SINGAPORE: His trademark pastel-hued images have gained Singaporean photographer Nguan a sizeable audience on social media. Every day, his followers on Instagram – 65,400 and growing – eagerly await his latest dream-like, melancholy-tinged snapshots of people and places, whether it’s a food vendor in Tokyo, a boy lying on top of a Singapore Post mailbox, or a winter scene of an abandoned amusement park in Brooklyn.

But the 43-year-old artist told Channel NewsAsia that there’s a series of photographs he hasn’t been showing much of just yet – community cats.

Since 2014, Nguan has quietly been shooting pictures of Dakota Crescent’s furry inhabitants as part of an informal side-project.

“I actually have a series that I’ve never fully shown. While Dakota’s human residents have now mostly been transplanted to new homes, the stray cats have been left behind. I thought making portraits of these really socialised cats would be an interesting way to speak about issues of displacement as we confront the ruthless pace of change in Singapore.

“The truth is, I’m slightly freaked out by cats,” he said, before adding with a shrug: “But I’m wary of human beings, too. And that hasn’t stopped me from staring them in the eyes and taking their pictures, relentlessly, for the past 13 years.”

From The Cats Of Dakota Crescent series. (Photo: Nguan) 

PHOTOS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Nguan’s dogged street photography approach, coupled with an uncanny knack for capturing evocative images, has made him one of Singapore’s most well-known names in the scene today. And while many of his works are readily seen online, an ongoing solo exhibition at FOST Gallery in Gillman Barracks gives people a chance to see some of them in a large-scale format.

Titled How Loneliness Goes, it features 23 photographs that riff on themes of solitude – a man waiting at a void deck, a cracked plant barely held together, a woman eating alone in a coffeeshop. First shown at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2015, the present iteration features a couple of new pieces.

“My audience has increased maybe 10 to 15 times since then,” he explained. “And I had all my prints at home so I thought, why not give (more) people the chance to see them again?”

And there’s no lack of admirers. Indeed, fans of Nguan’s work have steadily grown in recent years. A case in point: At the show’s opening on Tuesday, a crowd gathered outside the gallery before the doors opened. And during the show itself, a young woman asked him to autograph her camera.

Not bad for someone who consciously keeps a low-profile, preferring to let his photographs speak for themselves.

(Photo: Nguan)

“I’m not trying to be all mysterious or whatever, but I think anything else would be a distraction,” he said, as we settled at a nearby cafe for a chat. For the interview, the soft-spoken artist preferred to be called only by his first name and requested that no photographs of him be taken.

His anonymity has worked so well that during the opening, it actually took a while for people realise the artist was present. “The majority didn’t know who I was, so I could just watch them looking at the work and reacting to it. I don’t want to lose that.”

FROM THE BATHROOM TO THE NEW YORKER

For Nguan, it has been all about his images, which have gained traction thanks in great part to social media. Aside from his Instagram followers, he also has a solid following on Tumblr and Facebook. He set up the latter in 2009 and takes pride in its organic growth –  it took two years before he even got 100 fans, he said.

“I think of it as a huge honour when people follow you. That means they’re letting you into their lives at their most intimate moments, right? They want to hear from you when they wake up in the morning, they’re in the bathroom, they take the train to work, they’re lying in bed before they go to sleep. So I try not to waste anybody’s time with my posts,” he said, jokingly adding that he spent the whole of 2016 concentrating on his Instagram account.

(Photo: Nguan)

Last year, Nguan’s social media presence went up yet another notch: He was invited by The New Yorker to take over its Instagram account in August. Kicking off on Singapore’s National Day, he posted around 24 photos of Singapore over eight days.

“The attention it created felt equivalent to holding a show at a really major institution, which The New Yorker is. It was very interesting to see that how that might be a new way to show works, and you reach a worldwide audience,” he said.

“Around half of them were shot that same week. I felt like a journalist working in the 1950s, 1960s, when they would shoot and publish it the next day.”

EXPLORING THE BIG CITIES

His photography career was more of a fortunate detour, he said. “I drew a lot when I was a kid. I thought I would become an illustrator or a writer, actually.”

