Author: Natalie Tan (23A01B)

Raffles Reads: The Silence That Binds Us

Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Natalie Tan (23A01B) 

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 3/5

Maybelline Chen, a high school student, is the resident disappointment of her Taiwanese American family. An introvert who prefers writing poetry to mathematics, she pales in comparison to her older brother Danny: well-liked, handsome, and most importantly, Princeton-bound. Yet shortly after he receives his admission offer, Danny commits suicide, leaving May and her parents reeling at the unexpected news.

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Raffles Reads: The Macanese Pro-Wrestler’s Cookbook

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Natalie Tan (23A01B) 

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 4/5

After his parents’ death, former pro-wrestler Zeke Oliveira returns to Macau from America and spends his days running their restaurant by the beach, purposeless but for cooking good food. 

When someone rigs Zeke’s best friend’s car to explode, killing him right outside his restaurant, Zeke throws himself headlong into hunting down his murderers through the alleyways and hotel rooms of the city, eventually stumbling upon an organ harvesting conspiracy that threatens both his life and his understanding of his own cultural identity.  

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Interesting Hobbies: A Collection of Collectors

Reading Time: 8 minutes

By Hsiao Jia Ying (23A01C), Natalie Tan (23A01B), and Tay Yu Ning (23S06E)

When asked about how they spend their free time, the average RI student would probably respond with: “I play video games!”, “I listen to music!”, or even the very sad, “I’m behind on lectures so I have no free time”. But for Randall Neo (23A01E), his hobby is collecting vinyls. Every once in a while, he goes down to the vinyl store to flip through their vinyls, before picking out just one or two that he likes. 

Randall is but one of several students in RI who have the uncommon hobby of collecting unconventional items. 

From empty bubble tea cups to bus memorabilia and twentieth-century-pressed vinyls, these students’ hobbies have allowed them to discover a new side to themselves as well as connect with others having similar interests. 

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A Very Potter Musical: Friendship Is Magic

Reading Time: 8 minutes

By Lara Tan (22A01B), Mei Feifei (22A13A), Mirella Ang (22A01C), and Natalie Tan (23A01B)

Photos from Raffles Photographic Society and Koo Yu Tang (22S06B)

A Very Potter Musical isn’t your typical Broadway musical. 

For one, it has never actually been performed in the glamorous limelights of Broadway, or the West End for that matter. It isn’t a huge commercial blockbuster like Hamilton, neither is it particularly well-known to most musical theatre-goers. 

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