Because if it weren't for my mother that day, there wouldn't be this editor today.
My editorial journey began on a Tuesday morning in 1973, the moment I burst from my mother's womb, with the accelerator pressed to the metal from the very first second.
My mother gave me the most precious gift of my life from the very first minute of my birthday. Without it, I wouldn't even have the opportunity to pursue a career as an "automotive creative" as I do today.
The first few kilometers of the journey began on a street in Chinatown (near the current Tanjong Pagar railway station), where I spent the first few years of my childhood.
I am the youngest of six siblings. My father was a sailor and general laborer, while my mother was a housewife who was a very bright student in elementary school but had to drop out because, back then, adults believed that sending daughters to school was a waste of money—and there was hardly any money left anyway.
The "Ting" family and all our belongings are crammed into a single, tiny room. We have to share the kitchen and bathroom with other families who live in crowded conditions on the second floor of a row house that's somewhere between "livable" and "desperate."
I don't know why, but my memory of those kitchens and squat toilets is as hazy as the old, creaky wooden staircase in typical Chinatown style that groans with every step.
Or perhaps, my mother's cooking from my childhood, back when we were "from a humble background," was too simple, leaving nothing memorable, even on Chinese New Year when there was more meat than usual. Or maybe I didn't even shower often enough, because the whole family had to conserve water and money.
But what I choose to remember vividly is playing with a few toy cars in that humble apartment on Tras Street.
I can't say for sure if any of those cars are truly mine, even though my memories of the pioneering "automotive" era are less faded than the black exhaust fumes from the back of those rotten diesel trucks.
But what I'm sure of is that my mother asked a kind neighbor to tell his son to share his "car" with me, and we had so much fun pushing it around on the wooden floor together.
When I had nothing, I was more than happy to let the other party play the role of "boss," driving a Mercedes-Benz, while I reluctantly accepted being just "subordinate," driving my trusty Toyota. I must have played the role of the Hokkien right-hand man quite convincingly, because after that, I was upgraded to driving a luxurious Cadillac on weekdays and a cheap Celica on weekends.
My next automotive upgrade was in the large outdoor parking lot beneath the HDB apartment building in Clementi, where our family moved in.
There, I started a strange hobby: writing down the make, model, and license plate numbers of every car parked under the building and in the nearby blocks.
His mother was probably secretly worried that her son's teenage dream was to become a ticket taker, patrolling parking lots around the island issuing tickets and secretly admiring beautiful cars at the same time.
Fortunately, my mother encouraged me to study hard while also allowing me to indulge in my lifelong passion for cars, from pictures adorning the walls to car reviews. And I was incredibly lucky that my favorite subject was English, which became a vital tool for "telling my automotive stories" for decades to come.
My final chapter with my 81-year-old mother ended in 2018 when she passed away. If she were still alive, she would have turned 90 in May 2026.
2018 would have been much harder for me if my mother hadn't sent me a "divine blessing" that helped change the course of my career for the better just a few months after her passing. And she blessed me again when that pleasant detour ended with a U-turn back into the world of automotive media as the editor of Motorist.
Thank you, Mom, for letting me play with my toys too much and for quietly helping me throughout the journey.
Columnist, Vintage Cars, and My Late Mother (1936-2018).
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