He went on to later study film at Northwestern University in Illinois, but then quickly realised movies weren’t his thing.

“Other students would watch a film five times, but I could only watch once. I thought it would be fun to do but I didn’t really have the passion for it,” he recalled.

After graduating in 1998, he stayed on in the US. He moved to New York, where he began taking photography seriously.

One of the catalysts was the 9/11 attacks. “I lived a mile away, but I actually slept through the whole thing. When I woke up, the World Trade Center was gone already. But I just went out taking photographs of the empty streets,” he said. “I’ve never shown those; they were shot with a Canon Powershot and were bad.”

(Photo: Nguan)

But the experience was nevertheless a reminder of the power of images. “In the weeks that followed, whenever I wanted to tell people how I felt, I found that my pictures were more effective in corroborating my experience than anything I could write or draw or film.”

With no connections to the photography or art world, Nguan decided to go it alone. He posted his photos on online forums and message boards for feedback, or sent them to magazines. And crossed his fingers.

The big break came in 2005, when Los Angeles magazine Arkitip offered him eight pages in an issue. A year later, the influential publication Vice included him in their photo issue.

As he slowly got noticed, Nguan pursued his photography projects, which included a couple of series on Los Angeles and New York. Returning to Singapore for good in 2009, he also began a project about Tokyo’s Shibuya district, which resulted in his first book.

“I’m generally interested in the big cities,” he explained. “I would never go to shoot on a quiet beach. If I go to a mountainside or a beach, there’s almost nothing for me to do in terms of my work. I’m more drawn to crowds. I see my job as being (someone who) takes all the complexity of the world, complex emotions and distill them so that they are immediate and visceral.”

(Photo: Nguan)

Clean and green Singapore, however, was another proposition altogether. “That was the challenge, I guess. In a way, my goal was to make it look filthier than it is. I wanted to show that it’s a city grown out of a jungle.”

TAKING TO THE STREETS

Earlier this week, Nguan went on one of his regular shooting trips in the island. “I went to Jalan Besar. I found a new rainbow-coloured building, basically,” he said.

His trips often take place in the mornings and in the afternoons, with bare minimum equipment: A trusty Fuji 6×9 SLR camera, which he has been using for a decade, and rolls of film and a light meter stuffed into the pockets of his cargo shorts.

A recent photo taken by Nguan in Jalan Besar. (Photo: Nguan) 

“I don’t bring a bag. I just carry the camera in my hand, and walk in a state of heightened awareness. I feel like an animal almost. You just have to be hyper-aware of the smallest interactions that occur. And a lot of it is instinctive.”

He added that on his street jaunts, he would often stay at one place. And wait.

“I found the most effecting thing you can do is not move. It’s like looking for a space in a car park. You should just stake out one space and wait for an empty spot. If you keep moving, you might never get what you want.”

And despite his often in-your-face and intimate approach to taking photos, he has rarely gotten into trouble for his street photography.

“In Singapore, I’ve maybe been verbally reprimanded only three times. Once, I took a picture of an uncle with a child in Chinatown and he was furious. He came up to me and he wanted to know what I was doing,” he recalled.

Once a photo is out there, it’s another thing altogether, though. One of the more popular images in How Loneliness Goes was of a man kneeling at a bus stop. When it was published in a newspaper in 2015, the man’s family spotted it and requested it be taken down. Nguan did not include it this time around.

These days, however, he hasn’t been as inconspicuous. “I’ve been making more landscape work now, so I’ve been bringing a tripod. But you know what, the bigger and more formal your equipment, the less people bother you. If you use an iPhone, people will think you’re shooting an upskirt photo or putting them online!”

It’s not just his subject matter that has attracted attention. There are online threads where people attempt to figure out why his photographs look the way they do, with soft, pastel shades and desaturated, washed out colours.

(Photo: Nguan)

Nguan pointed out he doesn’t use any filters. Instead, the look initially began as the result of a happy accident, which he calls “that pink thing”. While scanning his photographs for the book on Shibuya, the images took on a pinkish hue.

