https://www.straitstimes.com/life/lifelong-learning-father-and-son-give-up-weekends-to-do-ai-diploma-together
Lifelong learning: Father and son give up weekends to do AI diploma together
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Mr Tay Tse Wan (right) and his son Quan Kai are both pursuing a specialist diploma in AI solutions development at Temasek Polytechnic.
ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
SINGAPORE – Mr Tay Tse Wan, 60, has completed his fourth diploma, while his son, Mr Tay Quan Kai, 23, is onto his second.
In May, they will graduate from their specialist diploma course in artificial intelligence solutions development, which they took together at Temasek Polytechnic. For much of the past year, father and son sat side by side at their laptops at home twice a week for their online lessons, often giving up their weekends to do schoolwork.
It was the older Mr Tay’s idea to ask Quan Kai, a national serviceman and the younger of his two sons, to take the part-time AI course with him.
Mr Tay, a regional sales manager, says: “You hear a lot about AI. If you don’t know how to use AI, you’re not up to date. To boost my confidence, I got Quan Kai to come with me as I had stopped studying for so long and I had no coding knowledge.”
The last examination he took was in 2019, at the age of 54. It was his third O-level English examination, after his Chinese-medium education in secondary school at Chung Cheng High School (Branch) decades ago. He failed that 2019 test, though he had achieved his best result 30 years ago with a borderline pass.
He got Bs and Cs for his tests and projects for his recent AI course, which the Government’s SkillsFuture scheme funded. It was “a good result” for someone with “zero knowledge” of coding, he reckons.
Early lifelong learner
Mr Tay, who holds multiple diplomas and degrees, was a lifelong learner long before the term gained currency.
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After NS following his first diploma in electronics at Singapore Polytechnic, he dived into continuous learning. The youngest of four sons, he had seen how his tradesman father and housewife mother scrimped and saved.
He says: “My father had to work very hard to meet the needs of the family, especially our studies. He did not complete his primary school education. This was common in the 1950s and earlier.
“Therefore, I told myself that I needed to work hard, especially when I started my first job as a technician in computer repairs. I realised that it was insufficient just to have a poly diploma.
“The only path I knew then was to gain as many certificates as possible. As I carried on with my part-time studies as a young man, I realised it was not the certificates that mattered. It was the knowledge I gained that I could apply to my work.”
He has had a 30-year career at Varta Microbattery, the Singapore outpost of the German multinational corporation Varta AG, which manufactures a diverse range of batteries. Starting as an assistant product manager, he moved to the logistics department before taking on his current role.
He is married to a 58-year-old accountant and their other son is a 25-year-old university student.
In his 20s and 30s, he collected a string of academic qualifications, using his savings to enrol in night classes.
During those years, he earned a diploma in management studies from the Singapore Institute of Management and a professional diploma in Asia-Pacific marketing, which was offered by the Marketing Institute of Singapore and what is now known as the National University of Singapore School of Continuing and Lifelong Education.
He earned his degrees through distance learning. He acquired a Master of Business Administration in 1995 with the University of Dubuque in Iowa in the United States. He took a bank loan of $5,000 for this MBA, a princely sum in the 1990s.
A few years later, when his boss asked him to head the logistics department in his early 30s, he took a bachelor’s degree in supply chain management from Australia’s Curtin University.
He pursued academics because he wanted to equip himself for each stage of his career. “For instance, when I was moved to supply chain management, I had no knowledge of it. I was the second youngest in the department and had a staff of 29. How could I talk to the lao jiao (old hands in Hokkien)?”
“When you become a manager, you have to adopt new skills and methods whenever the environment changes,” he says, crediting his upgrading drive for his longevity at his company.
Learning from each other
But Mr Tay found his fourth and latest diploma course most hard-going.
His son and fellow coursemate is a Temasek Polytechnic alumnus who graduated in 2021 with a diploma in electronics. Quan Kai says his father was initially lost at sea with software like Anaconda, a platform for AI and data science which uses the Python programming language.
Quan Kai (right) says his father was initially lost at sea with software like Anaconda, a platform for AI and data science which uses the Python programming language.
ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
As the course progressed, however, Quan Kai appreciated his dad’s real-world knowledge, such as when they worked on a project involving local housing prices. “We needed to help each other while doing the course,” he added.
In studying together, the elder Mr Tay sought to transmit family values to his son. “I wanted him to understand that, although it was a sacrifice of his leisure time, compared with his peers, he now has two diplomas.”
Quan Kai adds: “He tries to drill values like resilience, persistence and integrity into my brother and me.”
The younger Mr Tay, who floundered at PSLE, used to feel like an outsider in what was then the Normal (Technical) stream at his secondary school. But when he moved on to ITE College East, a campus of the Institute of Technical Education, he blossomed, winning academic awards and shining in his track and field co-curricular activity.
His dad says: “He used to ask me, ‘Daddy, I go to ITE, do you feel it’s shameful?’ I said, ‘I’m not ashamed that my son went to ITE.’
“Of course, I was a little disappointed when he failed his PSLE. But if you, as a parent, don’t believe he can turn around, nobody will believe he can turn around. I believed he could and I could see the change in him.”
Quan Kai now has an offer to pursue a bachelor’s degree in robotics systems, for which his AI-related diploma will come in handy. He starts at the Singapore Institute of Technology at the end of August.
He says: “Insecurity is a thing of the past. I don’t feel that any more. I have my own path now.”
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