Category: Greeting Words

10th November, 2018.

As I typed down the blog name “SovereignTEA”, I knew I was starting something that is completely new to me.

What firstly made me specifically interested in international relations was this piece of news about a soybean cargo ship:

A cargo ship carrying $20 million of soybeans has been drifting off the coast of China for a month, and it shows the real-world effects of the trade war.

– quote Business Insider Singapore. To see this clearer, the ship rushed to shore in the hope of clearing customs before Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs, but ultimately failed. After it failed, it kind of just started to drift around aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean for a month. What made it interesting was how the Chinese media dramatized the story of the poor ship crews – exaggerated as “a race of life and death”, it certainly caught my attention.

What appeared to be particularly intriguing was the concept of “trade war” – the idea of turning international trade into a weapon reveals the tip of an iceberg, and introduces me into the world of international politics.

At school, I take Mathematics, Physics, Economics, and Knowledge & Inquiry (or, philosophy) – as you can tell, not much of an exposure to IR from within the school curriculum. Thus, I have been trying to expose myself to IR for as much as possible. One of my extra-curricular activities is Chinese Debate: it gives me chances to research on and voice out my opinion on some international events like Brexit, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, the ongoing US-China Trade War, and so on. I’ve also been to several local Model United Nations conferences like THIMUN, OPMUN, NTUMUN. Apart from these, I occasionally attend public lectures and panel discussions hosted by local schools like Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. You do get to hear brilliant thoughts about things happening around the world, and sometimes, a good dose of humor from those professors.

So, debating, MUNing, attending public lectures and add a few reads like World Order, that pretty much summarizes how I’ve been learning about IR so far. The idea of starting a blog popped up after our last major exam this year. Halfway reading through The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Huntington, I thought: hey, how about writing some stuff on my own? While my knowledge base is still insufficient for answering the big questions in the study of international politics, I can definitely start by doing some research on the topics that I find interesting, and try to explain them to my readers!

International relations is a field with so much fun to explore – and I will try to show that to you in this blog. An inexperienced writer and learner of IR, I will try my best to ensure that my works are readable at worst and insightful at best.

I have a long way to go, with countless improvements to be made. True that “practice makes perfect” – I’m really glad that you are here to read my stuff and witness my growth.

The journey begins!

路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索。

——屈原

Long, long had been my road and far, far was the journey; I would go up and down to seek my heart’s desire.

Qu Yuan (translated by David Hawkes)