Yvonne Foong: Fighting NF

When I was born, my father purchased the Nikon MF-16, a film Single-Lens-Reflect camera of the Nikon FA series. My father enjoyed photography before he suffered a brain hemorrhage. With this camera, Dad took many pictures of me as a baby, that we still keep until this day. Below are some of those marvelous snapshots.

I am scanning pictures for the broadcast journalist in-charged of spicing up The Breakfast Show scheduled next Wednesday. At the same time, MPH is republishing my book, and they need these photographs for cover ideas.

As I flipped through our albums searching for meaningful shots, my heart cringed glancing at the empty slots where my chubby face used to be. While raising funds for the A.B.I. in 2006, some news journalists asked to borrow my photographs, as many as possible. I allowed foolishly, trusting that they would be handled as promised. But the journalists only returned them long after my story was published, and when they did, some never came back.

I suppose they would have treated my things well if I wasn’t just another desperate girl raising funds. I trusted them. But after getting hurt so many times, I’ve wised up and no longer hand over anything to the media that I want returned. To be fair, though, such things also happened with students.

Most journalists are decent people except for the rare few. They tend to be young and fresh. Their time was always more precious than mine, and I had to tell them everything. Although it’s common practice to get information out of the horse’s mouth, but there are the kind of questions you would ask after doing some homework, and there are the kind of questions asked without.

But most frustrating of all, those journalists did not realize that the person who took these photographs was my father. My father suffeed a brain haemmorhage when I was three years old, and could no longer take good pictures ever since. I could never be that child again, and Dad could never be that man again.

I appreciate journalists all over who had told and still telling my story. Many became friends too. But I’ve also learned to protect myself and not jump impatiently for media exposure. There are things money can’t buy, and the press cannot replace.