Home Away from Home

Music Video

“Time never truly disappears—it simply rests quietly between photographs and memories.”

The MV uses photographs as a medium and the journey of memory as a portal. By overlaying past and present, old images come alive once more in today’s real world.

About Home Away From Home

Home Away From Home was composed in 1982 by Lai Kok Fung with lyrics by Lian Siew Chin and Kenny Sin, serving as the theme song for the ASEAN Scholarship cohort of 1982–1983.

More than forty years later, the song is sung once again—not only as a revival of its melody, but as an echo of memories and youth.

The Song Writer

In 1982, Lai Kok Fung, who grew up in Perlis in northern Malaysia, received the ASEAN Scholarship after completing his SPM examinations and travelled south to study at National Junior College (NJC) in Singapore.

Coming from a small town, he had attended a Chinese primary school and a national secondary school where Malay was the main medium of instruction; English was only his third language.

Entering a junior college that operated entirely in English, he faced tremendous academic challenges.

At that time, the campus was home to a group of Singapore’s “last cohort of Chinese-educated students,” who were experiencing the transition of the national education system.

Students from different countries, sharing similar cultural backgrounds, naturally became one another’s support in a foreign land.

At the end of that same year, the college held a songwriting competition.
Lai took a half-finished melody he already had, reorganised it, and infused it with the deep emotions of leaving home.

The resulting song, “Confession in a Letter”, unexpectedly won first prize.

It was the era when campus folk music (“Xinyao”) began to flourish.
Musicians like Liang Wern Fook and Eric Moo also emerged during this period.
“Home Away From Home” was born from this wave of youth creativity.

This music video draws its spiritual core from Lai’s real-life experience.