Whether it’s the May 13 riots of 1954 or the switch from amber sodium vapour street lights to the flat glare of LEDs, Singapore’s changes can just pass us by. We can resist erasure by intentionally remembering, said documentary filmmaker TAN PIN PIN in this 2026 Commencement address for NUS College.
In 2014, the National Parks Board made a decision to replace the sodium street lights in Singapore with LED ones. The case for the change from a policy standpoint was clear: LED lights were cheaper to maintain and brighter per unit cost. And so, over the past 10 years, meter by meter, every sodium street lamp was replaced. The amber glow that so many of us grew up with no longer exists in Singapore.
This transformation was so gradual that even I, someone who has been documenting Singapore, was completely unaware of the change until one day I realized my street was simply too bright to get proper sleep.
Do you remember what Singapore looked like, and more importantly, what a night scene felt like when you traversed your street under that yellow glow? I don’t actually remember, and it grieves me.
When the city replaced that warm glow with the flat light of an LED, they didn’t just change a bulb. They altered the emotional landscape of our city.
I have some memory of the undulating darkness and brightness as I walked from street lamp to street lamp, but I am not sure how much of this memory is my own, and how much of it comes from watching too many Wong Kar Wai movies.
An image from the collection “Out in Plain Night” by Adar Ng and Dave Lim, which will be exhibited in an installation format at the Singapore International Photography Festival 2026 starting in October. [Top image: RememberingSingapore.org]
Now the city is over-lit, and my nocturnal views are forever transformed. Regrettably, I don’t have a baseline memory of what it was before. Had I known the lamps were going to be replaced, I would have gone for a night walk to soak in the amber visage of my city, to register what the city looked like to me.
And why is having that baseline important? Because one’s memory is the foundation of one’s identity. If we are not sure who we are, we become participants in other people’s rendition of our lives.
I saw the consequences of this in my own family. It happened while I was making my documentaries. I was interviewing people from the political left: communists, left-leaning politicians, student activists, and civil society leaders. These are people whose views were distorted, erased, or forgotten from our Singapore Story.
Hearing them talk made me curious about my own family’s experience. So, I decided to ask my father and uncles, who were the same age as many of the people I was interviewing, about their recollection of the events in the 1950s and 60s. Specifically, I wanted to know what they felt about the May 13 riots in 1954, when 1,000 Chinese middle school students protested against the colonial government’s decision to make national service compulsory. They were teenagers, still in school at that time, like the participants of the protests.
They told me they had little inkling of the protests then, and they did not participate in it. When my grandmother decided to send her boys to English mission schools, she had also inadvertently committed them to a world insulated from the anti-colonial struggle. The news of the 50’s student protests was suppressed and didn’t reach the English-medium school students.
Since my father and his English stream cohort did not possess an awareness of this event, their view of Singapore’s development is far more seamless and frictionless, compared to the perspectives of compatriots in the Chinese-stream schools. Thankfully the students kept photographs and written accounts of the events, so we, as a country, have a fuller portrait today of what happened in those years.
I have shared how a lack of awareness can cause us to miss important milestones. Had we known, we might have registered the moment, or done something about the impending change. Today, even if changes are made in plain sight, they are made in such a seamless and fast way, that even with the best of intentions, it is impossible to keep track of them.
For example, I was complaining to a friend recently that I have been using AI to improve my emails without being fully aware I was doing it. An AI button appeared one day, I pressed it, and the way I wrote emails changed forever. At the touch of a button, my clunky draft is transformed into a polished email. I told her I had misgivings about this feature, even as I used it. She said, “If you want to continue to use AI, why don’t you keep your draft? Then you will always know where you end and where the machine begins.”
It is important to know the “before” and the “after” of a change, to have a baseline to track our development, so that one can live with more intention.
As I stand before you today, you are about to graduate. You are crossing the threshold from the “before” to the “after.” My ask of you is this: be present to this moment.
Even as you look back and see how far you have come, address the present assiduously. Sit down and pen your thoughts on the issues that concern you or do not concern you, at this exact moment in history, at this moment in your youth. Take stock of your life. Write down your hopes and dreams. Who and what is important to you. Take that walk around your campus, register your favourite corners, and yes, notice the quality of the light in those places. Note how you feel with your senses.
Give an account of who you are to yourself, at this moment. This is your baseline.
This is the portrait to compare yourself against as you progress into the next stage of your lives.
Take that photo. Keep that draft. Write that journal entry.
A frictionless life is easily forgotten. But a life that is spent being present, noticing and remembering, belongs to you. Do not let the world quietly edit you away.
Congratulations to the Class of 2026.