Rapid changes

In Singapore, things change really fast that some people cant keep track anymore. Overnight, two-way streets become one-way ones, HDBs upgraded and re-painted regularly, condos was built in open fields within months and in a year, normal phone card become obsolete. I remembered once my sis came to Singapore and she wanted to use the phone card that she bought a year ago to make a phone call back to Malaysia. She failed to make the call and was puzzled because the public phone was rejecting her phone card. I approached her and told her that the phone card that she was holding it cant be used anymore. They have changed the phone cards to the chip cards which will only be accepted by all the public phones. The only reaction she gave me was, "Wah, I only bought it last year and so fast they have change it!"


Sometimes when I visited the old folk's home, the old folks there never fail to get nostalgic. " I used to play hide-and-seek in that playground", one of the old folks would said. The playground in the past has now changed to a newly built building. This is also what we call self-reference effects, even though these old folks are old, they are able to recall these memories better because these memories relate to themselves. We may want to have new changes in life but we also need touchstones of the past to keep ourselves rooted, and give us a sense of personal history. For most of us , this touchstones is often related to places or building. For example, that playground remind the old folks of herself as a cheerful and energetic young little girl that used to run around and play hide-and-seek with her childhood friends. But with Singapore changing so rapidly, so many of these touchstones have been lost. It is diffcult to feel a sense of belonging if, for example, you cannot take your kids back to your old playground and say," Here's where mummy chipped my front tooth". Because of this nostalgia chink in our modern armour, no wonder people are willing to pay $1.30 for a cup of Yakun's coffee , not because their coffee is super tasty but because of the cup that they use as people will start to reminiscing good old days.

Since memory is reconstructive, present beliefs about ourselves can influence what we recall from the personal past depending on your self-schemas (Markus, 1977) and motivation (Sanitioso, Kuna & Fong, 1990).

In this changing world, the most precious commodity that you can trade in is nostalgia.