Though most of the audience interviewed were positive about the role of the council in fostering integration, some remained skeptical about the extent to which the council alone can effect changes in social and cultural integration.

Mr Pang Li Jian, alumnus from NTU Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, said forming such an organisation will lead to integration but it will not be significant.

“It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks,” the Singaporean added, expressing his concerns regarding the inflexible views of the local elderly towards foreigners.

Final year Communication Studies student Ms Toh Lee Hoon also shared the same view. “The general sense I get from hawker talks especially with the elder folk is that they view foreign workers as rivals, instead of ‘team members’,” she said. “They do not see the reasons behind the influx of foreign workers.”

During the forum, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke at length about the issue of integration and the coming initiatives of the council as one of the government’s “greater efforts at fostering integration.”

The council, set up in April 2009, comprised members from the public and private sector, as well as the community. Its goal will be to ‘drive the integration agenda forward through a concerted effort’ according to Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng earlier this year.

The Straits Times reported in February that 20,513 foreigners took up citizenship while a further 79,167 took up permanent residency last year – an increase from 17,334 who took up citizenship and 63,627 who became PRs in 2007.

In addition, the paper also reported of a $10 million fund that organisations can tap for projects to help immigrants and Singaporeans to get to know each other better.

As integration becomes a pressing issue, many whom the Enquirer spoke to gave suggestions to make integration more effective.

“The initiative will be more effective if it targets the younger segment of the society,” said Mr Pang. He believes that children, when imparted with a strong acceptance towards foreign friends and cultures since young, will grow up and continue this drive of social integration to their children as well.

Meanwhile Mr Goh Wei Han, a doctoral candidate in Computer Engineering believes that the desire to integrate has to come from within, local and foreigner alike. “Internally, they must want to open up and mingle with one another,” the Malaysian said.

“All parties must understand the importance of cultural integration and are willing to work together towards achieving it,” said final year Business student Mr Hindri Susanto. The Indonesian added that the government would need cooperation from both Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans.

This was revealed by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the ministerial forum where the government’s stand on the role of transient foreign workers was spelled out in no uncertain terms.

According to PM Lee, in wake of one of the toughest crises experienced by Singapore to date, transient foreign workers bore the brunt of the severe job losses in the first half of 2009.

“And why did it happen? Because the impact was absorbed by the foreign workers and the shrinkage in the work force was taken up by the foreign workers,” he said, “and we have 20,000 foreign workers net; (some) lost their jobs, left, gone away, and they have absorbed and buffered us from the impact.”

Currently, transient workers, employed solely for work purposes, comprise slightly more than half of close to a million foreigners working in Singapore, with more than 100,000 foreigners introduced to the labour force annually in recent years.

Meanwhile, during this same six-month period of crisis this year, PM Lee revealed a little known fact that the number of Singaporeans employed has gone up – with a net employment gain of about 7000.

However, he stressed that this policy of hire-and-fire affects transient workers in particular as they are foreigners hired specifically for work in sectors that Singaporeans typically shun.

And he added these are the workers who not here in Singapore as long-term immigrants because transient workers are solely hired to work and do not settle here for the long run as citizens or as permanent residents.

“More than half of our non-citizens are in fact foreign workers like this. They are here temporarily as long as the economy needs them,” PM Lee said.

“Most of them are transient foreign workers, here to work, not to strike roots,” he said.

Not only do such foreigners serve as a buffer during slumps, their resources can be tapped during periods of economic boom to develop Singapore into a vibrant and economically robust city comparable to New York and Shanghai, he said.

However, Singapore’s casual approach towards employing and dispensing of foreign labour is unsettling.

Mr Roy Wu, a third-year Electrical and Electronic Engineering major at NTU feels such a move would appear to take the efforts of foreigners lightly.

Regarding transient foreign workers absorbing the impact of the weakened economy, Mr Wu said, “As a foreigner, I would feel insecure and feel quite discriminated.”

“Foreigners are a buffer in the work force and used for growing the economy,” he said. “They come to work and when the economy is not good, they are asked leave.”

But others feel that the casual treatment of foreign workers is just one issue among many others.

Ms Felicia Liu, a recent graduate from the National University of Singapore, said the issues faced by foreign workers are triple-fold. Many of them not only rely on a strong economy to find employment but are also subjected to fierce competition among themselves and realise that they are not welcomed the moment there is a downturn.

Ms Liu, who is Singaporean, said, “Foreigners become dispensable goods to us. It is a tough reality for them and it makes some Singaporeans uneasy about how we can commoditise labour this way.”

However, Ms Eveline Danubrata, a final year student from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information said transient workers face tough circumstances whether they are working in Singapore or in other countries that employ them.

And this situation is not about to change.

Ms Danubrata, who has studied in Singapore for nine years and received her Permanent Resident status in 2007, said, “Foreign workers who go to another country to work, in Singapore or overseas, face the same kind of competition so it is not very different.”

An online poll with the question, “How do you find the ministerial forum?” offered “inspiring”, “refreshing”, “fantastic” or “innovative” as answers.

Still, about 3000 people actually bothered to take part and more than 50 had decided what they felt about the forum even before it took place.

No surprise that “innovative” was the most popular choice at press time, since the other choices were even greater declarations of the forum’s brilliance.

But perhaps it was the Internet’s fault that attendance was less than stellar since students could pose questions to the PM on twitter instead of turning up in person.

There were unoccupied seats scattered around the bottom level and the upstairs area was found almost empty.

The last ministerial forum had Lee Kuan Yew gracing the event and the response was so overwhelming a video feed had to be set up, beaming the Minister Mentor live onto another large lecture theatre.

At least this time the question and answer session was more candid and certainly laced with less decorum.

Two years ago, people were breathlessly declaring their honour to be in the same room breathing the same air as the big man himself.

This time around, at least the people who came up to the microphone remembered to ask questions.

At the post-forum reception, the organisers of the forum got really organised.

Arranging themselves and student leaders in three groups, they patiently waited for the Prime Minister to work the room and make his way to them. Lest any of the students strayed from their herd, their group numbers were written on their name tags.

And only those who had a circle round their name tag number could speak to PM Lee – the others, merely formed the backdrop. The consequence of opening your mouth in his presence without the circle of approval was anyone’s guess.

Finally, don’t forget the inaugural twitter dialogue for any ministerial forum. Students were invited to tweet questions to the PM and one of them (not the best, in my opinion) was picked to be answered.

The ironic tweeted question on how new media affects personal interaction should have made way for “How long will you stay in the hot seat before you pass on the baton?” or “do you think Singaporean women should do National Service for at least one year?”

Even acknowledging the electronic showers of adoration (“pm lee u rock…” and “sir, impressive!”) would have been nice.

Oh wait, the PM did wave to the crowd when the moderator drew his attention to “I love u pm lee!”

Wonder if Ho Ching was smiling at that point of time.

Budget packages, GST credits, CPF top-ups, subsidies for public housing, education, health and so on.

This slew of financial benefits offered to a Singapore citizen, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, is the reason why a permanent resident from Malaysia recently decided to apply for Singapore citizenship after living here for many years.

Speaking at Nanyang Technological University Student Union’s Ministerial Forum, he told the crowd made up mainly of undergraduates, “I asked her why do you need this? You are a PR, your family is here, there is no problem.”

“She said: ‘If you take citizenship, you get (financial) benefits!’”

While the former American president John F. Kennedy could once proclaim to his citizens to ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country’, such patriotic declarations today might simply drive people to immigrate elsewhere instead.

The onslaught of globalisation has shifted today’s dynamics of citizenship towards the people. The ease of uprooting from one country to another has made each of us consumers in a supermarket world of countries.

The product: Citizenship.

During the forum’s Question-and-Answer session, one international student asked PM Lee on the benefits of becoming a Singapore citizen.

Another haggled with PM Lee to provide affordable housing to attract foreign talent like him to stay in Singapore.

Citing his fiancée and himself as an example, the PhD student from China said it was hard to make Singapore his home without a house. He could not afford a condominium, nor was he allowed to buy a new HDB flat as both his fiancée and him were permanent residents.

Hence, in this global fight for talent, how can Singapore tweak its citizenship scheme into an attractive card that a top talent would want in his or her wallet?

Show them the money.

The lure of low income taxes and attractive subsidies has definitely made Singapore the destination of choice for many. Thus, PM Lee pledged at the forum to sharpen the difference in these benefits so that “citizens come first”.

But how different would citizenship be from a credit card subscription then? If the choice of where to make a home boils down to the place that gives you the most monetary benefits – then what happens when there is no credit left?

To brand our citizenship by highlighting only its financial benefits surely attracts the wrong kind of people.

After all, a nation is nothing more than an “imagined community”. To tie the imagination entirely on money would mean the people, and the country, could be gone in one economic recession.

