A year ago, Singapore was in lockdown, churches were not open and I attended mass via live stream. Little did I know that virtual meetings and lessons were going to play a huge part in my life moving forward. Easter weekend in 2020 was a weird affair due to the pandemic. What a relief that life has gone back to some sort of normalcy in Singapore.

Other countries should take heed at what Singapore has done to get to where we are in terms of controlling the pandemic. Freedom of speech and civil rights are sometimes less important when you need everyone to band together to understand the bigger picture. I have friends in other parts of the world and some of them are from countries where the pandemic is still raging. The common denominator I see is that the rights of the individual is placed before the rights of the collective. It does not make sense that one should have the choice to wear a mask in public. It should be mandatory worldwide. Despite me not having empirical data to back my statement, I still think that if mask wearing in public was not a choice but a requirement worldwide, we would not have the number of infections and deaths that occured throughout the world.

Reflecting on the situation in Singapore a year ago just puts into perspective what a group of people can achieve when they work together. I started my day having lunch at Tiong Bahru Market with some members of my study group. I’ve not really thought about it but it feels good to have to look for an available table at a hawker centre or a restaurant these days.

The agenda for the day was to work on our assignments for LAW301-Legal Methods and the Singapore Legal System and SWK107 – Introduction to Social Work. We started at about 230 pm, capped the physical group to 8 people and had another 7 on Zoom. We debated long and hard on our TMAs and quiz questions. Trust me, when you get into law school, the only thing that will end a discussion is when everyone is dead tired or dead drunk. In this case, it was because we were all dead tired. We ended at almost 1 am. Out went the dinner plans. Was looking forward to having a nice dinner with the group but that went out the window thanks to some question about the problems about poverty for our Social Work module.

My buddy Raj took this photo. This was us trying to understand something. I really cannot remember what it was but it got intense!

Well that’s life in SUSS Law school. You’re gonna burn loads of holidays and weekends. Might I suggest working together with a group of people who will make this a whole lot easier? Like I said before, think of what a group of people can achieve when they work together.

Happy Easter everyone!

Yours sincerely,

Daryl