I thank The Straits Times for a wonderful National Day supplement. The photographs were gorgeous and the captions, intimate. They made me smile. Works better at tugging at the national consciousness than reams of text!
I have one suggestion – in case there’s some idea of putting the stuff into a book. I noticed that there was a fun snippet on how to order coffee in Singapore – kopi-o and its variations. So very Singaporean. Perhaps more such snippets could accompany the pictures to capture the uniqueness of this place. Like, how a “block” in Singapore refers to a block of flats – not the blocks in places like the US. Or a snippet to accompany the coastline pictures on how much land has been reclaimed. Or how pigeons is/is not the dominant bird population here followed by what? We use pavement, not sidewalk. Sometimes theatre and cinema are used inter-change-ably (as in Capitol Theatre).
I mean, National Day isn’t just for those born and bred here, but those who chose to live here as well. Might as well do something to get them settled into the Singapore scene quicker.
An ex-journalist who can't get enough of the news after being in the business for 26 years
