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Nitsa Holidays

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“Those who tried to demonstrate some form of independence and fairness in their reporting and editing have paid a high price. The Straits Times editor, Han Fook Kwang, was sidelined and made managing editor after a rare display of fairness in political journalism when he gave the Opposition, especially the Workers’ Party, more editorial space than what was allocated during previous elections.”

PoliticsSingapore
Book:Reluctant Editor: The Singapore Media as Seen through the Eyes of a Veteran Newspaper Journalist
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“When the Japanese invaded, informers said mother was an important member of the resistance. She was taken in, badly tortured and never confessed. Her life was spared because the Japanese interrogators could not believe a woman could have held such a key role. When her children were grown-up, mother would tell us, ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. The first time, you’re scared you’ll give away your friends. But there comes a point when you pass out. Once that happens, you cannot feel pain anymore. Once you have learnt that, you can beat your torturers.”

TortureSingaporeCool MumJapanese Occupation
Book:From Beirut to Jerusalem
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“with you, the sense i have lost my place in a book or simply lost — misplaced the memory which isn't in the last place where I looked. a thought that the clouds don't move — that it is we who thunder past — there it is! an old vacation, a train ride — sense of immobility. as sky and forest scroll past in relation, we are not moved, pretend to love the view, resort at length to scripted conversation by a poet-turned-screenwriter who didn't want this job, career gone grossly wrong and now drafts action film scripts wholly two- dimensional unless you choose to don the 3d glasses that do not stay on —”

LovePoetryLiteratureMaking LoveSingaporeScrabble Tiles
Book:Making Love with Scrabble Tiles
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“In the early '80s, I spent a year working on a verse-play -- based on the life of Anne Maguire (whose sister, Mairead, founded the Peace People movement after Anne took her own life). Anne's three children were killed on the pavement as she was wheeling the pram one day in 1976 by an IRA fugitive's getaway car -- the driver fatally shot by a British soldier; this singular incident crystallized for me so much of the terror then in the air. Writing was a way of keeping clear -- in the sense of fixing it, restoring it facet by facet, to clarity. Catching a moment of history like a fly in amber with the chorus of witnesses alive, outside. After all, poetry affords this license and extreme economy. I have no business, of course, to write about such matters, being a complete foreigner in Ireland. But you do it because it is nobody's business. What you write is nobody's business. Isn't that poetry? - "What You Write Is Nobody's Business": An Interview With Wong May (The Believer, May 2014)”

PoetrySingapore
Author:Wong May
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“The trouble with you," Parvathi said with a wisdom beyond her years, "Is that you don't know who you want to be. Girl or boy. Chinese or Malay." "Ya-lah you!" Fatima said. "No wonder the kids in your school call you OCBC." There was a bank in Singapore called the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation, or OCBC in short. So some cruel kid in school played on the initials of the bank to make fun of Peranakans. They jeered, "Orang Cina Bukan Cina." The words translated as Chinese person, not Chinese.”

SingaporeRacial IdentityPeranakan
Book:Kampong Spirit - Gotong Royong: Life in Potong Pasir, 1955 to 1965
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“At a farewell dinner, the editors gave [S.R. Nathan] a porcelain bowl. For the day before he joined us, the PM had told him: "Nathan, I am giving you The Straits Times. It has 140 years of history. It's like a bowl of china. You break it, I can piece it together, but it will never be the same." I was struck by the way the PM made his point – he knew the value and place of The Straits Times in Singapore's past, present and future.”

PoliticsPresidentSingaporeLee Kuan YewExecutive Chairman
Book:OB Markers: My Straits Times Story
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