Up to a few years ago, “memories” were considered a thing of the private realm. Even though there had been a popular history movement in the UK and US for about 20 years or more, it never really took off in Soutehast Asia. For much of this part of the world, history is one with a capital letter H.

How things have changed. Now, “memories” is all the rage. Stories now have a part to play in history. But if these “memories” or their narratives of it still follow the framework of “Great men’s history”, then it is merely adding spice to what is already known and repeated.

One can only hope that these stories told humanises the society, not reinforcing the convenient structures.

I’ve always admired those who work on their family history, and laboriously trace them back centuries. It’s hard work indeed.

I’ve been wanting to do mine for the longest time but never got around to it, not systematically at least. But in the last few months, I’ve been soliciting stories and details, which many of us would not think about asking in “normal conversations”. Every conversation with my parents or my relatives are turning into interrogation sessions!

A professor once told me that the longing for family history or roots is an index of loss. Then, I didn’t agree with her. I had not issues with my identity, felt no dissatisfaction or the need to know “who I really am”. I still don’t. But I am beginning to see her point, though not as she meant it probably. As I see it now, the loss is one of the links with the people whom I’m closest to and who mattered most to me. I’m missing my maternal grandparents especially even though they’ve been gone a long time. Perhaps it is Qing Ming, or perhaps it’s age. I miss them terribly.

That is probably the fuel for me to want to find out more about their lives, their stories. They’ve had intriguing stories I heard. There’s the Second World War, a mad mother (a la Bertha Mason), a loss grave, missing siblings, an opera troupe and family betrayal involved. On the other side, there’s also the Cultural Revolution in the mix, somehow.

But because they were poor and uneducated, they didn’t leave much written legacies, if at all. In a time when documentation is not the norm, this makes it even harder. But try I will, nevertheless, to piece together the stories.

Came across this article at Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter about the Canadian city of Calgary has decided to replace cemetery headstones with GPS as grave markers instead. So, instead of looking for one’s beloved as inscribed in headstones, all one need is a hand-held GPS locator which will tell you the spot your loved on is buried in.

With the cemeteries getting full, this is a new strategy to deal with “overcrowding”.

Casting aside issues of environmental friendliness, would not colobariums be a more “dignified” way of dealing with overcrowding? While memories are not inscribed in stones and other material beings, surely having a marker of somewhat more permanence be a better option than a GPS tag?

Perhaps the need for permanence and visible markers are more for the living than the dead.

I was talking to a young person recently about potential careers. He was surprised when I said that there were opportunities for history graduates. He thought that if you studied history, you could only be a teacher. So he was thinking about a career in science — doing something related to “the human genome”.

In Singapore and elsewhere, the work opportunities for historians are expanding. It’s just that sometimes we have to think outside the box. This blog “In the Service of Clio”was recently brought to my attention. It is currently running a series of essays from history Ph.D.s (in USA) who are using their degrees outside of the normal history department. It makes for interesting reading.

When I saw the news about bits of the Berlin Wall installed in Singapore’s very own Bedok, I was first bemused then confused and somewhat uncertain.

The intellectual in me screams – decontextualised history! With bits of the wall, hauled outside its ‘original’ site, encased in a glass case – essentially objectified, it’s totally decontextualised. How much of what Foreign Minister George Yeo said is “an icon for reflection about history, about the human condition, about how we treat fellow human beings” will be translated in such situation?

True, not everyone can afford to go to historic sites, which when turned into tourist attractions, lose all meanings too. Yet, are the meanings lost irrevocably when the object is divorced from its place?

The little idealist in me wants to believe that the installation can indeed inspire. Yet when the news finished with the item that a bistro has been planned as part of the installation and that it will be opened later, the sceptic in me nods. Meaning is lost.

P/S: the other bits of the Berlin Wall have been scattered all over the world too. You can find their location in the BBC map found in this earlier entry.