It is why the appeal of a Singapore citizenship must go deeper. People should want to be citizens of Singapore because of what they can and will do to make it their home.

The pink card in your wallet and the red passport you use to travel is not a key to more money. Rather, it symbolises where you’re from and who you are.

As a popular credit card advertisement puts it:

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s a credit card.

On the Internet, Facebook and Twitter users paid tribute to this entertainer of our generation—a generation that once weaned on to cassette tapes before CDs and iPods took over.

Nevertheless, as a big fan, his loss resonated even further and took a greater significance from a chance encounter with a primary school friend whom I have not spoken to for 16 years.

He refreshed my memory simply with one sentence:

“We were both the biggest MJ fans man.”

It was ironic how Michael Jackson’s death came on the same day of this chance encounter.

Back then, we were really big fans as we exchanged posters, spent hours talking about his music and wondered why a grown man would grab his crotch as a dance move.

I remembered us singing along to Beat It and Bad on our excursion trips in buses—and getting scolded by our teacher to sit down and shut up.

I remembered waiting patiently for the cassette tape to rewind before playing one of his albums for the umpteenth time—with the tape sometimes getting tangled up.

I remembered it became uncool to be an MJ fan due to the bad press and allegations he received as I grew older.

No one wanted to be associated with Wacko Jacko then, though I’m sure many secretly remained big fans from the deluge of tributes left on Facebook and Twitter.

Then it struck me that Michael Jackson’s death meant much more than simply the death of one of the greatest pop icons of all time: it felt like a part of our childhood had died along with him.

The memories and shared experiences created with friends and family through the sheer force of his music was something most fans treasured greatly. This was perhaps why people went out to the streets singing and dancing to celebrate the joy of his music.

But there is an even greater significance.

Michael Jackson belonged to an era where the attention given to his performances and music was undivided, as families and friends gathered around the television and radio immersed in his talent.

Today, we watch (and rewatch) the music videos that we like over YouTube, listen to thousands of songs on our MP3 players, all without the constraints of traditional media.

In the book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson explains that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from “hits” (mainstream products and markets) to a million of niches.

Armed with unlimited choice, consumers can now dictate what they want to consume for their media. Their attention is fragmented away from the usual dose of television and radio. Ratings for massive television events like the Oscars have plummeted from 55 million in 1998 to just over 36 million viewers this year.

Michael Jackson sold some 750 million albums—the most that any artist has seen. His ability to sell albums may remain unsurpassed as music sales enter a new paradigm where albums are no longer bundled and instead, individual tracks are being downloaded through online stores such as iTunes.

His emergence also coincided with the birth of MTV and the realisation that music videos would become an essential tool for marketing music.

He splashed out $500,000 for his music video Thriller—an unprecedented sum in 1983—and took music videos to another level. The 14-minute extravaganza became a cult hit and was broadcast all over the world, fueling his album sales.

Although social networks on the Internet may have propelled unsigned singers such as Colbie Caillat to fame—arguably something not possible before the Internet—it remains questionable if any artist could make the same impact around the world as Michael Jackson did.

Though the Internet may have helped to blur borders and make the world a smaller place, at the same time it has also made it more difficult to captivate the world’s attention as Michael Jackson did, aided by the traditional media of television and radio.

He could just be the last global entertainer.

The remark was made in Mr Pan’s acceptance speech for an honorary degree to recognize his contributions to the arts in Singapore, and to Nantah, which he served as the first General Secretary in its early days.

However, on the same day, both then NTU president Cham Tao Soon and the then Education Minister Teo Chee Hean present at the ceremony told reporters that they saw no need for a name change. They felt that NTU was a name already well-known in the world, and the word “technological” reflected its strength and focus well.

Mr Pan passed away a year later, before he could see current NTU president Su Guanning express plans to drop the “T” in NTU by 2005.

Shortly after taking office in 2003, Dr Su had mentioned in an interview with the Straits Times of his desire to revive the “fighting spirit” in the founding of Nantah by adopting its name.

Yet, in a dramatic turn of events, Dr Su announced a year later that he would put the renaming on hold until NTU becomes a full-fledged, comprehensive university. The matter has not been brought up again.

History of Nantah

Nanyang University, or Nantah, was established in 1955 and merged with the University of Singapore (SU) in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore (NUS).

However, most Nantah alumni saw it as a forced closure of their alma mater. The bitterness ran deep, as the 12,000 Nantah graduates felt marginalised by a society that did not recognize their degrees. Many of them were unable to find jobs, or were given little pay compared to SU graduates.