“I thought I had removed that from my local work, but then (fellow artist) Charles Lim once said to me my photographs have this Johnson’s Baby Powder thing on it – and I didn’t know what he was talking about. Whatever it is, people like it, so I don’t really think about it,” he said, with an amused smile.

WAITING FOR SINGAPORE

Despite having loads of his images already up online, Nguan still aims for other ways of presenting his art, whether it’s through books (How Loneliness Goes also has a book version) or exhibitions.

In fact, there’s one huge project in the pipeline – a series called Singapore, which he aims to publish as a book and, hopefully, present as an exhibition as well.

Some of the photos can be seen in both the ongoing exhibition (which he described as a “prelude” to the bigger series) and on his website. But there’s plenty more where those came from.

(Photo: Nguan)

From around 500 images, he has whittled these down to 85 which he says will collectively be “an epic depiction… an attempt to present a mythical version” of Singapore.

At the moment, Singapore is in “limbo” as he ponders his next move. For now, Nguan’s fans can always rely on his Instagram account for their regular fix of his captivating images.

“I always say that every picture is the middle of a story. The befores and afters of every picture, I leave entirely to the viewer. And that is why I like photography – its evocative potential is appealing and powerful to me,” he said.

***

NGUAN’S 3 FAVOURITE PLACES TO SHOOT

1. CONEY ISLAND, NEW YORK. I like to shoot on Coney Island in New York, which is like a beach with rocks, glass shards, and drug needles – although not so much nowadays. The messier the place is, the more excited I get.

2. SHIBUYA, TOKYO. I spent so much time there working on my series that I’m going to haunt that traffic intersection when I die! I shot there between 2008 and 2010, and after that I continued coming to Tokyo. This was shot in August 2015. When I put up the image on Instagram, a friend of the girl recognised her and tagged her. The girl’s name is Piano and she’s a huge Harry Potter fan. Thankfully, she seems chirpier in her own pictures.

3. GEYLANG, SINGAPORE. I like Geylang. It’s the last bastion of unruliness in Singapore. There’s still a lot of dubious activity that goes on in broad daylight, and a whiff of unpredictability in the air. I also love Geylang’s sidewalk coffeeshops – the pictures I make of them are in homage to Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings of Parisian cafes.

SINGAPORE: For four years after giving up his corporate job which was making him miserable, Bjorn Low spend a happy four years working on organic farms in far-flung places such as Scotland, Spain and Japan.

But when he returned to Singapore to start up a farm here, he hit a costly roadblock – he could ill-afford the land he needed. “I wasn’t shocked but surprised,” he said.

“To buy 10 acres of land (about the size of 10 football fields) in the middle of Wales with a river running through, with a farm house, cost less than a HDB flat in Singapore then.”

How could one farm without land? While looking around Singapore, the many green spaces in the midst of urban development triggered an epiphany – why not make use of the many under-utilised spaces to grow food?

That’s when the mission of turning Singapore into an “edible garden city” – which eventually became the name of his enterprise – took shape.

WATCH: Bjorn Low’s journey (2:55)

His story is featured Monday’s (Mar 6) episode of Game Changers, a five-part series about local entrepreneurs who shake up the way things are done.

GETTING CHEFS TO CHOOSE LOCAL

Inspired by what he called a “global movement” of chefs wanting to connect with local farmers, Mr Low started out setting up edible herb gardens – initially using something as simple as stacked wooden boxes – and was soon approached by various hotels and restaurants.

But to grow his business, he needed international chefs and bartenders here to demand locally-grown herbs too.

Convincing them proved to be a challenge. “A lot of the chefs are very used to using Western herbs but they don’t grow very well in our climate,” said Mr Low.

“You need to spend millions of dollars to set up that infrastructure. Using a lot more local herbs and vegetables allows us scale up our operations much faster with lower infrastructure costs.”

The rooftop garden at Wheelock Place, which supplies Spa Esprit’s Tippling Club restaurant.

An opportunity arose when Spa Esprit Group’s CEO Ms Cynthia Chua approached Mr Low, 36, and together with French chef Benjamin Darnaud – a believer in growing one’s own vegetables – they started Open Farm Community, a restaurant set in an urban farm on Minden Road.

