The Go-FAR Team

The bosses:

Professor Shyam Tekwani

Go-FAR is the brainchild of Shyam and he has been heading it relentless for the past  years. His passion for documenting conflict journalism through his lens has made him rubbed shoulders with people like the Sri Lanka Tamil Tigers. On top of Go-FAR, Shyam has been running the photojournalism courses, and inspiring many to take up the camera and document their world.  There’s one more thing that Shyam tops everyone and wants you to know–you can’t outtalk him.

Lau Joon-Nie

A lawyer by training, Joon-Nie has spent over 15 years in broadcast television as a reporter, interactive producer, current affairs producer and news editor at Channel NewsAsia and its predecessors SBC News and TCS News. As a young reporter, she covered the Court and Technology beats extensively, often combining her coverage of the Internet’s emergence in Singapore with unchartered areas in the Law. This resulted in numerous scoops involving the first Internet defamation case in the Singapore courts, online intellectual property theft of a local digital artist’s work, Internet governance issues, domain name disputes, digital watermarking and Internet regulation.

In recent years while on the International News Desk, Joon-Nie travelled extensively to countries like Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, offering Channel NewsAsia’s viewers new insights into these countries.  She has won several in-house awards for reporting, executive producing and best ‘live’ coverage. In 2001, she received a Student Emmy for her Masters documentary project “Blue Sky Station: New York’s Third Chinatown” which was produced, shot and edited while studying at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism under a fellowship from MediaCorp.

Cherian George

Cherian is the head of the journalism and publishing division at the Wee Kim Wee School. He teaches an introductory course on the journalism profession as well as media ethics. He researches press and politics, including censorship and alternative media. He was a journalist with The Straits Times for ten years, where he wrote mainly on politics and media, and served as the paper’s editor for art and photography. He twice won the company’s feature of the year award. He joined NTU in 2004, after a postdoctoral fellowship at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute.

Cherian maintains an active involvement in the industry and community service. He publishes a monthly current affairs newspaper for primary and secondary schools. His first book, Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation, was published in 2000. His second book, Contentious Journalism and the Internet: Democratising Discourse in Malaysia and Singapore, was published in 2006.

Print Journalists:

Mohd Zakaria

Go-Far will present me with another opportunity to open my eyes, broaden my perspectives and add another jigsaw piece to my understanding of the human condition – be it with the pen or camera.

Journalism is about people and their stories. Period. My internship in Nepal has allowed me to meet some of the most genuine and kindhearted people with amazing stories to share. Bangladesh awaits.”

Cheryl Ong

She hopes to experience something different from what she’s been doing so far, yet closely related to her interests in newswriting. She’s also curious about Bangladesh, a place she knew zilch about before Go-Far, and what she’ll encounter there.

She was a news editor for The Nanyang Chronicle and has interned with The Straits Times. She expects the worst most of the time, and hence will be bringing her own supply of anti-diarrhoea medication to the trip.

Zeinab d/o Saiwalla

Throw me in the deep end and let me learn to survive, I say and hence the reason Go-FAR. With a love for travelling, I believe that the best way to grow as an individual is to meet others from different backgrounds and cultures for it is these that enriches the mind and broadens perspective-essentials really. Pursuing journalism was a natural choice for it beautifully combines the opportunities to meet all sorts of people to gain a varied understanding yet demands individualism from the writer, allowing me to eventually have the last word. But I am not all about words and English. I love my math and numbers too because I think numbers make the world go round.

Armed with a calculator, balance sheets and a pen I think business journalists are a formidable force especially now because in this day and age, reading rightly between the numbers can either make or break someone.

So watch out – Bangladesh here I come with my pen, a calculator and some balance sheets.

Huang Huifen

A love for culture and belief that everyone has a story to share is what drives Huifen into pursuing journalism, even to the shores of USA, Dubai and soon, Bangladesh. She believes that true journalism is about getting out of the office, immersing herself into the lifestyles of the subjects, and giving voice to the voiceless. She also loves photography, and dreams to combine writing and photography into her work next time. She has won the Asian Geographic Search for the Next Photojournalist in 2008, and been nominated for a journalism award in Dubai in the same year. She may look all girly and airy-fairy, but she is highly adaptable to any situations and tough, having gone for community service projects in the rural areas of Indonesia in 2006 and 2007 respectively, and having survived on her own for 6 months in USA in 2008. So, Bangladesh, prepare your stories and let it be heard.

Jalelah Baker

I think I thrive on adrenaline. I believe I found the perfect profession that gives exactly the kind of adrenaline I need. Having tight deadlines, trying to get interviews and to ask the right questions makes me feel at home. After all the stress, the feeling of accomplishment surpasses all other previous negative emotions, according to me. I am naturally hyper, and I look forward to all new things. I believe I have an open mind that helps me see past many stereotypes, and this will hopefully be a boon to me in Bangladesh. Overseas reporting is going to be a minefield, and I am looking forward to embracing the challenges ahead. Admittedly, I am still very new when it comes to reporting, as I only recently discovered that that’s my passion. I believe this experience will help to nurture my skills in a way that no other experience will, at least while I am still a student!

Kash Cheong

Kash finds meaning in her daily muse on her toilet seat, but realises there’s so much more she doesn’t know every time she goes out into the world.
Having drank from experiences in India, Thailand and Cambodia, she loves the strangeness of new places and the slight discomfort of every new adventure.
Armed with curiousity and just enough clothes in her suitcase, and of course, pen and paper in her handcarry, she hopes to return in one piece, just with more stories to tell.

