New normal?

Oh, how our lives been changed. In Singapore, we went through a period of ‘lockdown’, also known as Circuit Breaker (CB), with our movements severely curtailed in order to contain the virus. To be frank, I was in a bit of a rut during CB. It left me listless and disenchanted. I chose to distance myself because I really needed space to navigate and find a way around all these emotions.

Being socially and digitally absent pushed me to catch up on books and do some fun photography work. If you know me personally, you might know that I eat a.l.o.t. of bread. Like, a lot. Like the can eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner kind of a lot. So I started photographing some of it.

It dawned upon me that I could use my photography skillset to help struggling F&B outlets. I decided to get in touch with some of my fave small local businesses and made some photos for their use during this climate where delivery and social media outreach was the most viable marketing option. No money exchanged but it made me happy being able to do a little something to (hopefully) keep them afloat. 

Here’s some images I made for Bakehaus. The bonus of all bonuses being I got to try a variety of bread and viennoiseries. I also made weekly deliveries to a select few friends and shared all these goodies with ‘em. 

Another eatery I was delighted to photograph for was Soulfood Catering at Pahang St. If you’ve seen my previous post, you’d have noticed that I ordered nasi lemak from them to send to some of my kids. Soulfood is a nondescript shop tucked in the corner of a Kopitiam in the Arab St area and they serve really homey fusion nasi lemak. The owners were very sweet and accomodating when they had to send nasi lemak to my boys during Ramadan and this really was just my way of paying forward their kindess. Also, helped ‘em clean up their Instagram feed a little, but yes if you’d like to get value-for-money nasi lemak, go find them on IG @soulfood.catering :)

Delving into something more personal: I was having recurring dreams of my late Dad and it unsettled me. Plus, I was on some insomnia streak. It was tough. The painful reality is that I will never ever get to see him ever again, let alone travel or take photos together, but long story short, I made a couple of images of my parents, using cut-outs, around my home. Guess we have a new memory together now :)

The school teaching semester has begun + I’ve been trying to keep up with the many kids around me + doing a lot more community things (count this my national service, pls!) so that’s all keeping me pretty busy. I’ve so many more things to share but this shall do for now. Thanks for reading this and have a lovely week ahead!