The guy who teaches China and IR, a Dr Russell Ong, kinda sucks. First, he looks and sounds Singaporean. Second, he has the same surname as me, which makes him even more suspiciously Singaporean. And third, he gives boring lectures, filled with "you know" ... e.g. "China was not happy, you know" ... that kind. I counted 233 you know's in a one hour lecture. And then finally, he keeps talking about exam questions. GOSH! It's as though I got teleported to Singapore!

But I was due to do the first presentation for International Politics of Asia, about Chinese nationalism, and he let out the usual refrain ... "search for a past year exam question and answer a question". I was irritated, but then, towards the end of that day, I refound my senses.

Answering questions isn't such a bad thing. Isn't that the whole idea? I have always learnt through essay questions ... was I dreaming that those weren't some kind of past year questions? Perhaps if he had said "essay questions" instead of "exam questions" it wouldn't have sounded so irritating. But it's true that questions focus and trigger thought. If I didn't think about answering questions as best as I could, I probably would not have honed many of the argumentative writing skills I now know that I didn't know as late as Sec 4. I remember Kenneth Lee and his emphasis on preparing for any inquiry with "essay outlines".

And then, Niall Ferguson, whose writing and teaching of which of course I'm a big fan, reinforced this thinking. Why didn't I recall that he starts every book of his asking 10-12 questions he would systematically answer in his book? That was fabulous. He says that he does it out of love for Oxford tutorials and the training that gave him. It is brilliant how out of 10 seemingly discrete questions arise books that make coherent sense.