SINGAPORE - 9 MAR 2026: 2.42pm. Toast Box at Shaw House (Lido) is a popular, bustling café located at 350 Orchard Rd, #B1-03. It offers traditional Nanyang coffee, kaya toast, and local meals from 7:30 AM to 9:30 PM daily. Known for quick service, it is a convenient spot for breakfast or a snack in the Orchard area.
9 Mar 2026. 2.42PM. Canon R5 75mm
1/100 sec, f/16, iso 5000. Focus on sign "Toast Box".
Group Exercise night. Yio Chu Kang Community Club.
Canon R5 75mm, 1/800 sec, f/4, iso 3200. TV mode.
9 Mar 2026. 8 pm.
SINGAPORE - 11 MAR 2026: 11.40am. I spotted the red male Scarlet Skimmer outside 29 Lentor Plain today. Hovering over small flowers for more than 30 minutes. Bright sunshine. Owner had just hosed the outside and his plants.
So I had the chance to take several poses of this sole red dragonfly.
Image of the MALE Scarlet Skimmer (Crocothemis servilia) is blood-red, with a thin black line along the mid-dorsal abdomen. His eyes are blood-red above, purple laterally. His thorax is bright ferruginous, often blood-red on dorsum and the anal appendages are blood-red. In comparison, the female has olivaceous-brown thorax and abdomen.
Sunny afternoon. 11.40am
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Female Scarlet Skimmer was seen several days earlier at Yio Chu Kang Cres forest where no red dragonflies were spotted.
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Writing magazine Dec 2025.
Real Life Great Stories. Short and Sweet. Jenny Alexander.
Writing flash memoir and prose poetry.
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This write up focuses only on flash memoir writing.
A flash memoir is a short story from your own life, 500 words or fewer.
No room for complicated plotting and exposition but story must deliver CHANGE POINT.
The reader has a glimpse of how things have been and how they are changed because of what happens in the story.
TRY THIS
Think of an incident in your life that made you change your mind in some way or take some kind of action. No need be a big thing - maybe you experienced a moment of joy in nature when the world was feeling bleak, or somebody said something kind or mean or you tried something new.
Write on sentence for each of the following:
1. What happened? The story.
2. How did it feel? The physical settings, using your senses.
3. How did it feel emotionally? How did those emotions feel in your body?
4. What did you learn? What changed for you because this happened?
Write the story in 500 words, then in 100 words and finally in 50.
Then take one of your flash pieces and create a narrative prose poem from it, redrafting it to tell the story using poetic devices and language.
Finally, visualise the little story as a film, pause it at a key point and picture the still. Focus in on ONE object or character, describe that and allow your thought to develop as it will.
Or take several objects and describe the scene using those.
Write a reflection - how did it feel to distil a scene from your full-length memoir right down to 500 words or fewer in flash memoir and then to a fragment in a prose poem?
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Think of an incident in your life that made you change your mind in some
way or take some kind of action. No need be a big thing - maybe you experienced a moment of joy in nature when the world was feeling bleak, or somebody said something kind or mean or you tried something new.
Write on sentence for each of the following:
1. What happened? The story.
2. How did it feel? The physical settings, using your senses.
3. How did it feel emotionally? How did those emotions feel in your body?
4. What did you learn? What changed for you because this happened?
The 77-year-old mother. Widow. 2 busy working adult children.
Loved cloudscapes. Sunrises. sunsets.
One day, central vision looks blurry or black.
Adult daughter concerned. Immediately see private specialist. Mount Elizabeth.
Wet macular eye degeneration. Private hospital. NO waiting unlike SGH.
Daughter seeks private specialist.
Treated. Repeat injections. Lunch.
Ship cruise with mother. Sunrise. clouds.
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1. An 80-year-old frail-looking widow and mother stays home alone. She is a Chinese woman, thin and medium height living in Singapore. Two adult Chinese children in their 40s are busy working. She photographs cloudscapes especially sunrises, by herself now. Her husband who also loved photography had passed away.
2. One morning, she saw dark spots and blurry areas in the centre of the cloudscapes and sunrises. Her 40-year-old daughter Abigail quickly checked her into a private hospital eye specialist. "Why not consult the government hospital eye specialist?" I asked her. "No, no," she told me, eyes seriously. "She will not be seen or treated immediately. She will be blind due to the delay."
3. In the private hospital, she was treated and recovered her vision. Her daughter visited her.
4. An adult 40-year-old daughter and her 80-year-old frail looking mother are on the deck on the side of the cruise ship appreciating the beauty of the sun set over the green sea.
Location: Hospital recovery area
Visuals
Mother slowly opens her eyes after surgery.
Daughter sits beside her holding her hand.
Mother smiles.
Mother:
“I can see you clearly now.”
WET MACULAR DEGENERATION
blurred, distorted, or lost central vision
Location: Park or waterfront in Singapore
Possible location:
Gardens by the Bay
Visuals
Mother walking slowly with daughter in the garden.
Bright flowers and sunlight.
Mother looking around in wonder.
Mother:
“The world looks beautiful again.”
Daughter (smiling):
“You deserve to see it.”
Final shot
Daughter supporting mother as they walk away together.
REFERENCE:
pika - 2 videos
Pika 2.2 AI video generation platform
chatsgpt - diagram Wet macular eye degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common, progressive eye disease damaging the macula, causing blurred, distorted, or lost central vision, particularly in people over 50. It has two types: dry (common, slow-progressing) and wet (severe, rapid leaking). Early detection via dilated eye exams is critical to managing symptoms.
There are two types of macular degeneration: dry and wet.
Nearly 90% of people with macular degeneration have the dry form. It develops when tiny yellow protein deposits called drusen form under your macula. The built-up deposits dry and thin your macula.
There are drugs that treat but don’t cure wet AMD. They include anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injections. They block the production of VEGF, which is a protein that produces new blood vessels. Your provider, generally a retina specialist, will numb your eye before giving you a shot into the vitreous (intravitreal injections). Anti-VEGF shots can sometimes improve your vision.
You should call your healthcare provider if you have macular degeneration and experience:
