Peggy Chan | Freshskin Beauty Specialist & Lily Loh | Hundred Ways | Singapore

In Singapore’s nebulous world of wellness and beauty, I met two friends turn business partners - Peggy Chan and Lily Loh. Peggy provides bespoke facial treatments and beauty therapies through her company - Freshskin Beauty Specialist, while Lily does makeovers and styling through her business – Hundred Ways. I’m usually a DIY kind of person when it comes to my skin, but spending the afternoon with Peggy and Lily convinced me that if there was anyone I’d trust to put their hands on my face, it would be these two! 

Meet Peggy.

I’m like a skin consultant, but my customers tell me I give very different advice. I learnt a lot from working with skin doctors and doing research on the ingredients that go into skincare products, so I don’t like to push services or brands because we all have different skin types and conditions. I mix and match what I use based on each customer’s skin, especially because many products are not made for Asian skin in Singapore’s weather. 

For some reason, a lot of teenagers come to me for help and I really enjoy it because they tend to have lots of issues. I like difficult problems like that because the challenge gives me a greater sense of satisfaction when I see improvements.

I had a customer who came to me once with very bad skin. It made her so quiet and soft spoken that she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. After five to six sessions, her skin started to improve and her confidence started to grow! She’s been with me for 6 – 7 years now. 

I came from a poor family in Malaysia. After my parents’ divorce, we moved to JB (Johor Bahru) and my mom started a job selling bread. I was with her one day when she was working in the heavy rain. I offered to help her, but she asked me to stay in the bread truck. I remember watching her with her raincoat on and loaves of bread going door-to-door trying to make a sale. It hurt my heart so much. I told myself that when I graduated from school I was going to do all I could for her not to have to suffer like this anymore.

I started this business because I wanted to spend more time with my children and I love seeing the transformation in my customers’ character and attitude when they go through the treatment. You know healthy skin has such an impact on self-confidence.  I feel successful and so satisfied when I see results.

Lily and I met while working at an aesthetic clinic. Actually she was the one who interviewed me! We work so well together because we share the same outlook on how service should be done, how things should look and especially how to treat people. We believe in honest, open communication and value this in our relationship with customers.

Meet Lily.

Most of my work in Style Coaching is for everyday looks. I guide people of all ages to groom and dress in ways that allows their true selves to shine. It’s beautiful to see how knowing the right colours, textures and cuts can change peoples outlook on themselves and the way they interact with others.

My interest in beauty started because of my own skin issues. Growing up, my skin problems and the lack of acknowledgement at home caused me to battle with low self-esteem. I became a perfectionist who was very sensitive and aware of issues around beauty. Because of that, I decided to go to beauty school. 

At beauty school, we were trained like nurses almost - understanding the intricacies of how the skin functions, how the machines work, etc. I came out of that programme knowing how to take care of myself better and it inspired me to want to teach others to deliver quality work in this field. So in addition to style coaching, skin therapy and hair & makeup, I teach part time at a beauty school in Singapore. 

I got this compass because of an urge I felt to get another tattoo. I didn’t realise till after I got it that a compass symbolises direction and I was at a crossroads at the time. So I feel the compass grounds me in a way and points me towards the right path.

Being able to help people who want to see change in their lives and working with them to find their style makes me so happy. The outward and inward transformation from Style Coaching gives me such a sense of satisfaction that it’s almost therapeutic. 

Peggy is patient, thoughtful, and sunshine personified, while Lily is intuitive, contemplative and gentle (like the moon). Together they’ve formed a seamless partnership that impacts lives through enhancing natural beauty. In an industry that can be harsh and predatory, it’s comforting to know that there are genuine souls like Peggy and Lily out there.

Drop by Freshskin Beauty Specialist at 470 North Bridge Road, Bugis Cube #04-18 if you’ve been thinking about improving the health of your skin or changing up your style. Not only will you be able to see Peggy and Lily without their masks on, but if you tell them about this photostory, you’ll also get a 10% discount on your treatment! Total win-win.

Uncle Five Part II | Singapore

It's been two years since I last attempted to piece together the story of Uncle Five. Due to a series of circumstances, and for obvious reasons, we have begun cleaning out his house.

Uncle Five is still the strongest man I know, but now, because of prostate cancer, he wears a urinary catheter and unrelated to cancer, he only has sight in his right eye.

Somethings don't change through, he is still a man whose smiles are like rare treasures, he still walks slowly with both hands behind his back, still has a hearty appetite despite having only one tooth and is still hard of hearing, making him a professional at selective conversations.

