CE's 2025: Trails and Trials
Abstract (TLDR for the speedrunners)
Trails walked, trials weathered. If 2024 was about the back-to-school transition, 2025 was about endurance and adaptation. From completing all five CDC Walking Trails across Singapore's districts to surviving a ceiling collapse and continuing OMSCS studies while navigating NS Reservist obligations in the jungle, this year proved that determination finds a way (even with mosquitoes and spotty connection).
Cultural immersion deepened through experiences like the visually stunning Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (watched in French dub, naturally) and emotionally devastating anime including Takopi's Original Sin, while maintaining my 1,000+ day Duolingo streak. Yet 2025 also carried profound lows: the passing of my grandmother and my mother's hospitalisation reminded me that Brian Dyson's glass balls demand our most careful attention.
As the page turns on SG60, the journey continues with gratitude and determination. Channeling the spirit of Expedition 33, I’m readying my usefulness for tomorrow, eager to explore the new levels and challenges that 2026 has in store.
Academic Trails: When the Jungle Becomes Your Classroom
"My definition of an educated man is a man who never stops learning and wants to learn." (Lee Kuan Yew)
Imagine you're deep in National Service (NS) Reservist training, surrounded by jungle vegetation, limited connectivity, and the constant chorus of cicadas. Now add a looming OMSCS assignment deadline. Welcome to my Fall 2025 experience.
Six months prior, the SAF100 notification arrived: my NS Reservist obligations would fall in November 2025. Rather than let this disrupt my academic momentum, I made a strategic decision to take only one course, Artificial Intelligence (AI), in Fall 2025. This foresight proved invaluable when the time came to balance military duties with academic commitments, especially as AI demanded significant breadth and depth, covering 15 chapters of the quintessential AI textbook.
Continuing the OMSCS journey in 2025 meant adapting to circumstances I bear-ly anticipated. When those two weeks+ of Reservist training arrived, including the jungle outfield exercise, my commitment to academic excellence remained unwavering. Armed with offline course materials, portable chargers, and sheer determination, I transformed downtime into study sessions. The course's flexibility allowed me to leverage the "drop 1 assignment" policy even while serving the nation, enabling me to take a breather before the final examinations.
Reversing back the clock and building on Fall 2024's ML4T and RAIT successes, Spring brought Knowledge-Based AI (KBAI) and AI, Ethics and Society (AIES). KBAI challenged me to think about cognitive architectures and human-like reasoning. AIES provided crucial perspectives on responsible AI development, forcing me to grapple with questions that will define our field for decades. There's something ironic about discussing AI's societal implications while experiencing firsthand how technology mediates our ability to learn in unconventional circumstances.
Software Development Process (SDP) and Introduction to Cognitive Science (ICS) then defined my summer semester. SDP brought structure to what I'd often been doing intuitively: formalising software engineering principles, team collaboration roles, and lifecycle management. ICS, meanwhile, opened fascinating windows into how minds work, bridging computer science with psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and more. Understanding cognitive architectures from both computational (KBAI) and biological (ICS) perspectives created unexpected synergies in my thinking.
Beyond coursework, 2025 was the year I discovered how exceptional educators make complex concepts click. 3Blue1Brown's visual approach to mathematical concepts, from linear algebra to neural networks, transformed abstract theory into intuitive understanding. Veritasium's explorations of scientific phenomena reminded me why I fell in love with learning in the first place. These creators proved that education isn't just about information transfer; it's about illuminating connections that make knowledge applicable and alive.
Physical Trails: Five Districts, Five Victories
"All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Completion of the 5 Community Development Council (CDC) trails
The CDC Walking Trails initiative launched in August 2025, offering Singapore residents a blend of exercise, heritage exploration, and digital gamification. Spanning five districts with routes between 4.4km and 5.5km, each trail promised both physical challenge and cultural enrichment. The prugal side of me also appreciated the CDC voucher incentives: up to $50 for completing all trails.
