SHENTONISTA

“In the past, most people believed that children should never talk back to elders, but we want to give our kids more autonomy. We want them to know that their voice and opinions matter, so we have discussions as a family instead of us providing close-ended options like a yes or a no to everything.”

“It’s pretty common, especially for Asian countries, to see art as something that you can’t go far with. I want to prove that belief wrong, and show that I can make a living out of it. It doesn’t have to be the starving artist way—there are many paths you can take. It’s not a one-way route.”

“One piece of advice I live by is to not take life too seriously, because life is really short. I’m a practicing yogi, so I believe that we are not our bodies. Our bodies are just machines that we’ll use for a little while in this life, before we drop it off and pick up new bodies again and again in our subsequent lives.”

“I wore braces for eight years, and my teeth still aren’t perfectly straight. Eight years leh! I put them on in Secondary 1, and only took them out when I was in my first year of university. My original dentist even retired halfway through.”

“I do freelance work with a Malay theatre company, Anggerik Temasek Bangsawan. Bangsawan is a type of traditional Malay opera, but we’re trying to revive it using new technology. The last production we put up had a fully digital set shown on LED screens.”

“You won’t normally catch me out for lunch in the afternoon actually, because most of the time, I’ll be in the gym. It’s become a habit to destress at the gym, either in the morning or in the afternoon, so I always sacrifice my lunch hour to gym.”

“My boyfriend and I met four years ago, at a wedding for our mutual friends. I had just come back from the Dominican Republic, and he had just arrived from Andorra, and we happened to meet there at the wedding. It’s fate!”

“I started photographing since 2015. Back then, I found an old camera in my wardrobe—it was a film camera, so I decided to just play around with it, and I’ve been photographing moments in my daily life until now.”

“I started modelling a long time ago, but it was only after my last year of poly that I became more serious about it. I thought now that I have a diploma, I can still find a job, at least when I want to, so I can just spend time exploring modelling as far as I can.”

"I hang out with a lot of graffiti artists here, and as you know, it’s not allowed, so doing that for a living is insane. Like just the fact that they chose the hard path with all of its struggles is quite inspiring to me, because they do so much just to bring their art to the public.”

"Towards the end of Hari Raya, a lot of people like to do open house, so they invite relatives, friends, everyone. I enjoy seeing that, but I cannot cope, because I stay alone. I cannot tahan so much visiting! I need my alone time also.”

"I entered law school because I’ve always wanted to be an international human rights lawyer, so that’s my long-term goal. Now I’m trying to take small steps towards this goal, and get to a point where I don’t need a well-paying job and can just help people.”