Ex-DBS and UOB techie now heads Writers Festival

YONG Shu Hoong pursued computer science in university. After graduating in 1990, he joined DBS as a system analyst and programmer. Two years later, he enrolled in a Master of Business Administration course at Texas A&M University in the US. He thought he’d be in fintech all his life.

Then something strange happened. Feeling lonely among American students “who wore cowboy hats” and “talked about their fathers owning oil rigs”, he started to write poetry to cope with his homesickness, isolation and yearning for Singapore food. He joined a campus writers group for companionship. When he first read aloud his self-penned poem to the other members, he postfaced it with: “Does that sound like a poem to you?”   

After returning to Singapore to work for Singapore Computer Services, he saw a call for entries for the Singapore Literature Prize. He submitted a manuscript for over 40 poems he’d written in recent years, titled it Pangs Of Hunger, and – surprise, surprise – it was one of 10 works shortlisted for the 1995 Singapore Literature Prize.