Five Questions: KG

Tell us about a typical day?

I wake up to the sounds of morning, birdsong and the start of engines from below my flat. If time allows, I would go for a jog along East Coast Park – on the best days, there would be a perfect balance of wind, sun and salt. Thereafter, the day would go as the day requires, lifted by meals and the company of good people.

What is your future hope?

That the capitalist order would be renovated by the genius of compassion, and that our relationship with nature would be informed by mindful reciprocity.

If you could invite one person to dinner, who would it be and where would you take them in your city?

Janice Wong, the pastry chef behind 2am:dessert bar in Holland Village, Singapore. There are many talented and renowned chefs around the world, but to eat and discuss familiar foods with a professional who has walked the same grounds would probably inspire ideas and perspectives in both of us. I would like her to suggest where!

What is your favourite bookstore?

In Singapore, the public “bookstores” run by the National Library Board hold a special place in my heart – they constitute a public institution that our people can be proud of, informed by the ethos and spirit of institutions like the National Health Service in the UK. A close second would be the MPH bookstore in Parkway Parade in the 1980s, where I spent precious minutes browsing books, seated on the carpeted floor in between aisles. Unbeknown to me then, the bookshop assistants knowingly turned their backs on children like myself. It was altogether a less commercial age.

What does a port culture look like to you?

Teeming with beached arrivals, incidental encounters, and purposeful visitors, a port culture flourishes with chance and choice, taken in a leap of faith. Further inland, the administrative centre exerts its regulatory pull, setting up breakwaters to manage the force of the incoming waves. Port culture pulses with a complex rhythm, originating from crossings attuned to human and organisational agencies.