I am Hazel — not a pen name, not a committee, just a person who writes better when the fan is off and the corridor is quiet. I grew up in Queenstown when the town still felt like a experiment in vertical living, and I stayed because leaving turned out to be easier than staying away. Journal Wave is my excuse to pay attention in public: to junctions, lift lobbies, market stairs, and all the mundane infrastructure that holds a life together when nobody is photographing it for social media.
By day I do ordinary office work that has nothing to do with literary ambition. I am good at spreadsheets and mediocre at small talk, which balances out. By evening I become a slower version of myself — the one who notices which neighbour hangs laundry earliest, which bus driver waits an extra second for the auntie with the trolley, which rain smells mean a storm will actually arrive instead of performing and leaving. Writing is how I file those observations before they evaporate.
I am not a historian, though readers sometimes treat me like one. I do not have archive access or oral history grants. What I have is repetition: the same walk to the market, the same slope to Chin Swee, the same window where the lamp comes on at 7:14 p.m. as if timed by a conscientious ghost. Memory improves with rehearsal; so does prose, though more slowly and with greater embarrassment when I reread last year's drafts.
My grandmother lived in these blocks before the renovation programmes renamed half the landmarks. She taught me that a neighbourhood is a chorus — voices overlapping, some off-key, all necessary. I try to write without stealing anyone's solo. When I mention a coffee shop uncle or a corridor cat, I change what needs changing and leave true what belongs to everyone: the weather, the MRT hum, the way light behaves before rain.
Journal Wave takes its name from the twenty minutes when sky and sodium lamps disagree about what colour the world should be. I publish irregularly because regularity would turn observation into obligation, and obligation kills the wry tone I am aiming for — not sarcasm, just the slight angle that lets you see a familiar place anew. British spelling, present tense when memory demands it, no monetised links, no urgency. If that sounds like your pace, pull up a chair in the Reading Room and stay awhile.
Reach me through the Find Me page if you must. I prefer letters to comments, silence to quarrels, and walking to arguing online. Queenstown keeps teaching me that dignity lives in small acts — sweeping leaves, holding a lift door, remembering someone's grandchild's exam season. I am still learning. The notes are proof of tuition.
I read more than I publish — essays, municipal reports, old newspapers on microfilm when the library allows. Influence leaks in without permission. What stays on the page is filtered through Dawson windows and corridor acoustics. If my voice sounds local, that is because it is. If it sounds amused, that is because seriousness without humour feels dishonest about how people actually live.
Thank you for reading. The portrait is incomplete by design — I update it rarely, like a photograph faded in a wallet. The writing updates more often, though still not quickly. Slowness is a feature, not an apology.