Dear FCL Global Community,
Happy Chinese New Year 2025, and warm wishes to all in our FCL Global community! Over at the Singapore-ETH Centre, we had a Chinese New Year celebration, complete with a calligraphy workshop (led by volunteers from SEC programmes, including FCL Global); delicious food and drinks set to festive music; and the Yusheng toss.
Yusheng toss, also known as lo hei, is a tradition specifically in the Chinese communities of Singapore and Malaysia that involves tossing the ingredients of a raw fish salad or yusheng (魚生) into the air with chopsticks. When I first came to Singapore, I found this fascinating as I had not seen this before in the New Year celebrations of the Chinese community back home in the Philippines. I learned that the height of the toss is meant to be symbolic of the height towards which a family hopes their fortunes will rise in the coming year.
We are ramping up the final year of the FCL Global programme, and research projects are on track to ending on a high note. While we work towards reaching our final milestones, it's important to also take a step back and reflect on the significance of our work. Urban systems are more than focal points of academic interest; they emerge out of the efforts of actors in our cities to meet their own, and each others', needs and aspirations, given natural, social, and technological constraints. The work we do is on issues that matter to billions of people around the world, including climate change, traffic, food security, and accessibility, among many others. We hope to provide platforms for your work to be communicated to broader audiences, including policymakers and the general public.
In the coming weeks, the FCL Global Communications team will be producing a Video Series showcasing the people behind FCL Global. This project, led by myself in Singapore and Adrien Bressan in Zürich, will consist of short interviews without need for much preparation, focusing on the researchers' current work; what motivated them to pursue this topic; and what it means for our cities. Researchers can also share existing visuals, such as photographs, data visualisations, or drawings, for inclusion in the video. We want this to be a space for you to share your story and perspective, and to tell the world what you have been up to during your time at FCL!
You may recall that we had sent out emails announcing this last year, and we are starting to reach out to researchers who had indicated their interest, but if you would like to join this series, we encourage you to reach out to us. Have a great weekend!
Warmest regards,
Joshua Vargas
Programme Manager (Research), Singapore hub
