Hi there Nuffnangers.

First of all, let me thank Nuffnang for picking me as the featured blogger for this month. Having seen the profiles of the other featured bloggers before me, I really feel like a dinosaur.

Anyway, name is Lam Chun See and I am 58. I am a management consultant by profession and I host the nostalgia blog, Good Morning Yesterday. I started this blog in September 2005 for two reasons:

1. To reminisce about the ‘good old days’.
2. To educate the next generation about what life in Singapore was like back in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Firstly, I noticed that older Singaporeans like to talk about the past. Whenever, my friends or relatives get together at festive occasions, or dinners or even funerals, they like to exchange stories about the past. The reason of course, is that Singapore has changed a lot during our lifetime. There are very few places that have not changed during the past 30 years. For example, many of the kampongs that I saw during my army days in the early 1970’s in Jurong, Bt Batok, Marsiling, Hong Kah and Tampines have all gone. Therefore, I thought, a blog would be a useful place for people like us to network and exchange stories. I want my blog to be a virtual a kopi-tiam or void deck.

The second thing I noticed is that our children seem to be very ignorant about life back in the old days; and about things of nature in general. Maybe life in Singapore is too fast-paced nowadays, and they have too many material distractions. Consequently, they miss out on many of the simple pleasures of life. So I want to tell them about what life was like in the Singapore before they were born, and a blog seems to be the ideal platform to do that.

But what triggered off this project was something that happened during a trip to Myanmar in 2005. On my way back to the airport, I shared the hotel car with a Japanese man who was a frequent visitor to Singapore. During our conversation, I remarked that Yangon was very much like Singapore during the time when I was young. Many of the old British-style buildings resembled those in Singapore, and they have many crowded old buses like our Tay Koh Yat buses of the 60’s. He was surprised and said that Singapore must have changed a lot during the past few decades. Yes, and too fast, I replied. It was then that I decided I should start this blog.

It’s been more than four years since I started Good Morning Yesterday and I have enjoyed the ride tremendously. I have met many new friends like the Friends of Yesterday.sg (Foyers). Some of them, like Philip Chew, Unk Dicko, and Laokokok have started their own nostalgia blogs. Others who do not like to host a blog of their own, like Peter Chan, Chuck Hio and Edward Williams, published their stories on my blog.

I have also come to know some folks in the UK who lived in Singapore in the 60’s when their fathers were stationed here as part of Great Britain’s Far East military forces. They too shared their fond memories of our country on my blog. I have met two of them – John Harper and Brian Mitchell – in person when they visited Singapore not long ago. Knowing how much we treasure old photos of Singapore, some UK folks whom I have not even met were so generous as to send me some old photographs from their collection.

But my greatest satisfaction is being able to connect with younger Singaporeans. Many young people who visited my site posted their comments or sent me emails saying how much they enjoy reading my ‘grandfather stories’. They said that reading a first-person account was quite different from learning from the history books. Some junior college students have even been inspired to undertake heritage-related projects as part of their school work.

Thanks to blogging, I am able to achieve one of my life-long ambitions which is to become a published author. With encouragement from my regular readers, I have decided to compile some of the more than 400 stories in Good Morning Yesterday into a book; God willing by this year.

Besides blogging and surfing the internet, I enjoy walking. I often go for walks in the parks in Singapore. Seeing how much such places had changed from the time when I was a kid gives me more ideas for my blog. I also do quite a bit of volunteer work in church.