I don’t know how to ask Mr Au Siew Chong, 86, why he has never married, but I try anyway.

“My job is very … what lah. No one look at me. My salary little bit. Not high,” he says.

As a young man, Mr Au worked as a lift attendant in the old Supreme Court (now the National Gallery), where he would often see Lee Kuan Yew and other pioneering statesmen passing through. The youngest of eight siblings, and the only one still alive, he now lives alone in a rental flat in Ang Mo Kio.

He lived with his mother until she passed away, after which one of his brothers asked him to move out. He then moved in with one of his sisters, until family tensions brought an end to that arrangement too.

Although he’s jovial and good-humoured, he doesn’t elaborate, and I can’t tell if he doesn’t want to or just doesn’t have the words.

Around 20 years ago, he moved into his current place. The bottom few floors of his block are occupied by AWWA, a social service agency (SSA) that works with vulnerable groups around the island, including elderly folk. The ground level has a Seniors’ Activity Centre, and they also run a befriending and support scheme called the Personal Care Service, which he has been under since 2014.

Today, his days look mostly the same. They start at 4:00, sometimes 5:00 AM.

“Go coffeeshop, sit there, have a kopi. Sometimes have breakfast, sometimes no. Maybe go to Chinatown, take the bus,” he says.

Mostly, he goes by himself. He sees his nieces and nephews during Chinese New Year, and chats here and there with the other elderly folk at AWWA. Some nights he thinks about his mother and his past, and it’s then that the loneliness creeps in.

“Sometimes at night, dream bad things. But don’t think too much lah. Just enjoy,” he laughs nervously.

“Go to heaven early, better.”

I don’t know what to say, so I laugh nervously back.