Simon Tay: Enigmas recalls a departing generation
"We are going through that period when our generation is saying goodbye, or has said goodbye, to the pioneer generation, and we ourselves are also facing that retirement prospect. So, we try to make sense of our lives, and the ones who came before us."
"And I think we are telling a story for younger Singaporeans because the Singapore we knew in the '60s and '70s, that is fundamentally changed. It's so different, in security, in economy, in what we eat and how we live life every day."
"There really was a concerted effort to put Singapore in a spotlight and press it."
"I think, in some ways, and I don't mean to be a doom caster, this global turmoil situation in the Gaza, our friendship with Israel and America, these things are coming back. I'm not saying history is doomed to repeat itself, but there is a kind of rhyme."
Simon Tay: Bring fact and fiction together
"My book, particularly about my father’s private life, depends a lot on family stories told around the table by uncles. They were dirt poor in World War II. My grandfather was killed by the Japanese when my father was nine years old, the eldest son."
"They had a huge family. They struggled. But, you know, while that may sound dramatic, when you're told this as a kid, countless of times, you know, it's just 'blah, blah, blah'. So, I just hope my story isn't just about my father, 'blah blah blah', but it has some resonance."
Balancing tensions
"My father had a massive heart attack after handling the Laju incident, and when he was retired, they found no government job for him. He was just sent off to the university to teach. As a son, I could see he wasn't happy. He lost his sense of purpose. He had, really, for a decade, done this job 24 hours a day, and the curtailment was sudden.”
"Ageing, losing your job, losing your sense of purpose. These things, they're not trivial matters. There's not always a happy ending to one's life or a book about one's life."
Simon Tay: Remaining relevant for the future
"Some people, quite consciously, perhaps artificially, take on mentees. I don't. I do interact with younger people. I do keep in touch with my old group. Now, again, some people really make an art of it. They joined all these old boy associations and, you know, fabulously have get togethers. I don't, particularly. I do have a bunch of close friends."
Simon Tay: Past and present
"The Sino-American tensions have come on to the point of competition, almost conflict. That's not going to go away. The Ukraine and Gaza situations are also not going. In fact, as they go longer, you mustn't get the attitude that people just say, well, it doesn't matter. It matters."
"It'll boil over and it can really infest, become like an infected wound."
"Even four to five years can be hard to predict, I do work a lot on these issues, but, if you’d asked me five years ago, would there be a global pandemic? I think we were all caught unawares."
