Wei Ming Tan

I am a freelance UX writer, occasional editor, and long-form essayist. I have lived in Singapore my whole life, and in Tiong Bahru — the same three-block radius — for the last eleven years. This is the blog I have been keeping, quietly, since March 2021.

What this site is

My Daily Narrative is a personal essay blog. The subject is Singapore, but only in the small sense — the corridors, the hawker stalls, the eight minutes between MRT trains at Chinatown on a Sunday afternoon. I am not a journalist. I do not report on national politics, on economic policy, on transport infrastructure, or on any of the other subjects that a proper Singapore blog might legitimately cover. There are excellent writers who do that work. I read them. I am not one of them.

What I write about is closer to what my grandfather called xiang xiang shi — small, ordinary things. A pair of running shoes. An auntie who has been running the same noodle stall since 1998. A rain vortex. A sentence I overheard on the Circle Line and cannot forget. This blog exists because I do not entirely trust my memory, and because I think a small country deserves at least one person writing down what does not fit in the papers.

Who I am, briefly

I was born in 1991 at Kandang Kerbau Hospital. I grew up in an HDB flat in Toa Payoh, moved to Tiong Bahru in 2014, and have lived here since. I studied English literature and mass communications at NTU, class of 2013. I spent seven years at a mid-sized product design agency writing microcopy for consumer apps. Since 2020 I have worked as an independent UX writer, mostly for Singapore-based fintech and healthtech clients.

My non-blog life is very ordinary. I read about forty books a year. I swim once a week at the neighbourhood pool. I have a cat, an eleven-year-old tabby named Muji who does not answer to his name. My parents live in Toa Payoh. My sister lives in Melbourne. I have not eaten laksa outside of Singapore, because I do not think I would enjoy the disappointment.

How this blog is written

I publish one long piece per month, and occasionally a shorter observational piece in between. Every piece is written by hand in a Muji notebook first, then typed up. I do not use AI for drafting; I have used it, on two occasions, for line-editing at the very end. I do not accept sponsored content. I do not run affiliate links. There is no newsletter, though I have thought about it. There are no comments, because I do not have the energy to moderate them.

The photographs on this site are a mixture of my own (rare) and licensed stock photographs of Singapore. Where a photograph is stock, I note it in the caption or use it purely as visual accompaniment. I do not photograph the people I write about. Names of neighbours have been changed, except for public figures and, in one case, for the woman who runs the noodle stall — Auntie Peng is a real person, and she has read the piece, and she has approved it, and she does not want a photograph.

Occasional questions

Is any of it made up? No. The essays describe real people, real conversations, and real places. Details have been changed in a few cases — names, apartment numbers, the exact date of a mediation session — to protect the privacy of the people involved. Nothing has been invented for effect.

Do you take freelance clients? Yes, occasionally. I take on a small number of UX writing engagements each year. You can reach me via the contact page.

Do you have social media? Not for this blog. I have a personal Instagram account with about 60 followers, most of whom are family. My friends know how to find me.

Thank you for reading. I do not take it for granted that anyone opens these pieces. I am grateful for the small number of readers who do, and I try to respect the time they lend me by writing carefully, slowly, and only when I have something to say.

— Wei Ming Tan
Tiong Bahru, Singapore