How hunger made me a top chef

Rico Hizon takes Outlook on a tour of Singapore through the extraordinary stories of people who live there.

Douglas Ng is a hawker – a street food seller – preparing Singapore’s traditional fishball noodles in one of the town’s eateries. He learnt the recipe from his grandmother.

Ang Song Kang a.k.a. Chef Kang started working in a kitchen because he had no food at home. He is now an award winning chef.

Rico also meets three Outlook listeners Chin Chye, Su Mei Lee and Sie Siz. They tell him what being Singaporean means to them.

Mohammad Mukul Hossine is a migrant worker from Bangladesh. When he arrived in Singapore in 2008, he got a job on a construction site. The work was difficult and not what he expected, so he started venting his feelings through poetry, scribbling his words on cement bags.

Graffiti is illegal in Singapore: if you get caught you can be fined a huge sum, and even go to prison. But there is a neighbourhood where street art is flourishing. A’shua Imran and Rozaimie Sahbi, known as Slac Satu, take us on a tour of the Arab quarter and explain how artists work around the country’s strict rules.

Picture: Ang Song Kang a.k.a. Chef Kang
Credit: BBC/Timothy McDonald