In addition, Nantah was built using donations from Chinese from all walks of life – including trishaw riders, cabaret girls and washerwomen – to realise a dream of setting up a Chinese university in Singapore. This added to the deep sense of loss Nantah alumni felt when they saw an English medium technological institution set up where their mother school used to be.

Nanyang Technological Institute, which opened on the former Nantah campus in 1981, was expanded to become Nanyang Technological University 10 years later.

Proposed name change stirs alumni

The proposal to drop the “T” by Dr Su Guanning was endorsed by Mr R. Sinnakarupan, president of the then 75,000-member NTU Alumni Club. For more than a year since January 2003, news in the media reported only NTU’s steps in pushing towards reviving Nantah, setting 2005 as the target date.

Yet, it was not mentioned that there were dissenting voices from various alumni, who took to the Internet to voice their objection.

A Nantah graduate, who currently resides in Canada, conducted an online straw poll of 50 alumni, of which all but one saw NTU as a separate entity from Nantah and not a resurrection of the former Chinese university.

The pollster, Dr Choo Eng Ung, also posted a declaration online with three other alumni to state that there is “only one real history of Nanyang University” – that it was shut down in 1980 and has ceased to exist.

The declaration, supported by 72 Nantah alumni, sought to “stop NTU from using the exact name ‘Nanyang University’”, in order to “protect and preserve the integrity of the true legendary history of our alma mater Nanyang University”.

Various Nantah graduates interviewed by the Enquirer, like Mr Chong Wing Hong, echoed the views of the online voices. “Most alumni, including me, see Nanyang University as having officially ceased to exist at age 25,” Mr. Chong said.

“A group of alumni thought that NTU should be ‘linked’ with Nanyang University. But Dr Su tried it, and it didn’t work out,” added the senior writer for Lianhe Zaobao.

“NTU is a new and independent university,” said Mr Tan Hock Lay, another Nantah alumnus. “The cultural, social and academic environment of NTU and Nantah are also largely different, so there is no point in bringing up a name change.”

Another objection to using the name Nanyang University was its historical baggage and the possibility of rekindling old grievances Nantah alumni experienced during the “forced closure”, said Mr Chong, the senior writer for Lianhe Zaobao.

This sentiment is reflected by another alumnus, who wished to remain anonymous. He and his Nantah schoolmates were so unhappy being viewed as NTU Alumni that they “tore up NTU letters asking for donations every year”.

“There is no harm continuing using the name ‘Nanyang Technological University’,” said Mr Chong. “The Massachusetts University in the USA is still called Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet it has a strong humanities and social sciences faculty, and has produced many excellent graduates. To change the name is not an issue.”

President of Nanyang University Alumni Academic Society, Dr. Choong Chow Siong, admitted that he was among the minority of Nantah graduates who also sees himself as an alumnus of NTU.

“There are two types of alumni of NTU – those who graduated from the university itself, the other established under the legislation,” Dr Choong said. Under a parliamentary act in 1995, the Nantah alumni rolls were transferred from NUS to NTU.

“Everyone has already deep set perception about what happened,” said Dr Choong, referring to those Nantah alumni who do not share his outlook as a dual alumnus of Nantah and NTU. “There is no need to actively push for a change in view, because it would be a 180-degrees change, one that is not easy to achieve.”

As for the continued possibility of a name change, Dr Choong said it is an important decision that should be made by stakeholders of NTU and Nantah together.

Name change shelved, for now

In July 2004, Dr Su suddenly announced a change of plan, saying renaming would come only after NTU becomes a full-fledged varsity. The move was backed by then Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan. This time, there was no timeline.

It was unclear whether objections from various Nantah alumni were the cause of what happened. Yet, six years after Dr Su’s proposed name change, it seems as if renaming NTU has already dropped off the radar.

During a global reunion of Nantah graduates in Beijing on 17 October last year, a discussion found that while reviving the “Nantah spirit” continues to be among hopes of alumni, the option of renaming NTU is no longer within consideration.

More importantly, NTU Provost Bertil Andersson said in an interview with The Enquirer that NTU would retain its technological focus, a theme that fit well with what Dr Su said during his speech at NTU’s 2006 convocation.

“Prime Minister Lee asked if we aspire to be Harvard or MIT. You will not be surprised that the answer is MIT,” Prof Su said as he addressed the freshly minted NTU graduates. “Among the three public universities in Singapore, we are the only science and technology university approximating MIT, whose excellence we want to emulate.”