Trail by trail (in the order I took them):
- North East (4.9km): Started with the exploration of Punggol's waterfront transformation and crossing the iconic Promenade Bridge with Coney Island views.
- North West (5.5km): The longest route embraced nature's envelope, threading through Bukit Batok and Bukit Timah's greenery along the Rail Corridor. This is arguably my top love-hate pick for the literal breath of fresh air yet one that seemed endless, especially since I did it after taking my IPPT at the new CMPB FCC.
- South West (4.4km): A literal uphill experience with how steeply sloped this route was compared to the rest. Did I mention that I stacked it immediately after the North West trail because apparently suffering can be a scheduling strategy?
- Central Singapore (4.7km): This was the palate cleanser in the bustling heart of Singapore. A heritage walk through the civic district, transitioning from Kreta Ayer Square's Chinatown vibrancy to the historical serenity of Fort Canning's parkland.
- South East (4.4km): Completed the quintet with coastal beauty unfolded from Fort Tanjong Kantong to the Siglap Canal Lookout Deck, passing one of Singapore's tallest slide. It's my personal favourite route among the five.
Each trail offered Instagram-worthy moments and quiet reflections alike, proof that Singapore's compact geography harbors remarkable diversity. You notice the makcik who tends her potted plant, the uncle practicing tai chi in the park, the way light filters differently through leaves depending on where (and when) you are. These observations don't solve problems, but they remind you that life continues in its beautiful mundanity even when yours feels complicated. And as Gustave from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 puts it, “I’m enjoying the uselessness of today and readying my usefulness for tomorrow.”
The achievement felt symbolic: just as each trail required steady progress despite fatigue, life's larger journeys demand persistence through varying terrain. Little did I know how much I would need that grounding later in the year, when my environment shifted from park connectors to surviving a literal ceiling collapse.
Cultural Trails: Stories That Resonated
"Stories are a communal currency of humanity." (Tahir Shah)
My Duolingo streak
This year, entertainment wasn't escapism: it was emotional sustenance. My Duolingo streak crossed the 1,000-day milestone in 2025, but the real payoff came through experiencing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in its native French. This stunning GOTY from French studio Sandfall Interactive blended Belle Époque aesthetics with turn-based RPG mechanics, telling a haunting tale of expeditioners battling "the Paintress" to prevent yearly age-based erasure (or so it seems). Watching the game's cinematic sequences in French transformed it from entertainment into linguistic practice, and spotting dialogue patterns I'd learned months earlier felt like unlocking real-life achievement badges.
Anime and Donghua (动画) that also made a lasting impact:
- Takopi's Original Sin: This emotionally devastating series tackled bullying, trauma, and redemption with unflinching honesty. Fair warning: don't watch the series on public transport unless you're prepared for ugly-crying.
- To Be Hero X (凸变英雄X): A clever deconstruction of heroism where powers derive from public faith, exploring identity and societal expectations with absurdist humor mixed with genuine emotional beats.
- My Hero Academia: Final Season: Watching Deku's journey conclude felt bittersweet as years of investment reached their narrative destination. What does it mean to be a hero when the world's problems can't be solved with strength alone?
- Lord of Mysteries (诡秘之主): The intricate world-building and Lovecraftian elements provided countless hours of engagement as Klein Moretti's journey resonated with my own attempts to understand complex systems and life itself.
These stories shared common threads: characters navigating impossible circumstances, questioning identity, and finding meaning through connection. Perhaps that resonance stemmed from 2025's own blend of challenges and growth. They created safe containers for processing emotions I couldn't always articulate, reminding me that struggle, persistence, and messy humanity are universal.
The Trials: Glass Balls and Fragile Moments
"The other four balls—family, health, friends and spirit—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered." (Brian G. Dyson)
In 2024, I wrote about Dyson's "Five Balls of Life" metaphor. This year, I learned that sometimes the glass ball breaks even when you're holding it tight.
