When I first began school in WKWSCI, my lecturer showed us Radio Station Forgot To Play My Favourite Song, a rockumentary about the local music scene in Singapore. It turned out to be a final-year project (FYP) by a group of seniors and I told myself my FYP had to be like that — to show Singaporeans another side of their own country.

In my third year, I tried to get the filmmakers down to talk about the film atSingaplural, but unfortunately they were all tied up, so I never got to meet them. As I finally attempt to finish up my own FYP this year, I chanced upon the film again when I was surfing around for local music and found Radio Station by The Padres, the song that played as the film rolled through its credits. After some Googling, I chanced upon one of the filmmaker’s blog, Billy Tan, who wrote a retrospect about the film:

The 3 of us have always enjoyed the compliments over the years but its also a little sad that none of us are within even sniffing distance of the hotshit rockumentarians we were 5 years ago – in fact we’ve all joined the SYSTEM and are civil servants now. If there were still anything remotely creative and edgy left in us, it probably would’ve been shat out of us by now. Sadly, we’re fading away instead of burning out.

In the song Radio Station, The Padres ask, We’re so young, have we got time? and listening to it makes me question how much time I have to grow before I have to take on the world and how much time I have left before my ideals are spent. And as I read Billy’s post, the song ended, There’s no more time… I wondered if I might end up talking like him a few years down the road.