My first serious assignment as a political reporter in 1991 was to check out a new book about Singapore, which was not available in Singapore but was doing a roaring trade across the Causeway in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. It was an “own” story, which meant the idea came from me, and I had pitched it to my supervisors and obtained their permission to work on it.

I travelled to Johor on a short day trip and interviewed booksellers. I rang up book distributors and stores, and interviewed readers and commentators on the book. Titled Singapore: The Ultimate Island (Lee Kuan Yew’s Untold Story), by T. S. Selvan who was then living in Australia, the book had been published in late 1990. By the time I wrote the story, it had sold over 10,000 copies in Malaysia, mostly to Singaporeans, according to the book distributor and booksellers I spoke to in Malaysia then.