When the idea first came to declutter his home, we wanted to hire help to clear everything in a few days. Uncle Five refused and told use that there were valuables in his house that could be sold. He needed to be part of the process, no outside help was welcomed, and so began our journey. Every Saturday morning for 4-5 months in 2014, we picked him up from the nursing home and brought him to his flat.

Since he is in his mid-eighties, we started by working an average of 2 hours per session. As his stamina increased, so did our hours. He readily tossed out old shoes he collected and mended, but was adament about keeping his handmade boxes and furniture that was covered in a layer of cockroach eggs, dead roaches or daddy long legs spiders.

From a seemingly dirty and laborious task, this became one of the most profound experiences of my life. Every week felt like I was walking into a time capsule. Not only was I learning about Singapore’s past through water bills from the 1980s, old kerosene lamps, opium pipes and sewing machines, but I also learnt so much about Uncle Five’s heart.

In making decisions about what to throw out, he often yelled out to no one in particular, "有没有用啊? You mei you yong ah?" (Is there a use for this?). Everything was about usefulness to him, how it could benefit someone else.

Sometimes amidst the rubble, I find clues to his life before. Passport photos that seemed to chronicle 50 years of his life; Two lone combs in a small plastic medicine cabinet next to the door in a room that was completely taken over by stuff (I once found two tricycles in that room, packed vertically in front of me, held up by a mixture of wooden planks, shovels and metal poles). Items like the two combs tucked away amidst all that chaos led my mind to wander and dwell on the man who used to look into the small mirror in front of the medicine cabinet and comb his hair.

And then there are purely puzzling moments. Once, we moved a huge sponge mattress that sat on a table and found smear marks from a squashed cockroach and 15 empty peanut shells. It was quite odd. 

The closer we get to clearing the house though, we start to see walls and furniture and the house Uncle Five moved into 30 years ago comes to life. As the previous photo story mentioned, Uncle Five worked on ships for many years and finally settled back in Singapore in his 50s. With his brother's (RIP Uncle Nine) help, Uncle Five's savings were spent on buying a 3 bedroom flat, the first property he has ever owned. The pride he felt in his home reverberates off the walls today through picture frames of landscapes carefully hammered together and hung with precision.

The telephone with big numbers in the corner that still had a dial tone. When I asked him what his phone number was, he told me not to call him.

A glass case full of vases neatly placed and kept safe.

On the shelf above the desk he built, sat a beautiful wood carved ship, one of many ship motifs that reminded me of his love for handmade things and his 30 year journey out at sea.

Throughout the last two years, especially during this process, I've learnt some new stories about him as well.

When he was as 17, just after the Japanese left Singapore after World War II ended, he went out to run an errand for his mom on a damaged bicycle. On his way, the bicycle chain came loose and he stopped to fix it. It is unclear if he was in a traffic jam or caused the jam, but he was approached behind by a very big policeman who hit him several times on the back of the head with a baton. He said that it's been 70years but his head still hurts.

When he was a young adult, Uncle Five would visit a relative who built things for the British Army. He would go often and observe him work for hours, then he would go to Sungei Road to buy the tools he saw and try to make things on his own.

Uncle Five has been on an airplane 4 times in his life. Twice to Amsterdam, once to Sydney and once to the US or UK for work. He told the story of how he had a job exporting butter from Queensland, Australia by ship. The route took him to parts of New Zealand, Panama, the west coast of the USA and Canada, down the east side to New York, to ports along the coast of the African continent, and back to Australia. He said the journey took 2 years. When I think about the world today with all the access to information we have; discovering the world that way Uncle Five did seem so arrestingly powerful and courageous.

And he didn’t just make stopovers. Uncle Five was institutionalized in South Africa once. As the story goes, he was dropped off during a work stint on a ship when he had a mental ‘episode’. He was eventually transferred to Singapore’s mental institution (called Woodbridge at the time) where a relative who worked there found him among the patients several months after our family lost contact with him.

When you look at his hands, his fingers are all bent out of shape, from a job hammering metal boxes together for 2 years. Having known all this about him, I visited one day and told him I had quit my job. He seemed surprised and asked me how much I had made there and why I had left. While trying to find the words, he furrowed his brow and asked me “辛苦吗? Xing ku ma?" Translated to English, it means "did it cause you suffering". I looked at him at a loss for words. Of all the hardships that he has been through, being put in the mental institution multiple times, living through a war, hammering mental boxes that disfigured his hands... He asked me if I had suffered. At a loss for words, humbled and feeling the weignt of that moment, I nodded and he nodded in understanding and acknowledgement “辛苦 啊辛苦. Xing Ku ah xing ku.”

