who…is…..Shien?

SIM YI SHIEN, who goes by YI SHIEN or SHIEN has lived in Singapore for most of her life. She went through a phase as a kid when she really wanted an English name or a name that was easier to pronounce, but now she really likes her given name and judges people who asks her if there if they can call her by anything else.

SHIEN has lived in SOUTHEAST ASIA for all her life, mostly in Singapore but also in Surabaya, Indonesia. Her last encounter with SOUTHEAST ASIA in an academic setting was in history class in junior college, but the contents of those classes have mostly been wiped clean post A Levels, save for the names of some famous people and very approximate knowledge of what they did.

SHIEN is an anthropology major, with a minor in environmental studies, and so she is usually interested in the interactions between human and the environment, and how culture has shaped people’s attitudes towards the environment. She thinks this course might help understand these interactions a little better. If anything, it will be a good break from thinking about environmental policy in her other classes. But really, SHIEN is taking the class because she has very little idea of what it means to live in SOUTHEAST ASIA from a critical perspective, and she wants to reflect on living in the region has shaped the kind of person she is (hopefully an ok person).