![]() Before arriving in Singapore, I had discovered that Francis P. ![]() Ng, a forgotten Singapore poet who disappeared at the outset of the Japanese invasion in 1942. ![]() ![]() I had come back to Singapore to trace the footsteps of Francis P. But much as I was disturbed about losing my own memory of Singapore, I was equally concerned about the loss of one of Singapore’s literary treasures. I tried to recall and imprint in my memory scenes I was familiar with. And there was a definite buzz to the city, with a lot more people than I remembered. Unfamiliar apartments and buildings had sprung up everywhere, and new shopping malls and changes inside once familiar buildings generated some anxiety. On terra firma, the songs and sounds of the National Day festivities quickly re-absorbed me into this country, exactly the same way they did when I first arrived as a 12-year-old girl in the summer of 1988. The night sky was still the same over the East Coast, twinkling here and there with the strobe lights of airplanes heading towards Changi Airport. Initially, it felt as if nothing had changed since I left the city. Twenty years had passed since I left Singapore to enter college in Japan and then higher degree studies in the United States and Germany. ![]() In August 2014, I found myself in Singapore, the country where I came of age as a teenager. ![]()
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