When pressed for a response on the renaming issue, the university replied with “no comments”, and The Enquirer has been unable to get a response from Dr Su himself thus far.

Perhaps Mr Pan Shou’s wish may never be realized, but it appears a sizeable group of Nantah alumni — who do not want Nantah’s name to be used for what they feel is an unrelated entity — want to keep it that way.

The poll indicated that 66% of 150 respondents said no to the suggestion of a change in the name of the university. Engineering students made up close to two-thirds of those against renaming the university.

In 2003, NTU led by President Su Guaning, aimed towards changing the university’s name to Nanyang University by 2005. However, in 2004, this plan was shelved.

According to a Straits Times article dated July 2004, President Su said this change will only take place once NTU becomes a full-fledged comprehensive university.

In response to the poll, many expressed the change as impractical and strange.

Ms Lee Wei Ting, a second-year Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) student, said: “NTU is already a global name. Having the name changed means we have to inform the world all over again.”

“NU sounds strange,” first-year Economics major Mr Seng Yuan Gan said. He is not alone as Mr Lim Kuan Chien, majoring in Biological Engineering, feels that the acronym for the university must have three letters. “If not, it won’t sound nice,” the 20-year-old said.

Another concern was the identity of the old Nanyang University.

Mr Shang Yun Zhou, a second-year EEE major from China felt that NTU is different from the Nanyang University of the past as it was a mandarin-speaking university.

In addition, business student Sim Yihui expressed her concern that Nantah alumni will be unhappy if NTU were to change its name to Nanyang University.

“I read in the Straits Times before that a lot of the Nantah alumni do not see NTU as a continuation of Nantah,” the 21-year-old said.

Meanwhile, the remaining third of the total respondents warmed to the idea of a name change for several reasons. One factor was the presence of schools outside the technological field.

Second-year Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering student Mr Kevin Koh believes that having a strong business school is a good reason for renaming the university better known for its engineering schools.

“…because of the stereotypical thinking of the word technological, my UK friend asked why is an arts school doing in a technological university?” 19-year-old School of Art, Design and Media student Ms Jane Koh said.

Besides the renaming of the university, the poll also asked students if Nantah was part of NTU. Nanyang University then, in the 1950s up till 1980, was commonly known as Nantah.

About 43% of the respondents were unsure about Nantah and its history relating to NTU. The remaining students were divided in their opinions over Nantah.

Second-year EEE major Ms Wong Yan Nan from China feels that although Nantah is part of NTU, it is now history. “It’s just a name and it does not matter,” she said.

However, there are others like final-year EEE student Mr Kheu Zong Jie who is certain that Nantah is part of NTU. “Monuments at Yunnan Garden are a big reminder of the Nantah Spirit,” he said.

Mr Allen Lee, an environmental engineering major and member of the NTU Basketball team, shared with the Enquirer the sense of encouragement felt at his games when the “old boys — really old, with white hair — come down to cheer on the NTU Basketball team”.

“That’s probably the Nantah spirit,” the 23-year-old said.

Additional reporting by Zakaria Zainal, Chong Zi Liang, David Pang, Elaine Ng, Lin An Chyi & Lin Junjie

“There’s a lot of new knowledge today and what students require is inter-disciplinarity,” he told the Enquirer in a recent interview.

“No one wants to be just an engineer; no one wants to be just a scientist. Young people today want to have a broader base; they want to look at the totality and to understand more things.”

And NTU’s strength lies in its ability to be a university “based upon engineering and science, but having these interfaces”.

For example, combining engineering with biology creates new devices and biomaterial while engineering with business is “very important for the industry”, Prof Andersson explained.

About half of the current university undergraduate population are engineering students, and the university has marketed itself as one which offers a well-rounded global education with a distinctive edge in science and technology, according to its website.

In a speech at NTU’s 50th anniversary celebration four years ago, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong challenged NTU to choose between the Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) model.

“Both are outstanding institutions. But whereas Harvard is strong in all disciplines, MIT builds its reputation on its Science and Engineering schools, even though its Humanities and Social Sciences departments are world class,” PM Lee said. “NTU has to choose between these two models. You can aspire to be either like Harvard or MIT, but you cannot aspire to be both.”

If NTU were to become the MIT of the East, its name should stick added Prof Andersson, using the Ivy League in the United States as a comparison.