“Urban farming in Singapore was previously unheard of,” said Ms Chua. “But now there is a momentum, there is a rhythm, and it was started because of people who are passionate about it like Bjorn.”

As Mr Low’s business partner, she helped put Edible Garden City on the radar of dining establishments such as the Tippling Club and Jamie’s Italian, encouraging them to use herbs grown in Singapore like cinnamon basil and white pea flowers.

Open Farm Community on Minden Road

FOOD FOR THE SOUL

But for Mr Low, the success of Edible Garden City goes beyond being a movement for locally-grown ingredients, to something almost existential in nature.

He described how working on overseas farms had helped his wife, Crystal, and him to escape the accumulated stress of working in the advertising industry.

“Working on the farm made me realise that actually, there is more to life than material wealth,” said Mr Low. “Being in touch with nature, and growing (my) own food, was able to fill up the void in my soul.”

He noted how “being able to nurture something to life” has been observed to help people out of depression. He added: “I’ve a history of depression in my family, so there’s multi-layered motivation for me to continue to do this – not just myself but for everyone in the community.”

His simple and wholesome outlook on life turned out to be contagious.

His employee, Mr Christopher Leow, 29, never thought that he could be a farmer in Singapore until he stumbled upon Mr Low at one of his talks.

“He made farming attractive to young people. He made it very sexy,” said Mr Leow, who used to manage a mobile coffee business. He is now one of 22 employees at Edible Garden City, which had started out with a staff of just three in 2012.

MUSHROOMING SUCCESS

The company’s revenue has since quadrupled to S$800,000 annually in the last four years, a point of success which has helped bury Mr Low’s family’s initial doubts.

“They realised that it’s become a career for me and a business that’s sustainable,” said Mr Low.

Edible Garden City now operates from an 8,000-sqm plot of land in Queenstown. Calling the place “home”, Mr Low said that with the security of a nine-year lease, his team can now “go full steam ahead with experiments” to show how under-used spaces can produce food and add to the aesthetics of the area.

The company is also working with the Spa Esprit group to create skincare and beauty products out of organic herbs. Calendula flowers with their anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties, for instance, can be made into creams, soaps and tea, said Mr Low.

“We have to innovate and add value to the crops we are growing so that we can make it a more sustainable industry,” he said.

One project will see Edible Garden City training and employing adults with Down Syndrome to grow mushrooms out of coffee and food waste, as part of their exploration into “closed-loop” farming.

“Essentially, we’re able to deal with the food waste problem in the city itself, and not having to cart it to a landfill,” explained Mr Low. He hopes this model can be scaled into other sites and even abroad – creating employment for slum-dwellers like those in Bangkok and Jakarta.

“It’s really important for me that it takes off, because I feel that, inherently, we can help urbanites reconnect with nature,” said Mr Low. “Gardening and horticulture has a way to let people understand what life is about.”

Catch the second episode of Game Changers, a five-part series about entrepreneurs who believe it’s reinvent or die, on March 6, 8pm SG/HK.

SINGAPORE: “The most difficult part was the decision to let her go. But in the end, we had to let her leave with dignity,” Mr Keller Wong said, his voice cracking with emotion. 

“Towards the end, you could tell she was very sick. She was on life support. Her face was yellowish, there were blood clots in her brain and red spots were appearing on her body because of internal bleeding.” 

Tears welled up in the 43-year-old’s eyes as he spoke and he paused frequently to gather himself. His wife, a calm, reassuring presence, shook her head gently at him. She flashed me a slight, wry smile. 

HOPE

From the moment she was born, Wong ZiQin had to fight for her life. A normal heart has one major artery allowing blood to flow out from each of its two ventricles on the left and right. But because of a rare congenital abnormality known as Taussig-Bing syndrome, both of these arteries were connected to her right ventricle.

Mr Wong’s wife – who only wanted to be known as Mrs Wong – was five months pregnant when they learned of their expected daughter’s condition. 

Abortion was an option, but they decided to keep their first child, who was conceived through in vitro fertilisation. “We wanted to give her a chance,” Mr Wong said.  

