Notes to Myself and You

A considered primer on (almost) everything under the sun in Singapore, Malaysia and South-east Asia by a travelled, veteran Malaysian-born Singaporean journalist and senior editor, YAP KOON HONG. Yap has worked in five newsrooms in Singapore, Malaysia. and Hong Kong and is a multiple award-winning senior editor, writer and columnist for The Straits Times, Singapore where he spent half his career, after which he joined the Prime Minister's Office briefly before founding YKH Media Associates in which he is the chief executive officer.Yap is a best-selling editor of two seminal books on Singapore: "A Hakka woman's Singapore stories" (2016) by the late Dr Lee Wei Ling, daughter of Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. He also conceptualised, cameo wrote and supervised the editing of the ground-breaking history book: "Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore" (2019) to mark the city-state's Bicentennial in 2019.This book, NOTES TO MYSELF AND YOU (2025) memorialises the domestic, regional history and current issues and challenges facing the world's two closest neighbours - Malaysia and Singapore, who are, the world's most amicable divorcees. Separation and divorce have been counter-intutitively positive between the two nations, and Yap explains why having grown up in those tumultuous times when Singapore becaame the region's, and probably the world's first accidental baby of Independence in 1965.Yap offers a rare, granular and bird's eye view of the two countries, being born and raised as a citizen of one, and becoming a citizen of the other.In as much, the book also dwells on key developments in the region and global events and personalities who impact South-east Asia; offering a perspective that is unusually regional.In a series of four chapters comprising some 50--plus original essays, commentaries and articles, he takes the reader through the multi-faceted politics, key personalities, culture, Faiths, sports and the arts of Singapore and Malaysia, as well as the rest of South-east Asia, especially its major players such as Vietnam (a trilogy of articles), Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.And, as an epilogue, his fifth chapter consists of 10 original verses written in the olde woodwind rhythms of routine rhyme about Faith, relationships, ambition, death and life; to round up this 358-page book, his first. Read more