Everyday Singaporeans with inspiring stories to share

SINGAPORE — After wandering into an unassuming cafe in Queenstown one day, digital advertising professional Jeff Cheong spent three hours chatting with the cafe’s elderly owner and learnt that he was a pioneer in coffee roasting here who had trained numerous young baristas.

Convinced that this was a story of an average Singaporean worth sharing with others, Mr Cheong spent the following three weeks persuading Mr Tan Tiong Hoe, who is in his 70s, to be a part of his pet project — Singaporean of the Day.

“He doesn’t cut corners when it comes to his craft, and he’s devoted his whole life to coffee roasting,” Mr Cheong said.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, Mr Cheong, 39, has been on a relentless search for inspiring tales of other everyday Singaporeans or Permanent Residents. His labour of love culminated in a recently-completed series of 50 short videos, each featuring a different person.

The project was conceived as a “kneejerk reaction” to a Gallup poll in 2012, which labelled Singaporeans as the least emotional country in the world. Eager to prove otherwise, Mr Cheong set about contacting and interviewing strangers from all walks of life with three friends.

The project cost an estimated S$30,000, partially funded by a S$17,000 grant from the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre.

Mr Cheong said reception to the project has been overwhelming, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Education Minister Heng Swee Keat highlighting it on their Facebook pages in 2013 and last year respectively. The success of the project, said Mr Cheong, stems from its honesty, since everything was non-scripted.

“Since the week we launched, we’ve had people writing in and telling us how this has given life to our concrete jungle. It’s very encouraging,” he said. The team has also received requests to compile these stories into a DVD or convert them into print stories.

Charity runner Shannon Heo was featured in one of the videos. The veterinary surgeon was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 2010, and started running marathons to raise awareness and funds for the condition.

“MS is like an invisible illness. People think you’re very normal, but I do have chronic fatigue, and have balance and coordination problems,” said Mdm Heo, 37. The story she hopes to tell? “Be kind to everyone, because we’re all fighting a battle.”

Professional puppeteer Frankie Yeo, whose video concluded the series, hopes to inspire others with his tenacity.

“There was no market for this back then,” said Mr Yeo, 52, who started pursuing the art form as a career 16 years ago. “There was also no internet, and I had to experiment with creating my own puppets.”

Having wrapped up this project, Mr Cheong is moving onto his next one — a video series featuring puppets modelled after familiar characters from school textbooks. He said: “We’ve all written essays about Xiao Ming and Fatimah. It’s an inter-generational thing. They’ve grown up and came back, and will continue to entertain us (in my next project).”