ZiQin was always weak, according to Mrs Wong. Her lips would turn purplish because of blood circulation issues, and she would get bloated or vomit easily. She couldn’t walk.

ZiQin was often warded at the hospital due to various health problems. (Photos courtesy of Keller Wong)

One night when she was two years old, the toddler had a persistent fever. Thinking it was just the flu, her parents returned home after checking her into KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) for treatment. 

Hours later, the hospital called: ZiQin’s heart had collapsed and she was in a coma. Doctors performed CPR on her for more than half an hour but she did not come around. Her parents never saw her conscious again. 

Even as toxins filled the child’s body, her father posted a hopeful message on Facebook. “She is showing positive signs of recovering and fortunately, the blood clots formed in her head is (sic) not found on vital parts of the brain. She tried to move her hands and open her eyes when we talked to her today,” he wrote. 

“We hope she will recover from this ordeal so she can be transferred onto Berlin Heart machine to buy time for a heart transplant.”

The Berlin Heart is an air-driven pump that takes over the work of one or both sides of a child’s heart. It is the only long-term ventricular assist device available for infants and smaller children and is usually used as a temporary solution while the patient waits for a donor heart for a transplant.

Doctors told the Wongs the Berlin Heart was not available in Singapore but could be flown in for the procedure. It would take about a week.

The device would buy some time, but also carried a higher threat of causing blood clots the longer the child relied on it while waiting for a donor heart. Singapore does not have a paediatric heart transplant programme and they would have to look overseas for a hospital able to perform the procedure – a process that could take anything from months to a year or longer. 

Faced with diminishing options and ZiQin’s worsening condition, the couple agonised over what to do. On Jul 8 last year, about two weeks after she fell into a coma, they decided to pull the plug. 

“It was harder for my wife because even during the period that ZiQin was in a coma, she had a lot of hope that she would recover,” he told me. “Then we had to let her go.” 

And Mrs Wong started to cry too.

BARRIERS

The world’s first paediatric heart transplant was performed by an American cardiac surgeon in 1967. The procedure has since been established as a standard of care for infants and children with end-stage heart disease, according to an article by KKH in 2015. 

“Singapore with its well-equipped healthcare infrastructure is well-poised to develop a paediatric heart transplant programme in order to provide the best possible care to our children with end-stage heart disease who hitherto have limited options for survival and quality of life,” KKH said in the article on healthcare group Singapore Health Services’ website, adding that public campaigns would be an initial step in creating awareness and promotion of organ donation. 

Transplants are available in countries like the US and the UK, but also closer to home: Malaysia, China, India, Japan and Thailand are among the many countries where paediatric heart transplants have been performed. 

Although the surgery carries its own risks such as having the new organ rejected by the recipient’s body, survival rates for children who undergo heart transplants are encouraging.

A 2014 study by experts from Loma Linda University Health in California found that of 337 paediatric heart transplant patients who underwent the procedure between 1985 and 1998, more than half lived at least 15 years with reasonable cardiac function and quality of life. (The study noted that the average adult survival rate following heart transplantation was 10 years.) 

In Singapore, the main barrier to starting a paediatric heart transplant programme is the lack of donor hearts, according to the chairman of the National University Hospital’s medical board. 

Associate Professor Quek Swee Chye, who also heads the hospital’s division of paediatric cardiology, said the size of the heart was roughly the same as the patient’s fist.

“For kids, there are different ages and sizes from newborns, infants, to toddlers, children, adolescents. You have to have a heart that is of fairly similar size. That’s a major difficulty compared to the adult population.”

The size of the heart is about the same as the fist, and for children this varies far more than for adults.

In countries with a successful paediatric heart transplant programme, there is usually a large population, a considerably bigger donor pool and a “very well-integrated network”, according to Dr Quek. 

For example, if an accident happens in California or New York, a hospital could issue a nationwide call for help and arrange for an available heart to be sent over from a different state. 

Singapore’s Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA) allows doctors to recover the kidneys, liver, heart and corneas from the bodies of all Singaporean citizens and permanent residents of sound mind and above the age of 21 if they die for any reason, unless they opt out. 

