My name is Hana. I am in my mid-thirties. I grew up in Singapore, spent a few years abroad for study, came back, and settled around Choa Chu Kang — Yew Tee side, mostly, with Bukit Panjang reachable on the same bus lines that stitch my errands together. I work part-time at a library branch. The job is quiet. My head is not always.
I started StoryTrace because I kept losing small moments. The first kopi before the LRT platform fills. An egret standing in the canal like it owned the reflection. A stranger returning a dropped card at the interchange without making it a speech. These are not events that belong in a group chat. They are traces — faint, easy to forget, worth one honest paragraph each.
I write in first person because that is the only voice I have for this. What you read here is what I saw, heard, or felt at the time I wrote it. Memory shifts. Mood shifts. I will revise if someone tells me I got a detail wrong — a street name, a time, something I misremembered from across a block.
Choa Chu Kang is not a backdrop I rent for atmosphere. It is where I buy vegetables, where the uncle at the kopitiam knows I take kosong on humid mornings, where void decks smell like rain on concrete and fried shallots at different hours of the same day. Yew Tee and Bukit Panjang are part of the same fabric — market runs, bus transfers, the slow click of corridor lights coming on one floor at a time. I try to write about neighbours and places with care. I do not speak for anyone else. I do not name people who did not ask to be named.
What I notice: the way sound travels between HDB towers. How the park connector changes character after rain. The particular patience of aunties at the market when you cannot decide between two vegetables. The last line I write in my notebook each night — always at the same window, always after the estate has settled into its softer hour.
If you have read this far, thank you. You can browse the journal, or send a note if something resonated or if I got something wrong. I am glad you are here.
This is a personal blog. Everything here is written by me and reflects my own experiences, opinions and memories at the time of writing. Posts are personal reflections and are not professional, medical, legal, financial or fitness advice. Places and everyday moments are described from my own point of view; I don't name or speak for anyone else, and I try to write about my neighbourhood kindly and honestly. If I've got something wrong, tell me and I'll fix it.