Before she passed away peacefully late last year, the mother of a close friend from my university days suffered poor health for a few years. My friend based in London tried to spend as much time as he could in Singapore.

Every time he came back, he would visit his old haunts and satisfy his craving for local hawker food – the No. 1 obsession of all Singaporean returnees, I suspect. But his focus was his mother’s well-being, of course.