Thoughts In Singapore

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

I am sitting at INSEAD Business School waiting for my friend to come join me for a lunch date. I am staring at these lovely orchids. I am enjoying the cool, crisp a/c as it is a balmy +32C outside with high humidity. I am glad for this chance to cool down. I am enjoying my time in Singapore and yesterday I went on a group tour to learn about the Japanese Occupation during WW2. It was really interesting but also really heavy and sad to learn about the estimated 50,000 Chinese men that were killed during this time. It was so sad hearing the stories of the POW's from different parts of the world that had to try to survive here for almost 4 years under Japanese rule. The conditions were brutal.


During the tour we visited a war museum with many artifacts from this time. One interesting story was how a group of women made quits out of rice sacks and they embroidered personal messages for their loved ones that were in the men's POW camp under the pretence of making quits for the hospital. It allowed personal messages to be shared between the women and the men's camp without the Japanese guards knowing about these coded images designed in the quilts.