Children are not covered under the Act, although family members may volunteer to donate a dead child’s organs for transplants, education or research under the Medical (Therapy, Education and Research) Act. 

Dr Quek pointed out possible ethical dilemmas for doctors when it came to encouraging family members to donate the organs of their dead children for even the transplant programmes that Singapore currently has. 

“In the absence of the ability to give consent, the consent is actually given on their behalf by their parents. Kids are very close to their parents’ hearts, and that decision is understandably hard to make.

“It’s a tough situation on the ground even for adults. When a patient is brain-dead, unless he has opted out, HOTA allows for organs to be donated. The reality is that a lot of families would be very emotional – firstly to come to grips with the death of a loved one and secondly to accept that his or her organs will be harvested for donation. So what we face on the ground can be challenging.” 

CHANGING HEARTS

“When the Chinese want to scold someone, they say they hope you si wu chuan shi (die without your whole body). They believe you somehow have a better time in the afterlife if you have everything intact,” Mr Wong said. 

“But actually, that’s all rubbish. When you die, your organs turn to ash.”

Mr and Mrs Wong want to prevent future donor organs for children from being wasted by forming a group which they plan to call OTM, short for Organ Transplants for Minors, in the next few months.

They already have some volunteers and want to reach out to other parents in the same situation. Their goal: To raise awareness of the need for child-to-child organ transplants and challenge the stigma surrounding organ donation. 

More than six months on since ZiQin’s death, the pain of her loss is clearly still raw.

“Honestly, I haven’t really recovered. I just try to keep myself busy,” Mr Wong, who is self-employed, said.  

The couple had wanted to start an awareness campaign for some time but put it off as they grappled with grief, they said. 

While friends have suggested they look for other parents who have lost their children and set up a support group to work through their feelings, Mr Wong said this was not their priority as they would rather do something constructive to help others. 

“We want to save other parents from the heartbreak. We don’t want anyone to feel the way that we do,” he said. 

(Photos courtesy of Keller Wong)

Follow Melissa Zhu on Twitter: @MelissaZhuCNA

SINGAPORE: When he was 15, Johan (not his real name) slashed another teenager in a fit of anger – putting the victim in intensive care for five days.

Johan was ordered to serve a five-week detention order and 30 months of probation for the assault in 2011, and his prospects seemed dim.

Even his probation officer thought, when she was assigned his case file, that he was “hardcore”.

“And then when I actually met him in person, I realised that Johan was a very articulate youth; he was intelligent, polite and thoughtful,” said Ms Marlia Mohamed.

She was one of a circle of individuals who, over the months of his probation, rallied around and helped that boy – who was raised by his single mother to be respectful and polite, but lost his way during his violent and angry school years – back onto the right path.

WATCH: Johan’s remarkable transformation (3:10)

These days, the confident 21-year-old has a diploma in counselling and is dedicating his life to helping others with a troubled past like his. The story of his journey was recently told on On The Red Dot, as part of a series about how it takes a village – strong communities, friendships and families – to help people in crisis get back on their feet again.

BREAKTHROUGHS AND HARD TRUTHS

After Johan pleaded guilty to voluntarily causing grievous hurt in 2011, a social investigation had found him suitable for probation, a community-based rehabilitation programme. His case was one of 1, 104 new court orders for probation that year.

The conditions of his probation included fulfilling 180 hours of community service, counselling sessions and a nine-month stay at the Singapore Boys’ Hostel – on top of having to attend school.

Part of his community service obligation was spent at the Bishan Home for the Intellectually Disabled. Community service officer Sherlyn Wong had discussed with Johan how he could best contribute to the community – and found out that he actually had an older brother with epilepsy and mild autism.

“So I suggested that perhaps it would be good for him to work with the intellectually disabled,” she said.

Growing up, Johan said, he never really wanted to interact with his brother. But that experience at the home forced him out of that zone and to understand the intellectually disabled better.

“And it has been fruitful; my relationship between me and my brother right now is pretty good,” he said.

Psychologist Dr Janice Tan helped him understand and manage his behaviour.

