My mission is to fill in the gap in theLiterature of Singapore Section where (probably because internet nerds are mostly below 30) older notables in this field have been neglected. I live in Paris (am bilingual in French and English) and am an "oldie" myself.

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Quotable Quotes

Derex 09:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

User_talk:Tbeatty 16:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

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Ivy Goh Nair (born Ivy Goh Pek Kien inKuala Lumpur,Malaysia in1946) is ajournalist, writer and former seniorcivil servant ofSingapore.Her book,Singapore Accent, was published in 1981. Goh Nair is married toChandran Nair, a Singaporeanpoet,artist, and retiredDirector andMediator ofUNESCO inParis, where they now live. They have three grown-up daughters and a cat.

Goh Nair studied at theMethodist Girl's School in Kuala Lumpur and graduated inHistory from theUniversity of Malaya in 1969. From 1964 to 1965 she was an AFS (American Field Service) exchange student toWisconsin,United States, where she graduated from Greenfield High School. She later studied atLa Sorbonne University of Paris where she graduated inFrench language and French Civilisation in 1987.

She was a tutor in the History Department of theUniversity of Malaya from 1970 to 1972, the year she left Malaysia to join the Administrative Service of theSingapore Civil Service where she remained for nine years, holding various posts in several Ministries, Statutory Boards and Departments (Ministries ofLaw andEnvironment,People's Association, The Land Office and the Department ofTrade) ranging from Assistant-Director of thePeople's Association, Collector of Land Revenue to Assistant Director of Trade.

She was one of the Singapore foreign correspondents forAsiaweek (Hong Kong) in 1981 before leaving Singapore to join her UN Civil Servant husband inKarachi,Pakistan. She also free-lanced as a journalist in various newspapers including, theStraits Times, theNew Nation , theBusiness Times (where she wrote a weekly column under the pen-name, B J WU in 1980), andThe Singaporean, the Journal of the National Trade Unions Congress. She had a weekly column,South of the Border in the Malaysian "Sunday Star". InKarachi, she wrote a weekly column forthe Star (Karachi Sojourner), and contributed many articles to various Pakistani newspapers, including theDawn newspaper and the Karachi Herald.

In 1981, her columns written for theBusiness Times under thenom de plume of BJ Wu (her name inpinyin, Wu Bi Jian) were compiled into a book"Singapore Accent", Times Distributors Sdn Bhd, 1981. Favourably reviewed by both the local and international press at the time (by S T (Shashi Tharoor) in the SingaporeNew Nation 24 Aug 1981; and by Ian Gill in theAsian Wall Street Journal, 29 Aug 1981,^[1] the book became a localbestseller and enjoyed a bit of notoriety.

• "Is the Singapore Press 'discovering its bite?' Are we witnessing the evolution of the 'Ugly Singaporean'? Should we emulateJapan? Do theChinese have a sense of humour? Should husbands share the housework? These are some of the provoking questions posed-and answered inSingapore Accent, a new collection of essays by B J Wu which has just hit the book stalls. Most of the essays appeared in theBusiness Times during the past two years. . ." writes S T (Shashi Tharoor) inThe New Nation:("Book on Singapore, Bubbles With Ideas") 24 Aug 1981, who also adds "The Author is Mrs Ivy Goh Nair who has spent the past nine years in the administrative service."

Ian Gill, the Singaporean correspondant for theAsian Wall Street Journal, reviewed the book in the 29 Aug 1981 issue of the newspaper and said:

• "Journalists in theThird World have a harder job than newspapermen in Western orCommunist countries. This assertion is made byTommy Koh, Singapore's well-respected permanent respresentative to theUnited Nations, in a forward to a book recently published hereSingapore Accent. The reason Mr Koh gives for his view is that journalists in both Western and Communist countries work within clearly defined, although different, frameworks of values and norms. . . In contrast, he notes that 'journalists of the third world often find themselves working without knowing what are the operating norms and values'. . ." Mr Gill continues: "Singapore isn't noted for itspress freedom. . . . Somemedia observers in Singapore ,however, recently have seen an increase in the number of critical articles in the local media . . .Singapore Accent could well serve as an example of this. This slim volume is a collection of newspaper columns penned under thepseudonym of B.J.Wu. . .The columnist is in fact Ivy Goh Nair, a senior civil servant. . ."

• Singapore Accent (1981)

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• Book Reviews
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• Book on Singapore Bubbles with Ideas by S T(Shashi Tharoor) The New Nation 24 Aug 1981
• Stay at Home Travellers Comment, Sunday Nation, 23 Nov 80
• A Closer Look at the goings on in Singapore by David Tsu, Sunday Star,Malaysia, 4 Oct 1981
• Thought Provoking Review by Felix Chia, The Singaporean, 9 Aug 1981
• Love is not enough Interview by Nusrat Nasarullah, Morning News, Karachi,10 feb 83
• A Foreigner's Pakistan by Maisoon Hussein, The Herald,Karachi, March 1982

• Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree

• Certificate of French, Superior A level

• Certificate of French, Superior B Level

• Certificate of French, Intermediate Level

• Pages with missing files