I have written about how the Young Generation Magazine (YG) come about in an earlier memory posted. I will now talk a little bit about its predecessor, the Young Singaporean Magazine. I am not exactly sure when it started, possibly mid-70s ? Probably someone who is in the know may write something about that. What I do remember is that my eldest brother, who was 3 years older than me, used to buy these during our primary school days. It costs only 20 cents per copy. The paper quality is not as good as YG, and its not even stapled in its spine, just a collection of loose leaflets. But its content is amazing. The first picture shown here is the only copy I have in possession now (threw away most of the copies we used to keep years ago, as there were just too much stuff we had in our little 3-room flat) showed an article on how Singapore was changing its postal code from 2 digits to 4 digits from 1st July 1979. Many Singaporeans would probably remember how we used to have the 4 digit postal code, and then changed to 6 digits. But the change from 2 digits to 4 digits is even earlier. All these changes showed how the growing population in Singapore over the years have affected our lives. The magazine, like YG, had articles in both English and Chinese. I remember practising the eye massaging exercise ever since I read an article inside the magazine (see picture #2), even until now. Its demonstrated by the child actress, 陈姿宝. Its a very helpful exercise to relief stress in the eyes. There is also a section known as "Spark of Genius", which is bilingual. It presented an imaginary difficult situation/problem in daily life, and asked its readers to propose a solution, and the winners will get a $5 prize. Each issue also gave the answer to the problem posed in the previous issue. I thought that its a good idea to nurture creativity in our young minds. Besides these, there were also comics (both English and Chinese, including my favourite Quyuan), "Milk for Young People Contest", children stories from around the world, Paper Mate Colouring Contest, school news, information on newly published books and cartoon soundtracks. Thats a great deal of content for just 20 cents !