Johan also met with Dr Janice Tan – from the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s Clinical and Forensic Psychology Service – about once a month from 2011 to 2013, to talk about his issues and strategies to manage his behaviour.

Johan was forced to confront his violent angry streak and, critically, recognise what had led up to his assault on the other boy. “As the sessions went by, it became more apparent to me that these were not just out-of-the-blue occasions,” he said.

“(Dr Tan) actually made me realise that the surroundings (are) out of my control, but what I could control was my emotions; how I could do something about it. And that really hit me hard.”

THE CHANCE TO CHANGE HIS LIFE AROUND

Johan also formed a close friendship with chief executive Nicholas Lee of the Singapore Boy’s Hostel Trybe – a relationship that prevailed even after he left the hostel.

The hostel’s structured disciplined lifestyle and the community milieu seemed to help Johan find a sense of purpose, noted Mr Lee.

And when Johan’s mother was diagnosed with a tumour (which was later treated successfully), it was to Mr Lee that he turned and asked how he could turn his life around.

‘Johan’ with Mr Nicholas Lee of the Singapore Boy’s Hostel Trybe

When Johan expressed interest in helping other troubled youth, it was his probation officer, Ms Marlia, who found out how he could apply for a bursary.

“He was like, ‘I think I understand what these youths are going through and I think I’m in a better position to help them’. And I was like, okay, this boy deserves to be guided and (for us to) make sure that he achieves what he wants to do,” said Ms Marlia, whom Johan today considers a good friend.

Earning his diploma in 2013, he is now applying for undergraduate studies. And he is thankful for all the guidance received.

“The involvement of every individual throughout my rehabilitation period offered different perspectives and different advice,” he said.

“But all of them were in line in believing that I could change.”

Watch the full episode here. New episodes of On The Red Dot every Friday at 9.30pm on Mediacorp Channel 5.

SINGAPORE: The fifth edition of the sustainable light art festival i Light Marina Bay officially opened on Friday evening (Mar 3). Artists from nine countries – including Singapore – are presenting art installations based on the theme “Light and Nature” at this year’s festival. 

“Created with environmentally-friendly or energy-saving lighting, the installations highlight the importance of sustainability and reinforce Marina Bay’s position as a sustainable precinct,” i Light Marina Bay said in a press release. 

The light installation named Ocean Pavilion marked the official opening of the festival. Designed by UK artist Luke Jerram, it measures up to 8.5m in height. Made of more than 25,000 repurposed plastic water bottles and illuminated by energy-efficient LED lighting, the dome-shaped structures were put together by more than 300 members of the community over three weeks, according to i Light Marina Bay. 

Ocean Pavilion by Luke Jerram. (Photo: i Light Marina Bay)

Besides the light installations, festival organisers said 79 building owners and organisations around Marina Bay pledged their support for the “Switch Off, Turn Up” campaign by switching off non-essential lighting and turning up the temperature of air-conditioning throughout the festival. The energy saved from this will offset the power consumption of the installations at the festival, according to the festival’s organiser, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). 

Dande-lier. (Photo: COLOURS)

Hybycozo by Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu. (Photo: i Light Marina Bay)

Home by Anna Galas. (Photo: i Light Marina Bay 2017)

In addition to the light structures, the festival will also host a recycling and upcycling marketplace, an urban garden, a learning yard and a kinetic energy playground from Mar 3 to 5, and Mar 9 to 12 at The Promontory. 

Moonflower by Lee Yun Qin. (Photo: i Light Marina Bay 2017)

(Ultra) Light Network by Felix Raspall, Carlos Banon, Manuel Garrido and Mohan Elara. (Photo: i Light Marina Bay 2017) 

The Body of the Sea by Danny Rose Collective. (Photo: i Light Marina Bay 2017)

i Light Marina Bay will be on from Mar 3 to 26. The 20 light art installations will be on display from 7.30pm to 11pm daily. This will be extended to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, the festival organiser said. 

SINGAPORE — Mrs Jessie Ong was not into active sports after being paralysed on the left side of her body due to a stroke eight years ago. But on Saturday, after trying her hand at table tennis and boccia for the first time, the 43-year-old got inspired to become more active.

