{"quotes":[{"text":"To assure him, Peter Lim decided that the newsroom adopt this approach: it was better to produce the best story than the first story. He had good reason. Finding scoops in a Singapore with many OB markers carried a real risk: the story was sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes had to rely on official spokesmen. But once they knew you were on the story, they either prevailed on the editors to hold it until the time was right to release it, or gave it to every newspaper. The edict went against the grain. No journalist could resist the temptation to be first with the news.","author":"Cheong Yip Seng","tags":["journalism","singapore"],"id":10040,"author_id":"Cheong+Yip+Seng"},{"text":"During the Japanese invasion, bombs had fallen from the sky and people could run for cover. Now, they exploded in the middle of the road, or in the fields while people were playing soccer.","author":"Mohamed Latiff Mohamed","tags":["confrontation","cultural-medallion","fiction","indonesia","konfrontasi","malaysia","novel","singapore"],"id":11083,"author_id":"Mohamed+Latiff+Mohamed"},{"text":"Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may be described, not as a place covered with blocks of public housing, but a topography where black vertical shafts, some forty storeys tall, rise out of the ground like trees.","author":"Justin Ker","tags":["fiction","flash-fiction","short-stories","singapore"],"id":25213,"author_id":"Justin+Ker"},{"text":"I am writing this on a computer that I can’t imagine living without. This is an alarming thought, the extent to which I have organised my life around a metal box full of wires (and, via the Internet, to many other metal boxes full of wires). Someone told me most of the Internet is stored in a warehouse somewhere in North Carolina. I don’t know enough about technology to gauge if this is true, but it made me realise how little I actually understand about the world I inhabit. The world of Dr Wong’s childhood was significantly smaller than mine, but he understood every square inch of it.","author":"Jeremy Tiang","tags":["computer","internet","malaysia","singapore","technology","translation","wong-yoon-wah"],"id":37794,"author_id":"Jeremy+Tiang"},{"text":"There are myriad kisses in a relationship: desperate ones as involuntary as breathing, stolen ones on crowded trains, ceremonial ones at the front door, routine ones as dispassionate as licking an envelope. It takes two to kiss, but does it take two to hold the memory?","author":"Stephanie Ye","tags":["fiction","kiss","short-stories","singapore","stephanie-ye"],"id":47416,"author_id":"Stephanie+Ye"},{"text":"The sensation of the ocean bearing my weight was the most carefree lightness I’d ever experienced. When we were halfway across the strait, the sound of an engine approached from a distance—it was probably the police coast guard. We quickly ducked under the surface of the water, exposing only the tips of our trunks so we could breathe.","author":"Xi Ni Er","tags":["beach","chinese","cultural-medallion","howard-goldblatt","ocean","singapore","translation","xi-ni-er"],"id":59247,"author_id":"Xi+Ni+Er"},{"text":"I like to see you in a sari, with your long hair dressed in a single plait. Don't forget that I married a girl from India because I like my wife to be conservative and feminine.","author":"K. Kanagalatha","tags":["feminist","india","patriarchy","short-stories","singapore"],"id":67161,"author_id":"K.+Kanagalatha"},{"text":"Beneath it allI kept faith with Ithaca, travelled,Travelled and travelled,Suffering much, enjoying a little;Met strange people singingNew myths; made myths myself.But this lion of the seaSalt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,Touched with power, insistentOn this brief promontory...Puzzles.","author":"Edwin Thumboo","tags":["edwin-thumboo","merlion","poem","poet","poetry","singapore","singapore-pioneer-poet","singapore-poet","ulysses"],"id":67442,"author_id":"Edwin+Thumboo"},{"text":"Pak Karman hugged his wife’s gravestone tightly. “You left without saying farewell!” The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.","author":"Mohamed Latiff Mohamed","tags":["alfian-sa-at","death","epigram-books","fiction","grief","latiff","loss","love","mohamed-latiff-mohamed","mourning","novel","sg-lit","sglit","singapore","translation"],"id":82815,"author_id":"Mohamed+Latiff+Mohamed"},{"text":"You scour these Chinatowns of the mind, translating themlike sutras Xuan Zhang fetched from India, testing waysreturn might be possible against these homesick inventions, trace the traveller's alien steps across borders, and in between discover how transit has a way of lasting, the way these Chinatowns grew out of not knowing whether to return or to stay, and then became home.","author":"Boey Kim Cheng","tags":["chinatown","diaspora","history","memory","nostalgia","poetry","singapore"],"id":98178,"author_id":"Boey+Kim+Cheng"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":47,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}