I GREW up reading The Star. More accurately, I spent my childhood reading whole articles out loud to my grandfather.

I TAKE heart in the recent news that the Permatang Pauh MP has put her political will behind a pilot project trialling naltrexone to treat opioid addiction in her constituency.

It is a very human condition to seek those who are most similar to us.

THERE is a poem by Rupi Kaur that goes, “how is it so easy for you to be kind to people, he asked. Milk and honey dripped from my lips as I answered. ‘Cause people have not been kind to me.”

IT is an Oxford tradition for students to pin a carnation to our sub fusc (academic gown) when sitting for examinations.

I READ with a heavy heart some of the responses to the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire. Barely a month has passed since the Christchurch mosque shootings, where the res­ponse by Kiwis led by Jacinda Ardern was one of compassion, action, and grace; and here I am reading vile, insensitive responses made by the very community of faith shown that compassion.

IMAGINE constantly being shown moving images of your mother dying. All the while, a voice in your head berates you for having caused her death.

WOMEN who lead showed us exactly what they are made of this past week. Following the terror attack at two mosques in Christchurch, the world finally saw how committed politics looks like in the form of Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

IN my past life as a virologist, I gave public lectures to promote the uptake of the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil.

Building a gender-balanced world is not just a task for women. Men must fulfil their responsibilities too so that we all benefit.

ACCORDING to my Chinese birth year zodiac, this year is auspicious for me. However, the sceptical part of my brain argues this point with the realism that it would not be possible for a whole year to go by with only good luck.

From STEM to STREAM, it is the love for knowledge that we need to inculcate.