Hey everyone! Just popping by to give everyone a quick update about what’s going on. Basically, finals season has started!

On Monday, I gave a presentation for my Economics in Japanese class (I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I also took it last year). But basically, I presented on how Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet and how that’s changing business models through servitisation of the manufacturing industry, and all my questions were about…

A dystopian/utopian future.

It was kinda interesting to see everyone’s reactions though.

China (3 people): they were all really negative. My teacher fears the day where robots will completely replace humans, and she seems to think that the more technology progresses, the less human warmth there will be, and that technology will not be able to increase human interaction. The students are “bad people exist. This is unsafe”

Korea (2 people): they were actually positive. Very similar to my view actually.

Malaysia (1 person): The Malaysian dude was more concerned about growing inequality due to progress, which is totally understandable, and one of the things I do worry about too.

Singapore/me: I’m like “there are two futures. The minute we think that the future is dark, the minute we give up, that’s when we lose. So we have to shape our own future instead of just letting it happen”

I ended up saying that quite a few times, because I just ignored the definition of crazy. Each time, I got the same response.

Well, no, but if we all think that way, then the future certainly won’t be bright. I had show corning’s Day of Glass and NTT Docomo’s 2020 vision of the future, before my teacher was like “ok, well, let’s all work hard for the future.” (video below)

I definitely don’t think the future is going to be all rosy, especially in the short term, what with the skills gap and possible redundancy of blue-collared workers, but I can’t agree with my teacher that the world is fine the way it is.

There are kids being made to work in unsafe factories.

There are people who can’t get the education they want.

There are people risking their lives in places like the Fukushima nuclear plant to keep us safe.

If IoT and the development of robotics can make all those jobs redundant and get kids into schools, people away from dangerous places, I’m all for it. I don’t think this future is certain either, but I know that if we don’t try to achieve it, we never will.

On Tuesday, I had my first exam, on the stock market! Since I spent all the pre-exam time preparing for Transcosmos, I felt super unprepared. But, the results came out today (my teacher is super fast!) and apparently, I passed with a D!!! Not a great grade, but it’s not a fail!

On Wednesday, I had my test on The Functions of the Stock Market and um… I forgot the rest of the name. I normally remember it as “the class taught by people from Nomura”. Fingers crossed I didn’t make too many mistakes.

Today was my test on the Economics of the Telecom Industry, and it was definitely the hardest test so far. It’s also the first test in three years where not a single person left the room before the time was up. Which is a pretty good indication of how tough it is, even though we can bring the textbook in. Although we didn’t really use the textbook, because my teacher prefers to set questions to make you think (which is good, actually). Fingers and legs and arms and everything crossed, because this class is taught by my sub-zemi teacher, and I really, really want to pass it.

That’s about it! Next week, I had exams on Monday (which is also the start of Chinese New Year), Tuesday and Wednesday, and them I’m done for the term! Except for one essay and one more presentation. But I’m just going to focus on Wednesday first. Anyway, depending on how efficiently I study during the weekend, I may or may not be able to blog more next week 😀

A really random photo of a bag my friend bought. Apparently, there’s a pun on the word sushi there.