School on YKM's Corner on the Web

Reflections of a newly minted NUS CEG Master graduate

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After 2.5 years of sweat, tears and lack of sleep, I’m a Master Graduate loh! I just graduated with a Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering from NUS College of Design and Engineering (CDE) Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department.

Before I embarked on this master degree program, I actually did not know what the experience will be like as I did not know anyone taking up similar programs beforehand.

There is not much online information on the experience of graduate level programs from the CDE faculty and ECE department compared to the undergrad level. This is not surprising as relatively few Singaporeans take local graduate programs compared to undergrads in the first place. Of those that do, many anecdotally gravitate towards Masters in Business/Finance or CS/Tech related programs instead of core engineering.

Therefore now having completed this program, I decided to share my thoughts and structure this post in the way that would have helped someone like my younger self before I started.

These are the points covered in this blog post:

Why I chose to take a Masters in ECE?
Program structure of ECE-CEG Masters
Reviews of courses that left me the greatest impression.
Profile and working with other students
General Feedback to professors to accommodate part-time students
When or should a Singaporean take an NUS coursework engineering master degree?
Conclusion

Graduation, Uni story arcs and thanks

Sun, 26 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

(Long post warning: 2.5k words)

This post is 2 weeks late as I was rather busy during this period. Anyways, as this will be the last post I will have about Uni life, thought would like to thank a few key people and describe the 5 story arcs that has greatly defined my time in Uni.

The mandatory first picture is of course this one lah.

Just collect the dummy scroll simply with no fuss. Unlike the few from the Information Systems Department who pulled selfies on the stage.

The only easy Sem was last Sem

Sat, 02 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I was not the first person that came up with the title above, but I thought it resonated perfectly with my undergraduate life especially my last few semesters. The last sem is indeed my hardest Sem.

Having just finished my final exam of this semester and of my NUS undergraduate career, I thought I wanna do a “stock-take” on what I did this semester.

Tl;dr version:

In summary for this semester, I took a level 5000 module, did my FYP + presentation and was a CS2103 tutor to 16 students. I gave 3 talks: guest lecture for CS3217 on iOS (Swift) Development, workshop on Raspberry Pi/Linux and a talk/live demo on Bluetooth Low Energy. I volunteered regularly at Repair Kopitiam and Yishun Reading Stars. As if those weren’t enough, I still held a part-time job too.

NUS Hack&Roll 2015 AAR

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third Hack&Roll hackathon I have joined and my very last one for this hackathon and as an NUS student. Can check out my first two here and here. Didn’t win anything but not that we were expecting any, it is the stuff we learned that were most important.

So presenting to you the Raspilizer! Done by myself and my friends Kai Yao (KY) and Yong Quan (YQ), two of my technical go-to buddies.

An independent device that does dynamic audio compression in “almost” realtime. Just feed in audio via the 3.5mm input jack and connect your speakers/headphones to the output jack!

My NTU local exchange experience (Aug - Dec 2013)

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post is more than one semester late but better late than never. So minor disclaimer, my experience is at least half year out of date by the time you read this post.

Every semester, 20 lucky students from NUS will get to go for a local exchange (both full and partial inclusive) to SMU and NTU respectively. School of Computing is awarded a measly quota of only TWO but I guess that is proportionate to our student population.

I was one of the two in SoC to go for the NTU partial exchange from August to December 2013, AY 2013/2014 Sem 1. A partial exchange is a unique programme for only local exchange students obviously. Unlike a full exchange, I took modules concurrently at both NTU and NUS. I had to do this as I had an un-mappable core module CS3216 that had to be taken in that particular semester.

What I did in NUS Hack&Roll 2014

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

NUS Hackers tried to encourage participants to write a blog post or on social media about their experiences in the HacknRoll 2014, so here it is. Nah, I would have written this anyway without their encouragement. But after they read what I wrote, I wonder if they would still share it.

So this hackathon which was on 25-26 Jan was the second one I had attended. You can read up about my first one here. Although this time, instead of being “drafted” into a team by an acquaintance, I was the one who asked a few people if they willing to join my team.

The idea we agreed to work on was the iOS version of the SoC print app. I first started on the Android version of that app nearly one year ago. From that point up to now, several SoC friends have asked me for an iOS version. As I did not have a Mac, an iOS device or knowledge of Objective-C, there was no way for me to pick up iOS programming much less write an iOS app. Fast forward 10 months later, I’m in CS3217 with basic knowledge of Objective-C, have a Mac and a CS3217 rental iPad, I have the tools to do so now.

I have several peeves with the way this hackathon was organised compared to last year but I shall leave that to the later part of this article.

So here is my team in planning/discussion/problem solving when we were “shot”. From left, Kaiyao, myself and Yong Quan. Both of them were also the beta testers for my Android app.

Our project video. Narration was done by Yong Quan. (Try to view in HD if possible)

Finally the end of CS3216

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So yesterday was the Steps exhibition that marks the end of the module and the return to the reality of the final exams, other than the final report of course. It was really an interesting experience to pitch our class management app to both teachers and students alike.

Nearing the end of CS3216

Sun, 17 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of this semester, I wrote about how this semester shall be the most pivotal for me. Now coming to the end of this semester, I do agree with most of the points I foresaw earlier with exception to the NTU part. Anyway, this most are mostly for CS3216, the rest shall come after the exams.

Why this semester will be the most pivotal for me?

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It is an obvious fact that the workload each semester is always greater than the one preceding it. This adage has never been more right up to this semester. In fact, greater is just an understatement. In just 2 weeks into this semester, I cannot even count the number of days I have slept for a reasonable number of hours.

This semester will be my most pivotal semester so far and I although I can’t predict the workload for subsequent semesters, the jump has been greatest in this one. Notable reasons for this preliminary conclusion include the notoriously heavy CS3216, my partial exchange to NTU including a French module, continuing my part time work from my internship and my weekly community service.

My experience in NUS Hack&Roll 2013

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I confess I signed up for this weekend event at the last minute. One of the team members who was an acquaintance of mine said they needed one more member so I joined. I can say, I left this 24hour hackathon today with no regrets other than the proverbial, I could have done that better in hindsight attitude. This was my first hackathon and most definitely won’t be my last.

Sitting down with your team coding through the day and night then day again for only a single goal while surviving on a steady supply of snacks, soft drinks and fast food is an unforgettable experience.

My team, which I barely knew before the event but nonetheless worked reasonably well together in the end.