Reading Magazines

In junior college, we always hear how our general paper is very difficult to score. The need for examples for our essays is very high and one way to do it is to read newspaper daily. Then, people come to recommend Time and Economist magazines as a good way to broaden our perspective and to know more about the current affairs. Being the typical kiasu (scared to lose) Singapore, I subscribed to 3 years of Economist and 2 years of Time magazine. I thought just 2 magazines per week, how hard can it be to read? I have never been so wrong.

Time magazine is shorter and easier to read than the Economist. It is less content heavy which allows me to finish reading it quickly. However, I just could not finish the Economist magazine fast enough and slowly, the new issues stack up. Even after trying my best, I managed to keep up to 8 new issues unread. Actually, I was quite thankful that i applied for the Economist magazine. It made me realize how small Singapore is and that there are many things that are going on around the world that I might not know. There is hardly any article on Singapore but it made me very interest to know about current affairs to the extent that it is not for my GP anymore, it is about gaining more knowledge.

I was given the chance to subscribe to the economist during my NS. This time the average cost of the magazine is not the manageable $2-$3. It is $5+. After much consideration, I chose to extent my subscription, but I am starting to regret now. $5 is a lot to me and for a magazine that I only read once, I really do think that it is not worth it. I will not have the time to read the magazines in the future too. I guess it will become a burden and the $5 will really be wasted. I will just have to get my news from other sites which are free. However, I do recommend people to read Economist if they have the chance to try, it will not be easy as it is really very content heavy.

Telling people that I reading magazines makes them assume that I read tabloid magazines or health magazines. However, when I tell them that I read the Economist, they will give me the disgusted look, name calling like nerd and etc. It does not affect me, I am okay with it. As long as I have the time to read the Economist, I think it is good enough.