A random day

"The Tale of Kieu" has been a very familiar literary work to not just the Vietnamese, but also to people around the world. But have we stopped to wonder what makes people so hyped about "The Tale of Kieu", or is it just overrated? Well, in school, we are taught a great deal about literary devices: metonymy, metaphor, foreshadowing, anastrophe, and here the list goes. But I would argue that "The Tale of Kieu" offers an avenue to the interpretation of the meaning of life. When I was discussing with my friends the motif of adventure tales and fairy tales, it struck me that "The Tale of Kieu" does not follow such a motif, which appears weird because most of the tales go with a happy-forever-after ending for people who lead a noble life. I will not summarise the plot of the story, as it can be found on the Internet, so please go read it if you want to be familiar with the topic.

What is a ripple?

NUS-AUN Asian Undergraduate Symposium (AUS in short) is one of the series of the summer programmes that students from ASEAN (with a few Asian), from now on ASEAN+, universities can choose from. This series of summer programmes consists of similar AUS-like programmes running in parallel in different countries in the ASEAN+ region. AUS2024 has extended in scale and scope, hosting 300 delegates from the ASEAN+ universities. With the theme of Interconnected Community, students are expected to collaborate with each other to work on a project that aim to tackle the social problems facing their home countries and beyond, spanning three areas Sustainability and Environment, Needs and Wants, and Diversity and Inclusion.