Brian Lim, is a Space Entrepreneur, One of the leading individuals in Australia around the development of Space Startups in Australia.
‘….Encourage bold visions and idea, no matter what they are. One of the reasons why Singaporeans overseas do not want to come back, is because the smallness of the vision of the local population. The big bold visions draws out the best in us, they draw people to us. No one believed me when I first said we could build a space industry on our own, now 18 months later, the Australian government is supporting its creation along with Universities and Commercial entities in the creation of the Delta –V which is now leading the creation of the Space Industry in Australia.
Reduce the amount of red tape to experiment. At Singularity University, I am investigating, Bio electric batteries, next generation drone flight systems, Genetic Modifying organism, and new ways of traveling into space. We know that we can’t do all of them, but we can test all our ideas and experiments on them to validate them.This is incredibly useful for generating new ideas and validating old ones. I intend to already build a similar facility back in Sydney to support the space industry….’
Above is part of a letter from a Brian Lim to Jack Sim explaining why he would not return to Singapore. That is not all. If he had not migrated to Australia, he would probably be a hawker or someone peddling goods in the pasar malams. This Brian Lim did poorly in his PSLE, ended in the Normal Stream, repeated his O level, and failed in polytechnic. What kind of prospect or jobs would he be fit to do?
Today he earned a Masters in Space and working in NASA in Singularity University in Australia. Would he be invited to be a returned FT? Can we find the reason why there is no talent among Singaporeans and why other countries are producing so many talents? If a PSLE failure can be remoulded into a top talent, surely all the straight As and near straight As students must be better potentials. But no, they are not even good enough to compete against 3rd World funny degree graduates.
And this Brian Lim is not a single or exceptional story. There are many Singaporeans overseas that are rejects of our educational system but earning Masters and PhDs and working in high tech, science and engineering industries. Can we figure out what is wrong with this kind of developments?
And look at what this Brian Lim is doing, ‘investigating Bio electric batteries, next generation drone flight systems, Genetic Modifying organism, and new ways of traveling into space.’ Some of our super talents would laugh out their dentures if they found out Brian Lim failed his PSLE. Brian is employed by the Australian govt in space exploration and space mining. What are our local talents doing, building more costly shopping centres and monuments? Or maybe trying to study solar flares, earthquakes and tsunamis or desert storms.
There have been many stories of our failed students that turned out to be gems in foreign educational systems. How many of our Einsteins have been wasted in the process and going through the decades of our educational system?
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
* The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com