This month, The Ridge features two Facebook projects – Bare Nusessities and UniLuncher – that aim to better engage NUS students, and connect us in more meaningful ways.
#1: BARE NUSESSITIES
“What’s your fondest childhood memory?”
“How do you want to be remembered?”
NUS boasts a myriad of wonderful people with incredible stories – yet so rarely do we chance upon fleeting opportunities to learn something new about someone new. First-year Life Sciences undergraduate Kae Yuan has made it his personal project to uncover glimpses into the life stories of strangers he meets on campus – a project he terms Bare Nusessities.
Inspired by Humans of New York, Bare Nusessities’ Facebook page is filled with captivating photos of smiling faces, shots of belongings, taken in campus locations we are familiar with – all accompanied with intriguing and provocative captions that reveal a bit more about the subject in question. To date, Bare Nusessities has garnered nearly 900 likes on its page within one semester of being in operation, with 82 people having been featured on the page.
Kae Yuan shares his motivation behind the project: “I’m interested in people, that’s why I’m doing this. We should be open to talking to the next stranger we see. It’s really not that hard, and you’d be surprised at where the conversation leads. Plus they often offer some new perspective, which is really cool.”
“I think that many Singaporeans have this fear of talking to strangers, like bothering other people – that makes us appear a bit cold.”
Kae Yuan relates how he found himself “ghosting around” in his first week of University. Having not joined any orientation camps, he said, “I could spend the whole day not talking to anyone… this wasn’t my image of university. So I wanted to do something.”
“The second week of school, I started this project.”
The idea of approaching complete strangers – albeit within a secure campus environment – was daunting. But the first person he met on the project made him feel better by encouraging him, giving him the confidence to execute Bare Nusessities.
Selecting a subject is an exercise in patience. “My criterion is very simple. You’re alone or in a pair, and you look like you’re not going anywhere.”
The learning curve wasn’t easy either. “Initially, what I did in my first few weeks was to stop people who were walking, and that wasn’t very good because usually they are on the way somewhere… the responses would be quite short. It will be better if I approached someone who is resting, admiring the sunset or something. It’s easier when they’re in a relaxed mode.”
There are also those who decline having their photos taken, in which case Kae Yuan may take a photo of their shoes, or belongings. For those who decline to be featured on the page at all, Kae Yuan says it’s fine – “I’ll just keep it in my memory.”
Having had so many encounters with different people, Kae Yuan cannot identify his most memorable encounter, “because at the end of each conversation I would learn something new.”
“I would say that the longest conversation was more than two hours.”
It bears an odd irony in the fact that students belonging to a population as diverse as NUS’s rarely venture out of the comfort zone of familiar social circles. That said, despite the comfort of familiarity, there is beauty in fleeting moments with strangers we are surrounded by everyday. As Kae Yuan puts it, “There’s something unique about talking to a stranger… we have no vested interests or something, you know? There’s something cool about just meeting someone once and never seeing them again.”
Pausing to reflect on his personal objectives, Kae Yuan admits that his initial goal was to face his fear of talking to strangers and meet people different from him. He was also keen to find out what is important for people. “I think most of us don’t know what’s important, or we don’t particularly. We cannot exactly pinpoint it, but we can express it in some ways.”
“I guess I’m trying to find out what people hold dear, and then learn more about myself as well.”
The well maintained site is helmed singlehandedly by Kae Yuan for the five months since its inception. “It’s a personal project, so I get to decide if I continue or stop. The good thing is that I am the one motivating myself to do it so I don’t feel like it’s work – I’ll probably continue it.” But he adds, “The current method of finding a stranger is quite time consuming, so I might have to change it.”
It seems for Kae Yuan though, that the effort is worth every second he spends.
“They say you have to learn something new everyday, so that’s a good way and, who knows, you might meet your new best friend.”
Who knows, indeed.