Talent
When he was nearly three years old, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son would watch his mother and father playing chess in the family’s ramshackle home in the Mekong Delta, and, like any toddler, pester them to let him play, too. Eventually they relented, assuming the pieces would soon wind up strewn around the kitchen. To his parents’ astonishment, Son did not treat the chess set as a plaything. He not only knew how to set up the board, which was crudely fashioned with a piece of plywood and a felt-tipped pen. He had, by careful observation, learned many of the complex rules of the game. Within a month, he was defeating his parents with ease. Son was competing in national tournaments against kids many years older. Now 12, he is Vietnam’s youngest champion and a grand master in the making.s
Abigail Sin who, age 10, is Singapore's most celebrated young pianist. Sin started reading at age 2, and for the past three years has been ranked among the top 1% in the city-state in an international math competition. She's smart, but it was only through her music that she qualified as a bona fide prodigy. The youngest Singaporean ever to obtain the coveted Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music diploma in piano performance, Sin demonstrates one of the hallmark qualities of the breed: a single-minded drive to excel. Her rage to learn was manifest in her almost unstoppable urge to master the keyboard since she took her first lesson at age 5. "A lot of kids don't like to sit at the piano for hours," says her tutor Benjamin Loh. "Abigail is different. She loves to play, ands she learns extraordinarily fast.”
Chandra Sekar began operating the family PC on the sly at age 6, to his father's consternation. "Initially I was worried about Sekar getting electric shocks," he recalls. Very rapidly, however, the boy was displaying an uncommon flair for programming. "He used to surprise me by exploring the software and coming up with any number of shortcuts." His father hired a computer tutor
Abigail Sin who, age 10, is Singapore's most celebrated young pianist. Sin started reading at age 2, and for the past three years has been ranked among the top 1% in the city-state in an international math competition. She's smart, but it was only through her music that she qualified as a bona fide prodigy. The youngest Singaporean ever to obtain the coveted Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music diploma in piano performance, Sin demonstrates one of the hallmark qualities of the breed: a single-minded drive to excel. Her rage to learn was manifest in her almost unstoppable urge to master the keyboard since she took her first lesson at age 5. "A lot of kids don't like to sit at the piano for hours," says her tutor Benjamin Loh. "Abigail is different. She loves to play, ands she learns extraordinarily fast.”
Chandra Sekar began operating the family PC on the sly at age 6, to his father's consternation. "Initially I was worried about Sekar getting electric shocks," he recalls. Very rapidly, however, the boy was displaying an uncommon flair for programming. "He used to surprise me by exploring the software and coming up with any number of shortcuts." His father hired a computer tutor