Singapore Theatre Festival 2018 - W!LD RICE

After a whirlwind of shoots, we are delighted to share these images promoting the Singapore Theatre Festival 2018, presented by W!LD RICE. The Singapore Theatre Festival is an event dedicated to celebrating contemporary Singaporean theatre through the development and presentation of new and original local writing. 

Working closely with art director Ching Kai, it was a memorable experience imagining these plays come alive through photographs. 

Please lend your support and watch these riveting plays before tickets are sold out. 

SG100 - Centenarians - Chum Ai Haw

Be kind, be caring. Don’t hold grudges.

Mdm Chum Ai Haw was born in 1915 in the Hainan province of China. At 20, an arranged marriage compelled her to travel to Singapore where she would join her husband who was 16 years her senior. He was a shy man who started his early career as a hawker at Bain Street and later retired as a bar waiter with Cathay Organization.

Despite owning a food stall, food was scarce in the Chum household. Mdm Chum and her husband would have porridge every day, with coconut and salt for added seasoning and texture. Although she claims to have never worked a single day in her life, her children remember her sacrifices, raising five sons, three daughters and fourteen grandchildren. Mdm Chum treats her Indonesian helper like her own daughter or best friend, teaching her the Hainan dialect and offering life advice: to be kind, caring and not hold grudges.

Despite not having any history of chronic illness, Mdm Chum started developing pains in her leg and needed a walker to move around. She kept to her daily routines—making her way downstairs to savour her favourite bee hoon and fried chicken wings, with her helper. At 102, she is no longer as mobile and spends most of her time in bed. She maintains a positive disposition, playing mahjong with her helper (who lets her win) from time to time, and reminiscing over pictures of her past travels to China.

SG100 - Centenarians - Seah Sor Yuan

I used to be fat, now I’m all bones!

Mdm Seah Sor Yuan was born in 1916, in Jinmen, China. She left for Singapore to join her husband and his family. As newly-weds, they spent time managing the family’s provision shop along Beach Road. By the time she turned 25, Mdm Seah had given birth to two young children, a daughter and a newborn son.

On February 15, 1941, Mdm Seah became a widow when her husband was captured and killed by the Japanese, never to come home. He was 29 and her youngest son was barely two. She spent the next few months hoping for his miraculous return, before accepting the fate of his execution. She busied herself at work, shuttling to and from different shops to take care of their businesses between Beach Rd and Tanjong Rhu. “Running here and there”, according to her son, must be the secret to her longevity, other than her fiercely independent, yet generous spirit.

At 101, Mdm Seah is the epitome of immaculate. Her bedsheet is crisp, with the edges ironed at and held down with metal clips. Her wardrobe contains clothes that she sewed herself— all hung neatly, arranged according to occasion and colour.

It is her attention to the little things that endears her to her loved ones. From a family of two children, Mdm Seah has been blessed with five granddaughters, two grandsons and eight great- grandchildren. She remembers all of their names, and even their birthdates.

Mdm Seah is also not one to forget what it means to have loved and lost. She continues to commemorate her husband as an annual ritual, buying flowers and offering prayers at the Cenotaph. It was easier to get owers in the earlier days. “Now it’s harder,” her daughter-in-law sighs matter-of-factly. “People don’t focus on the dead for Valentine’s, but the living.”

Text by Adlina Maolod

Click here for more photographs of Singapore centenarians. 

Florian Kohlbacher - Swissquote Magazine

Commissioned to photograph Professor Florian Kohlbacher for Swissquote Magazine around two years ago.

Stumbled across the magazine spread with the portrait used recently. Quite a fascinating experience to witness how a photograph is used in a magazine for print. 

Esquire Singapore - Call of Duty, Lock Hong Meng

Yesterday is meaningless

In an old photograph of his young 21-year-old self handling a bulky General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), Lock Hong Meng was quick to say that keeping these photographs is an accident rather than choice.

The four albums he kept were neatly arranged and captioned by his men during his time as an officer.  

“Yesterday is meaningless, tomorrow is meaningful,” the 64-year-old said. “Today is the only constant that matters.”

Towering at almost two metres and bestowed with a deep, assuring voice, one’s attention is easily magnetised by his wit and frank snippets on the subtleties of life.

It was April 15, 1969 when Lock was called on to pay his dues as a Singaporean son. 

Accompanied by his eldest brother, Lock made his way up to the reporting point located near the mouth of Teck Chai Terrace, an hour’s bus ride away from his house.

Sling bag in tow, his innards were churning with the same sense of uneasiness that was gallivanting its way through the thousand-strong crowd of fresh faced enlistees. 

Little did he expect the administrative faux-pas that was to ensue. 

“My turn came and the clerk told me to complete my medical and go home,” he said.

He made his way back home half happy that he had a week’s reprieve left, and half sad that it couldn’t come any sooner. 

The day eventually came and Lock was sent off to the 6thSingapore Infantry Regiment located at Taman Jurong Camp. He would eventually serve six months of Basic Military Training before being handpicked to attend the Specialist Leader Course.

“Who says the Army doesn’t listen to you? “ he questions with a firm tone. 

“I once asked my Platoon Commander why the morning run was 3 miles long.”

As fate would have it, his commander altered the training regime – just not in a manner that Lock had hoped for. 

“The next day, it became 6 miles.” 

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Text by Prabhu Silvam

This was part of a feature on Esquire Singapore on national service veterans.