It was all British pop for me growing up in the 80s. But then I went to Vancouver to do my undergraduate degree. I made so many friends from Hong Kong, and they introduced me to karaoke. So my experience of karaoke was singing Cantonese music.
I came from a girls’ school where all of us barely passed Chinese. Now I appreciate it a bit more. When you’re overseas, you realize you are Chinese. In Singapore, you’re just a Singaporean.
I remember spending a lot of time recording music on the radio, and you just hoped the stupid DJ wouldn’t speak halfway through it. I would find the right images from Smash Hits and Number One and do a collage as the covers for my mixed tapes. That’s the kind of person I am.
I left Singapore to pursue a degree in mass communications. But I ended up doing anthropology with a minor in archaeology. And because of the degree, the whole museum world opened up to me.
Back then, to find someone with a relevant degree to join a museum was hard to come by in Singapore. The majority of people were having business degrees. These days, whenever we put up an ad for a curator, I get tons of people with masters in art history.
My archeology class was very hands-on. We would sit around a pit, trying to make obsidian arrow points. My professor was so good at making sharp blades with obsidian that he would use them for his own operations rather than surgical blades because it actually heals better.
When I told my mother I was changing majors, she said, “Are you going to come back and dig Sentosa?” A couple of years later, she saw a local newscaster on TV who also had an anthropology degree. That really consoled her.
When I took over as director, my big question was, “How do you keep the National Museum relevant?” It’s very different from the old days when it was hard to get information.
I’m more influenced by contemporary art museums these days. We’re working a lot with Singaporean contemporary artists as well, to interpret important historical moments. We bring a lot of them here to do site-specific installations. A museum isn’t just a place about the past.
It’s very lucky for the museum to get a revamp [for SG50]. The world has changed, the audience has changed. We’ve realized Singaporeans would enjoy more of an experience rather than a didactic way of understanding history.
We just opened a children’s wing called Play@NMS, and that’s exactly where I park my car, so when I come in, I see the busloads of kindergarten children. It adds a nice vibe to the museum. It’s not sterile. There’s kids laughing and making noise.
Emails are so terrible. People are so irresponsible. They CC you on everything. To me, if you CC me, it means I have to read everything. So I get very upset when I get CCed for the sake of being CCed. Someone’s just trying to cover ground by CCing the whole world.
I used to say, “Do not let your work define you.” But being a museum director really defines your life. It even influences what you do after work. The Singapore arts and culture scene is so vibrant, there are so many things happening at the same time. I have to decide which ones I will attend. Sometimes it has nothing to do with my personal taste.
When I go overseas, I go channel surfing but stop at the advertisements. Within that short thirty or sixty seconds, you can tell a lot about a culture or society, and that fascinates me.
I’m a calm driver. I’m ok with slowing down for people, with people cutting in front of me. But the moment you honk at me and I have no idea why—that upsets me no end. But I’m a very controlled person. I don’t want to get STOMPed!
It would be nice if Singaporeans could be open to everything. We can agree to disagree, but just talk about it. We have to accept that we won’t be on the same page at the same time, but we have to not sweep things under the carpet.
I used to be one of those people who couldn’t wait to move out of the family home. Now I actually bother to sit down with my parents, and I find that it actually relaxes me.
Suddenly I’m reconsidering parenthood. Five years ago, if I came to work and those children were here, it wouldn’t matter to me. But these days I stop and look at them more.
I always wish I could play a musical instrument. My mom tried me on everything: piano, violin and all. I tried on my own to place the guitar. Hopeless. So I tried to go for the ukulele. I finally realized, I have no rhythm.
