Hua Language Centre director Chew Wee Kai ruminates on ageing and what goes on inside and out as one inevitably moves into the twilight of life, not least the obvious signs of failing eyesight. Where once it was a joy to read The Water Margin and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, now the spirit is willing but the eyes are weak.

Hua Language Centre director Chew Wee Kai thinks back to the first time he attended a university graduation — in a tent. However, the solemnity of the event still shone through, in a fitting tribute to the effort of the graduates, as well as the travails of that storied university called Nanyang University (Nantah), and all that it came to represent.

Hua Language Centre director Chew Wee Kai reminisces about the wells that he used to know as a child, and the stories and memories evoked of Singapore in the 1960s, in the days of water rationing and floods, when water did not come from turning on a tap, but tapping into the ground.

Hua Language Centre director Chew Wee Kai regales us with anecdotes of various uses of the Chinese language among the general population in Malaysia and Singapore. While grammar and usage might not be the most accurate or logical, somehow one still manages to figure out the meaning, and bonds between people are formed.