“If you look at the Nobel prizes in the last 50 years after World War II, which universities have the most Nobel prizes?” said Prof Andersson, currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Nobel Foundation.

“It’s Harvard – it’s a comprehensive university. No 2 is Berkeley, it’s a comprehensive university. And No 3 is Oxford, Cambridge, also comprehensive.”

However, in the last 15 years MIT, Stanford and Caltech are first, second and third respectively with Harvard ninth on the list, he said to prove his point.

“Many of these universities have a “T” in their names. MIT is not just engineering; it also has humanities, so it’s also an interdisciplinary university but the engineering is in the center,” said Prof Andersson, adding that comprehensive universities may be too diluted to really concentrate on their research efforts.

Hence there’s no reason for NTU to drop the “T” from its name. “The ‘N’ is for Nanyang, the ‘T’ is for Technological, the ‘U’ is for University – I think everyone has its share,” he said. “And then the ‘T’ stands for the core of the university.”

Patience with ingenuity is sometimes the only way to work around the various problems that plague almost every still-developing nation. One such problem is load-shedding. An English phrase that, before stepping on Nepali soil, was as familar to me as the Devanagari script used in the Nepali language.

Nepal is hardly a fully-developed country, so I did not come here with high expectations. Prior to arriving, I had heard of the dusty and confusing roads of Kathmandu and the infamously frequent power cuts – popularly known here as load-shedding.

But reality did not sink in until I first experienced it. Worse, the backup battery had run out completely at the guest house we were staying in. So my friend and I ate our self-cooked Christmas dinner by candlelight. How apt.

A drastic change of lifestyle was inevitable. A typical morning — even before I brush my teeth — in Kathmandu begins with checking the load-shedding schedule given by our landlord.

On good days, I make my morning cup of coffee using the hot water dispenser easily in a minute. On bad days, I sit shivering in the cold, marbled-floor office and work on articles and photographs until my laptop battery runs out.

The thought of laptop batteries going dead in the middle of writing an important research paper seems like the worst nightmare to students like you and me. But that does not beat short-circuiting one’s laptop while trying to restart backup power when load-shedding kicks in.

Besides home, the load-shedding schedule has also become the star attraction at my internship office tasked to churn out two magazines monthly.

Despite less than four hours of power during working hours, I am amazed at how the editorial team has been able to keep to their strict routine of writing, editing and laying out pages.

True, one can always get the interviews and fieldwork done before load-shedding kicks in. But with the increasing frequencies of protests, roadblocks and traffic jams, one can hardly get anywhere around Kathmandu to get any form of reporting done.

I wonder how my peers back in our air-conditioned nation will do with so little electricity and yet so much time on their hands. Surf the Internet? Oh wait, that needs power.

Talk on the phone with friends? That requires some form of electricity too.

Go out and catch a movie with friends? Well, provided the movie theatres have backup generators to screen the movies during load-shedding.

My Nepali friend was curious to know what youths in Singapore do in their leisure. When I mentioned the above, she remarked that all these activities cannot be done easily here.

However, instead of complaining about the lack of electricity to get anything done, the Nepalis have found ingenious ways to cope with whatever problems that plague their everyday lives.

No electricity at night? Let’s use candles and write on paper.

Unable to edit photographs and layout pages during load-shedding? Let’s try to get double the work done when there is still power.

Moreover, this is the same nation who went through a long and bloody civil war. The people’s war may have been officially over, but the power is still stuck with the ruling parties and all the common Nepali wants is to get the power back.

As the government announces yet another record-breaking increase in load-shedding to 16 hours a day, the resilient Nepali will take things in his stride and get on with his life.

Before the lights go out.

The writer is currently on internship with two lifestyle magazines in Nepal. She managed to finish this article just before the lights went out.

Currently, the bulk of our writers, inclusive of the editorial team are on internship with local papers or overseas media companies. It has been difficult juggling between the duties of running this news website and also the responsibilities of our respective internships.

Nevertheless, the Enquirer has a few stories that will soon be published that will engage our readers despite the tough juggling act.

Meanwhile in the about us section, we also have included a statement of our finances and the kind donations that we have received from our readers who support the Enquirer. This is our commitment to be open and transparent about the costs and benefits accrued from running this news website.

A majority of these funds will be pooled to support – part incentive and mainly basic remuneration – our reporters when they are out on the field. They will continue to produce rigourous and groundbreaking journalism that reflect what the Enquirer stands for.

Meanwhile, we hope that you, dear readers, will continue to support the Enquirer as you have before. Thank you.