“People might think that disabled people cannot play sports. And even disabled people think they cannot play sports,” said Mrs Ong. “But you need to tell yourself you can do it. You can always do it.”

The artist now intends to play boccia with her friend at Bishan Community Centre. Mrs Ong, who turned up at the event with her husband and son, was one of over 230 people with disabilities who attended Project This Ability Para-sports Day at Enabling Village in Lengkok Bahru.

The event was the first community integration initiative supported by the TODAY Enable Fund, a charity fund established last December to provide people with disabilities with resources so that they have a chance to use their talents to achieve success. The fund, which has raised S$265,000 to date, will also support transition-to-work programmes at SG Enable and help some individuals achieve their aspirations.

At Saturday’s event, visitors could try their hand at seven types of sports, including wheelchair basketball, goalball, cerebral palsy football and para badminton. The campaign, which aims to encourage people with disabilities to play sports as a means to meet new friends and lead a healthier and independent lifestyle, was part of the final-year project of a group of students from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.

Ms Joey Chua, 23, who mooted the idea, was inspired by her cousin who was born with dwarfism. She recalled how her cousin, who is now 25 years old, would not take the train just to avoid the crowds and the stares that would greet him. Instead, he opted for the bus, although it meant a longer travelling time.

“When he was young, he didn’t feel it. But as he grew older, he was more aware of how society views him. This became more apparent and I didn’t like what I was seeing,” said Ms Chua.

“We were all inspired by his interest in doing sports and want to help him and others like him lead an active lifestyle,” said Ms Chua. “Hence, we decided to (organise this event) in hope of fostering a long-lasting sporting community of people with disabilities.”

The power that sports has in uplifting lives is something that Mr Muhd Aidil Khalip can attest to. Once a lively and active person, the former despatch rider became a shadow of his former self after being run over by a tipper truck just a week away from his wedding in July 2013. He was 25 then.

His injuries were so severe that a part of his left leg had to be amputated. Although the dream wedding did take place a few months later, the unemployed man felt “useless”, as his wife, who was then working as an office manager, had to shoulder the role of being the family’s sole breadwinner. And he fretted over their long-term finances.

But there was one familiar avenue that he knew he could turn to, to build up his confidence, said Mr Aidil, who is now 29: “I thought that the only disability is your attitude. So, I told myself that I should try playing sports again.”

Formerly an avid football player, he picked up air rifle at the urging of a fellow patient at one of his rehabilitation sessions, but his interest fizzled out as it was not very physically intensive.

In 2015, he found the sport he was looking for — wheelchair rugby.

Apart from playing indoors and having to sit in a specially-designed wheelchair, the sport is similar to how rugby is typically played. “You can tackle people, topple them over,” said Mr Aidil, with a laugh.

Now, he would make the half-hour commute confidently by train every Friday from his home in Sembawang to Toa Payoh Sports Hall, where he would rough it out with nine other wheelchair-users.

He said those with disabilities might be apprehensive at first in taking up sports and meeting new people. But it is all about taking the first step.

“Soon, you will realise that they’ve become like family to you. We can relate to each other because of our disabilities and we try to inspire one another,” said Mr Aidil.

Support the TODAY Enable Fund for the special needs community. Find out more via www.todayonline.com/enable.

If you know of more stories of people with disabilities, email us at news@newstoday.com.sg

SINGAPORE: A 26-year-old Singaporean was arrested on Friday (Mar 3) after he allegedly bought cannabis from an online website.

According to a news release on Saturday, the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) said they had been alerted to a suspicious parcel on Friday, which contained about 136 grammes of cannabis.

Cannabis in vegetable form recovered on Mar 3, 2017 from a suspicious parcel. (Photo: CNB)

A fake identity had been used by the intended recipient in an attempt to hide his identity, said CNB. Further investigations found the intended parcel was the male suspect, and that he had used the assumed name to evade detection.

During his arrest, a search of his residence found more drugs and drug paraphernalia, including cannabis in vegetable, paste and powder forms, as well as 11 pieces of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) stamps.

The suspect is a student, said CNB, adding that investigations are ongoing.