Early Life
Lum was adopted at birth, and never knew her parents; she was brought up by a woman she called her grandmother. When Lum was only three, her grandmother gambled away her savings; they lost the house in which they were living, and moved to a leaky shack without running water. She came to Singapore at the age of 15 and enrolled at the Tiong Bahru Secondary School, where she supported herself through tutoring and sales jobs. She went on to study at Serangoon Junior College and graduated in 1986 with an Honours degree in chemistry from the Faculty of Science of the National University of Singapore.
Read more about this topic: Olivia Lum
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)