​AUDREY CHIN 

This year, on Palm Sunday, I went to Lee Kuan Yew's funeral

It may be unfashionable but I’m shouting it out anyway –  It’s good being a daughter of Singapore. It’s something to be immensely grateful for. I had flown from the Little Red Dot to the North Eastern USA for a wedding and then a book reading in Virginia. Unexpectedly, my country offered me a launch in their Washington DC embassy, the first of my book promotion events in the USA. I expected a subdued cosy evening,  I found out they’d pulled out the works! This was one moment

For me, Constance Singam the Singapore feminist and civil society activist, is the epitome of true grit Brought up in a patriarchal South Indian Catholic household, almost promised off to a Kerala Indian boy in the next village when she was twelve, married for love soon after her first job to an older man and then a housewife who didn’t even have a driving license for eighteen  years, Connie blossomed in widowhood.  Now, we know her as the mother of Civil Society. When Consta

Sarah Pannir’s spotlighting Marina Bay Sands today, the Mid-Autumn Festival I campaigned against this casino development. Since its completion, we’ve had more problems with addicted gamblers, under-age commercial sex and tourists who drop in specially to commit crimes in our suburban housing estates. But, Sarah is right. Like any seductress, Marina Bay Sands is beautiful and beguiling. People say Singapore is a workaday efficient city bereft of charm. On this weekend, when a

My friend Kathleen Caron, who blogs at {full of life} soul food, interviewed me this week. The secret of giving a good interview is the questions. Kathleen is great at reaching out and getting to the heart of the matter. What I discovered in the interview is how strongly I feel that despite our differences, we’re all human under the skin.  That common humanity is what allows us to bond, to be friends, and to carry on conversations across hemispheres …. Do go over to Kathleen’

We caught up at lunch last week to talk about her latest heart task. “I am a Singaporean Malay Muslim woman,” Saleemah told me. “The concerns of the community are my concerns because I’m a leaf from the same tree.” Saleemah believes that before anyone can do anything meaningful, they must show up in their own lives. Her involvement in Suara Musyawarah, which translates as the voice of lively discussion, is first of all about being alive and committing to her own heritage and

It’s about hearts The debate about the  Population White Paper has unsettled me It’s the week before the Lunar New Year. Normally, this is my time for trimming our Vietnamese mai trees, baking pineapple tarts and Indonesian layer cake, getting my popiah filling ready for the family re-union dinner on New Year’s eve and arranging the flowers and decorations. Actually I’m still going through the routine. But instead of focusing wholeheartedly on my tasks, my thoughts keep drift

It’s a good question. A friend sent around this thinking point as a response to the population white paper released today. It’s the title of a paper by Joseph Chamie in The Globalist, written on March 04, 2010 (appended below) Personally I think Mr. Chamie’s paper is a bit of a rant. But, his question raises 2 valid points: (1)    Adding more population to create growth so you can distribute to those born earlier is indeed like a pyramid scheme. (2)    At some point, the econ

There have been a slew of comments on why the Punggol by-elections turned out the way they did. I’m not going to add anything to the debate with more theory. Instead, I’ll offer a conversation with a Punggol voter, a flash-back to a one-to-one we had on cooling off day. Madam T. has lived in a 3 bedroom HDB flat in Sengkang, within Punggol East, for 13 years. Her family of three, her husband, herself and a working son, can be considered middle-class. All three work, her husba

IT MAKES YOUR BLOOD BOIL DOESN’T IT? The number of university spaces we’re giving to foreign students from South East Asia? The fact they’re getting loans with better terms than our local kids? It isn’t fair, I’ll grant. But, it’s not the students’ fault for wanting to better themselves. And if the schemes are there, we can’t blame them for wanting to apply. IMPORTANT THING IS FOREIGN STUDENTS DON’T JUST TAKE, THEY ALSO GIVE. Music isn’t what most Singaporeans associate with

Photo Credit: http://www.etsy.com WE DIDN’T INVITE THEM   I’ve heard them practicing in the park from my study.  I’ve passed them on my walks.  I’ve kept them at a safe arm’s length. What they do on their day off is their business. I let them be, them and their singing… But now they’re in my driveway. “There some carolers asking if they can come in,” my daughter whispers nervously in my ear. I peer out at the 8 people gathered in our driveway, smiling uncertainly from under f

Photo Credit: http://www.marcpotts.blogspot.com I’ve been accused of being Pollyanna! All because I said yesterday that Singaporeans shouldn’t objectively be as unhappy as we say we are. I’m not going to take back what I said, although I’ll concede that Singapore isn’t an easy place to live in. Going through the Gallup questions myself, I can see how many Singaporeans didn’t say YES! to many of them. Did you feel well-rested yesterday? No. I was multi-tasking, trying to get r

THE GALLUP POLLS – SHOULD WE IN SINGAPORE CARE? Photo Credit: http://www.stanford.edu According to Gallup Singapore ranks as the least emotional country in the world and also the least positive Is this heartbreaking? Should we be concerned? First, lets see what the poll questions are  – Gallop measures daily emotions of a sample of about 1,000 persons in each country. The questions that they ask residents are: Did you feel well-rested yesterday? Were you treated with respect

Monique Truong – An award winning American writer and you’re discovering something new about how an American woman of Vietnamese descent might be perceived in this Little Red Dot you’re visiting for the first time. In the first of this series on Vietnamese Artists in Singapore I interview Monique Truong, the award-winning author of The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth who was in Singapore for the 2012 Singapore Writers Festival. The Book of Salt has been nominated for the

We don’t eat turkey … PHoto Credit: http://www.chubbyhubby.net Not because we’re vegetarians unfortunately. Unfortunately just because I can’t cook it well and our oven’s too small for the gigantic bird we’d need for all our guests.  Anyway for us, it’s the gathering of people that matterFirst things first – the people who’ll be there By and large boat people… We’ve got a bunch of nationalities: German Vietnamese, English Vietnamese, French Vietnamese, Australian Vietnamese,

It’s a boat person’s festival that’s why… When we lived in the US, it was a public holiday, an opportunity for far flung too busy friends and relatives to get together. With memories of the war and of hunger still stalking them, my husband’s people commemorated this American migrant feast with the solemnity of ancestral anniversary days.  To have enough food to eat in a land of plenty, it was something to give thanks for. We don’t owe our livelihoods to that land of plenty no