Every week for 4-5 months we went to Uncle Five’s house to learn bits and pieces of history. There were so many treasures that I couldn't bear to throw away. Uncle Five’s many beautiful handmade made a particular impression on me. They were not made of the best material and would not win any awards for functionality, but in a world where everything is digital, something as imperfect as Uncle Five's boxes makes such a deep print on my soul. I felt that those pieces ought to be be displayed in a museum and his story told. 

Being part of this journey in Singapore with Uncle Five has filled my heart with so many emotions I can hardly explain them all. I feel so privileged to have been part of this moment of history being passed so symbolically through the house of a hoarder to me.

We had our last session on 8 June before Uncle Five moved back home. I am glad to get my Saturdays back, but a litle afraid too because I don’t know what adventure Uncle Five will be on next and I almost feel like I might not get the chance to see him again (also because he has never been responsive to knocks or rings from door bells).

The saying goes that no man is an island, but I felt like I have visited the island where one man lives. It is still largely a mystery to me, how a baby would become a man like him on an island and I will carry these memories with me for a long time to come.

[Uncle Five passed away on 23 September 2015.]

Uncle Five Part I | Singapore

Uncle Five is very close to my heart though he isn't the greatest communicator. These photostories were my way of understanding him better, piecing together snippets of oral history through present day images.

This is part one of a journey of discovery that was written on December 2011 in Singapore.

This is my Uncle Five. He is my grandmother's brother and the oldest of seven siblings. No one knows why his name is Five, but it has always been that way.

He rides his bike everywhere, wary of spending unnecessary money on public transit. Every sunday for the last few years, he would ride his bike to our house carrying everything from oranges to a full length mirror and a thick wooden single seater couch. We would sometimes watch dumfounded as he unloaded the furniture at our gate, hanging bags of expired food where he could find space, oblivious to our presence.

He was 19 when the Japanese invaded Singapore. He went from working at his parents' bakery to being a coolie for the soldiers. He always had a heart to help people and left school after Primary 5 to support his family. The story goes that after he was tortured by the Japanese, he was never the same again.

As far as everyone knows, Uncle Five has been to Woodbridge three times. Rumours in the early days were that every patient who was admitted would have been greeted with excruciating electroshock therapy, regardless of the diagnosis. So now, when he goes for radiation treatment for prostate cancer, not only does he feel nothing, but he asks why wires aren't being attached to him.

The first time Uncle Five was admitted, it was because he grabbed the neighbours daughter and held her tight. He fancied her and didn't know how to express himself. She screamed for help and by the time my father and his siblings came around, Uncle Five was having the daylights kicked out of him by her family. My father and his siblings, who were children at the time, had to drag him away. To keep him from jail, his brother, Uncle Nine, admitted him to Woodbridge instead.

Uncle Five's mother was a formidable matriarch. She protected her flock with a firm hand and disciplined unapologetically. She was also a diabetic. In her old age, when her body began loosing its strength, she collapsed one day and became paralysed from the neck down. A relative who was not so fond of her, saw the incident as an opportunity and tried to suffocate her in the middle of the night. She didn't succeed. The whole incident created such a stir that the police was called in. To protect the family, Uncle Five took the rap for the incident and was admitted to Woodbridge again.

When Uncle Five was younger, there were days where he'd lock himself in his room, coming out only when my father and his cousins were making a racket outside. My father said that Uncle Five was a terror, that one time, his cousin had a hammer thrown at him barely missing his head. They all learnt to be careful around Uncle Five.

Uncle Five has worked at sea for over 20 years as a steward. He has travelled all over the world including places like Italy, South Africa, and Canada. He would often disappear at sea and come back home randomly. He never seemed to have all his bearings, but he always knew his way home.

He also loved to fix things for people. That was and still is his love language. My aunt laughs when she tells the story about how as kids, they would wear out their shoes and wouldn't be able to afford new ones. At night, Uncle Five would thoughtfully cobble heavy rubber soles to their shoes so in the morning to their horror, they had to go to school with weights at their feet.

He lives frugally and conscientiously, living by the motto that what you don't give away to family, you sell

Uncle Five loved to collect vases in his travels at sea. He used to have vases of all shapes and sizes in his room. They were so beautiful that a relative would often pop in when he wasn't home to take a few vases for herself. Annoyed, Uncle Five glued thick blocks of wood to the bottom of the vases so the next time she came in, they couldn't be moved.

This is my Uncle Five. He is 85 and still rides his bike around better than I ever could. He loves to drink Soy Bean Milk and eat green bean soup.