This blog is going to cover my journey as a Munk One student studying at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore over the next month.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Arthur, I’m a Munk One student, and I’ve just finished my first year. I chose to visit Singapore because I am interested in discovering how this city state grew from a barren island to one of the biggest financial hubs in the world in just 50 years. The summer program I am taking at NTU, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Asia, is relevant to what I learned in my Munk One courses. For example, how Singapore solves water shortages and refines its national defense could be topics for discussion in Professor Kramarz’s class.

In the first day of class, I have found out that quite a lot of innovative products of the past three decades – such as sound cards installed in our computers and the USB drives that are widely used today – actually originated in Singapore. My professor’s explanation for the Singaporean drive to develop innovative products used the example of the country’s water shortage. Basically, Singapore has been heavily relying on Malaysia for water since its independence, but as the Malaysian government was arbitrarily increasing the price of water, Singapore decided to search for alternatives, and ended up inventing a water treatment system that sanitizes sewage and desalinates seawater as new sources. In other words, the lack of natural resource has motivated Singaporeans to be creative and innovative.

I think this program is going to be mind-blowing and I am expecting so much more to come when I begin to work on group projects with other students!