Poon Chian Hui

Chian Hui doesn’t have any particular passions as she is interested in almost any topic, but she vehemently hates cats, taxi drivers who smoke, Singaporeans who speak in fake accents and the colour orange. For more details, you will have to befriend her.

Bangladesh doesn’t exactly faze her as she has no problems getting all down and dirty – only her long-time friends will know this secret history. After traversing Europe last year armed with only one pair of jeans, having her sneakers stolen in Athens (thank goodness for H&M beach slippers), stealing trolleys from Swedish supermarkets, camping in a cramped caravan (more like an airless box with lousy beds inside) in the middle of some Italian forest, suspected of being an illegal immigrant after officials on a midnight train at the Hungarian border failed to recognize the Singapore passport, and running top-speed for 20 minutes across a village-town in Transylvania to catch the last train to avoid sleeping on the streets and getting attacked by vampires, she is keen to add more wacky adventures to her travel scrapbooks.

Teo Wan Gek

As a journalist, I hope I never lose my sensitivity and that I remember to tell their stories and even though things may not change for the better for them, I can live with myself knowing that I tried. Going to Bangladesh, I hope I don’t lose sight of things and go into a mad dash of rushing out stories and letting these people that I talked to become my anecdotal lead, kicker, and just nameless faces.

Rather than staring at the New York Times and TIME and dreaming that one day my articles will turn up there, Bangladesh gives me a real shot at writing stories for them. Having interned at The Sunday Times and news editor at The Nanyang Chronicle, those experiences have given me alot of exposure. From stakeouts to working more than 16 hours on some days and leaving work bleary-eyed and half-comatose, the rush that I get from the stories is more than enough to keep me going.

I’ve always loved writing and I’m glad that I can do it as a career.

Photojournalists:

Tan Yi Wen

Yi Wen’s idea of a dream job includes traversing across the globe and photographing people in their environments. Having peed in the bushes, gotten lost while photographing in both bustling New York and chaotic Kathmandu, died and gotten reborn while bungee-jumping and negotiated her way past protesters at roadblocks, she is starting to be addicted to life’s unexpected twists and turns. While she has an inkling of what Dal Bhat in Bangladesh will taste like, she is looking forward to taking the road less travelled and meeting the unexpected during GO-FAR Bangladesh. She loves the idea of how photojournalism is able to fuel her desire to understand different cultures and people, and how she can make things happen just by making pictures.

Kong Yen Lin

21-year-old Yen Lin is currently pursuing a double major degree in Communication Studies and Sociology. Having practiced Fine Art for almost as long as she could remember, she had always fantasized of ending up as an Art Historian. But life’s detours got her into photojournalism three years ago when she became the photo editor of The Nanyang Chronicle. Currently fresh out from a journalism internship in Nepal where she wrote extensively about gender, health and education, Yen Lin hopes to specialize in development journalism and carry on with more field reporting in Nepal or South Asia. And here’s something else: she loves the feeling of hunger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nuria Ling

Nuria does not enjoy writing her own profile because she almost always regrets it the next day. She is now unable to be anything other than a  photojournalist after her stint at The Straits Times Picture Desk made it unthinkable for her to go back to a desk-bound job. The need to get that picture empowers her to overcome many things – though she would still rather fly SIA. Being selected for Go-Far is a privilege that she will pay back through the images and untold stories of a segment of society whose voices are muted. On a last note, she gets a kick busting the myth that photographers need to be sweaty, clumsy and male. She regards the sound of the Nikon shutter as one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

Video Team:

Lee Lay Ming

“Alamak, Bangladesh that kind of place you also want to go,” these were the exact words my dad said to me when I called home to say I’ve been selected for Go-far. So what kind of place is it? Most of us know Bangladesh because of the Bangladeshi workers in Singapore, but we don’t know it as a country so when the chance came along for me to better understand its culture and people, I decided to take it. And I like travelling because there will always be a rich trove of experiences and insights to take away at every destination. I’m excited to be working on a video project as part of Go-far, and I really hope to present something meaningful that can tell touching and humane stories.

Oh, and since I was asked to write something wacky about myself, I shall digress to share something I realised not too long ago – I have an inborn talent for cooking and housekeeping, so it seems like I’m well on course to realising my childhood ambition of being a housewife (cue for you to start laughing now)!

Liew Shixiong

Shi Xiong considers himself an amateur-guerrilla-student-wannabe filmmaker and his passion for filmmaking has seen him not only wrecked a $15,000 camera, but also caught by the police twice for trespassing. His childhood fantasy is to become a wandering swordsman in ancient China, but his greatest dream now is to make an epic movie on the life of the Buddha. He is thankful of this chance to shoot in a foreign land and he hopes to learn more about the Bangladeshi society, its people and how with a pure human heart, we can transcend all obstacles in life.

Phillip Lim

I am Philip, and I am just an average guy. I wake up in the morning, go to work and look forward to the next drink as and when I can get it. My favorite pastimes include geeky pursuits such as playing computer games, watching movies and reading fantasy novels, but strangely everyone loves refering to me as “uncle” instead of “boyo” or “loser.” I suppose it’s because of my immensely mature mentality and my shockingly wise statements, and has absolutely nothing to do with having zilch fashion sense and the behavior of a hard-of-hearing, hokkien-spewing gaffer. I decided to sign up for Go-Far as I wanted to go far (forgive the absolutely stunning pun) and experience journalism outside of my comfort zone. However, I must also confess that leaving for an unknown country, with unknown dangers and thrills together with a bunch of buddies, was also an instigating factor in my decision. I hope it turns out as swell as I hope it will be!