Love among the …

Posted by Tym under Explore Singapore 2006, Explore Singapore!
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While last week’s episode of Explore Singapore! introduced us to English girl Sarah Thompson (played by Elizabeth Tan) looking for her mother in Singapore with the help of former museum curator Mr Heng (played by Moses Lim), this week’s episode promises to delve into the relationship between Sarah’s parents. So what kind of love story can one conjure about an Englishman and a Chinese woman in Singapore in the 1970s?

A rather surprising tale of love among the war memorials of Singapore, as it turns out. I never went on a date at a historical monument, least of all one associated with suffering and death. Then again, I never dated a wartime historian either, which is what Sarah’s father turns out to have been. So maybe it’s not surprising that our characters, as they retrace Sarah’s parents’ courtship, end up traipsing across Fort Siloso, Memories at Old Ford Factory, Changi Museum and Reflections at Bukit Chandu.

It’s a little sweet, and also a little macabre, how the love story unfolds among these four sites and how the wartime metaphors are used to shed light on Sarah’s personal struggles: If her parents loved each other, why did they split up? How could Sarah’s mother bear to leave her? Is her mother still alive? And the show still hasn’t answered last week’s million-dollar question: is her mother a Peranakan Chinese or a Dyak (though I can’t imagine a Dyak named Chen Cui Fen)?

Despite sombre moments evoking Japanese Occupation doom-and-gloom, with re-enactments of ill-treatment by Japanese soldiers and interviews with Occupation survivors, there’s plenty to keep this episode afloat as our heroine takes a few tentative steps towards piecing her mother’s life together. Now if we could just figure out what brought her parents together in the first place …

Watch this next episode of Explore Singapore! on Thursday, 21 December at 7:30 pm on Channel 5.

Tags: Explore Singapore, Fort Siloso, Memories at Old Ford Factory, Changi Museum, Reflections at Bukit Chandu, National Heritage Board, Singapore