Creativity and Service: Memoirs of a Pioneer Generation 2

Since my last post in October, we have returned to the site many times and as such gradually gotten closer to some of the elderly there. Through repeated conversations with a couple of members at Lions Befrienders I was able to gain a better understanding of Singapore’s history, especially during the time of the Japanese occupation. As mentioned in my previous post, I was shocked to find out from the elders that the Singaporean youth apparently view their own history with disinterest. I later had conversations with my grandparents, who mentioned that disregard for history is becoming an increasingly prominent issue in China as well, especially among the newly rich (LO6).

Throughout seasons 1 and 2 I decided to spend my time interviewing Mr Liu Hanlin to find out more about his experiences during the occupation and chronicle his story for others to learn from. The memoir generated from these conversations can be found here.

Moving into seasons 3 and 4, I would like to take on a more active role in interviewing. Something I found challenging in the first two seasons was that sometimes my conversational partner would be disengaged from the conversation and unwilling to answer the questions I asked, which created many awkward pauses throughout the interview. Alternatively, it was difficult to gain meaningful answers from the conversation (for example, I interviewed one man who when asked what his interests were very bluntly replied that he had no hobbies). For the next two seasons I think it would be helpful to incorporate an easy activity or game as a pretext for conversation so that the elderly could be more relaxed and so that the conversational flow would be more natural.

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