For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood… As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb. Aldous Huxley
Author Archives: Khai Yin
Truth
I remembered circa 1999 our RF engineering lecturer Dr Steve Collins lamented at us, “You all are going to be bankers, aren’t you?” And yes, many of my peers did end up working for Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. I didn’t become a banker nor a consultant, and yet I didn’t practice as an engineer also, …
Punting on Cherwell
Suyash and I enjoying Pimms with Izrin on the punt. Circa 1997.
The Oxford Angst
Colin Wood had said to me more than two decades ago – You won’t learn much about engineering here, Khai. Not as much as you would if you had gone to, say, Imperial College. But you will know that you don’t know. And you can (then) find out (about what you don’t know). Or, more …
Five Mathematicians
Because as Tim was wont to say to me, “What’s an engineer but a failed mathematician?”
Gentle Regrets
Like Scruton at Cambridge, at Oxford, I was socially estranged, but spiritually at home.
Je ne veux pas travailler
Sometimes you don’t feel you truly own something unless it presses against the flesh.
Babymetal
One item on the bucket list ticked–hearing Road of Resistance live. And I was in its infamous Wall of Death to boot and had lived to tell the tale. Despite how innocuous this band looks, Babymetal play some of the absolute heaviest, brutalest metal ever concocted by any mortal. The breakdown in Iine! has got …
Mechanicks at the Universitie
By the late Alastair Howatson. Shipped from a used bookstore in England, now in our family library for posterity.
Suyash
On my deathbed, I’d regret letting true friendships to atrophy over time. I’d only known Suyash for one year (he came to Oxford from Bucknell as a visiting student), but we were close as any brothers you ever knew.