivered lectures on Dialects of English for a linguistics class, and am pretty good at being able to distinguish English shibboleths.

Work
I am the Political Counsellor at the Singapore Embassy in Washington. Prior to that, I was Deputy Director (International Organisations) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singapore, focusing on human rights and development. Before I joined MFA, I was Deputy Director (Climate Change) at the Singaporean Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, where I did policy work as well as international negotiations on climate change and air pollution issues. Since I spend most of my day talking and writing about those issues, dsng.net is my break from all that.

Writing
I wrote for three editions of the budget travel guide Let's Go (Let's Go: Britain and Ireland 1999, Let's Go: London 2001, and Let's Go: New York City 2002), and was the editor of the 2000 edition of Let's Go: Britain and Ireland.

Hobbies
The time in Boston was also the start of my obsession with baseball and the Boston Red Sox. I'm a paid-up member of SABR. Besides that, I'm a music, film, art, American literature, English language, and trivia buff, a fact which stood me in good stead when I won the "Singapore's Brainiest Scholar" game show in 2003 but otherwise means I'm pretty much just a trainspotter. I do like pub quizzes. I also used to do some DJing.

Random bits
I'm obsessive, compulsive, and sometimes disorderly. I think "The Simpsons" is the greatest TV show of all time. I hate urban legends and conspiracy theories, partly because I think they try to hard to attach order to an entropic world.

Last updated Aug 2010