Up until earlier this year, Ashish Kumar ticked all the boxes one might associate with success in Singapore. He was among the top scorers for his year’s Primary School Leaving Examination cohort, clinched the Public Service Commission scholarship to pursue a law degree at the University of Cambridge and held posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Ministry of Communications and Information. But after completing his six-year scholarship bond, Ashish, 32, had little apprehension about going into “early retirement”.
Thanks to savings and some savvy investments, the Singaporean bachelor is more than content to limit his expenses to just $2,500 a month while working 10 hours a week as a debate coach for his alma mater Raffles Institution. “I think of it as getting out of the system and taking back control,” Ashish explains. He adds: “As far as I remember, I’ve never been interested in conventional metrics of success, like wealth or leadership.
Fundamentally, I have always been a creative person, and I think that’s what really motivates me.” At the age of 14, Ashish, whose father is Indian and mother Chinese, got into debating “by accident”. “I was very noisy in class.
And my teacher said you are very noisy, you should join the debate club. I was like, oh, there’s a debate club? You can do a CCA by just arguing with people? Now that sounds easy,” he recalls. “So I joined and found out it was actually very difficult.
You need to know a lot of.