My grandmother's passing brought profound grief, the kind that reshapes perspective and reminds us that time with loved ones is the most finite resource. What surprised me most was how grief isn't linear or logical. It arrives in specific, sensory details: the sudden craving for her signature curry (a recipe now lost to time as she always cooked by feel rather than formula), or hearing a Hokkien phrase she used to say. The glass ball didn't just crack, it shattered into countless tiny shards that I'm still carefully collecting, knowing they'll never quite fit back together the same way.
Closer to home, my mother's sudden hospitalisation mid-year triggered every family member's worst fears. Those anxious hours in hospital waiting rooms, navigating medical consultations, and supporting each other through uncertainty tested our collective resilience. We quickly learned that recovery isn't a straight line. It's small victories measured in stable vitals, in being discharged home, in slowly regaining strength. My mother's subsequent recovery has been a blessing, though it reinforced important lessons about health's fragility and the importance of regular check-ups.
These trials cast 2025's achievements in a different light. Academic progress and trail completions mattered, certainly, but they paled against family's irreplaceable value. The glass ball didn't shatter this time, but it's marked now, scratched, a visible reminder of fragility and the constant vigilance required to protect what matters most.
The Prugal Life: Budgeting in an Expensive City
Following last year's tradition, 2025's financial landscape required continued vigilance as inflation continues its march. Despite a healthy buffer of savings, watching prices creep upward meant stretching every dollar remained essential. While the prugal mindset isn't about deprivation, it's about intentional spending and finding joy in clever lobangs.
2025's Best Finds:
- CDC vouchers earned via walking trails: explore and exercise with financial incentives.
- The
$3$0.60 SG60 breakfast: What can you get for under a dollar in 2025? Free-flow pumpkin porridge, century egg & chicken porridge, soy milk, tea and sides in an air-conditioned environment. It was one of the ultimate SG60 promo at First Bowl, though before anyone rushes down, be prepared to pay $3 as this specific deal has concluded.
- $7 lunch buffet: yes, unlimited cai png (mixed vegetable rice) including seafood exists. For large eaters, this was less of a meal and more of a tactical victory against shrinkflation.
- Legacy wins: Maintaining the ultra-budget mobile and broadband plans discovered in 2024.
Pro-tip: The Senior Mobile Plan Hack
Did you know you can stack multiple senior plans? There are now $5 SIM-only options across nearly every telco provider. Since most seniors don't need 8 concurrent lines (at least, I hope so), it’s time to (lovingly) pester your parents or grandparents to utilise their eligibility. I’ve compiled the current list for anyone managing family tech stacks:
- Singtel hi! postpaid - Most reliable coverage
- eight (by StarHub) - Great value, especially if you manage to snipe the 1-for-1 top up credits during promotions
- Circles.Life (M1 infra) - Flexible data options
- Simba - Still the roaming king with up to 4 lines per senior
Looking Ahead: Beyond SG60
"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." (Søren Kierkegaard)
Personal milestones on the horizon: The OMSCS journey continues into 2026 with a deeper dive into natural language processing and so much more. The Duolingo streak marches toward 1,500 days. New trails (literal and metaphorical) await exploration.
Reflecting backwards, moving forwards: As a New Year resolution, I'm planning to review my OMSCS courses in reverse chronological order, starting with Fall 2025's AI and working backwards through the semesters. The goal isn't just retrospection for its own sake, but to identify patterns, connections, and insights that only become visible with hindsight. How did KBAI inform my understanding of ICS? What threads connect AI back to ML4T? Sometimes the best way to understand a journey is to trace your steps backwards, seeing how each destination prepared you for the next. Expect these reflections to appear on my kuma blog as 2026 unfolds.
The non-negotiables: Crucially, prioritising family and health above all else remains paramount, having learned through 2025's trials that these truly are life's glass balls. No academic achievement, no matter how significant, justifies dropping these.
Stay tuned for more updates,
Chong Er 🐣
ฅʕᵔᴥᵔʔฅ
Appendix: Gallery of Photos taken during the CDC Walking Trails
SG
