Mr. Victor Seow, 64, on a tour of Chinatown last Chinese New Year with Silver Horizon Travel Co-operative, of which he is Chairman. Silver Horizon was organising a tour to South Korea in 2020 when the circuit breaker kicked in and travel restrictions were imposed by various countries.

The Straits Times 30 Apr 2022

‘It’s time seniors got out of the cage syndrome’

WHO: Mr Victor Seow, 64, a retired general manager of a co-operative. He is chairman of Silver Horizon Travel Co-operative, a volunteer-run social enterprise for and by seniors to encourage active ageing through travel. It organises tours.

MR VICTOR SEOW: Silver Horizon was organising a tour to South Korea in 2020 when the circuit breaker kicked in and travel restrictions were imposed by various countries. All our plans had to be scrubbed

For our members, who were looking forward to travelling, it was a difficult time.

It was especially tough because we were cooped up at home. We were not meeting people and we were worried about contracting the virus. All those played on our minds. It affected our mental and physical well-being.

The safe management measures dried up our opportunities to travel, even local travel. Physical meetings were not quite possible until the measures were relaxed towards the end of last year.

When that happened, we had a get-together for lunch at the Grand Hyatt hotel in December. We also organised a trip to the southern islands in January and a tour of Chinatown for Chinese New Year.

I have become more active on the Internet. Even if I could not travel, I read up about other countries and looked at pictures of beautiful scenery overseas.

I have definitely become a lot more tech-savvy since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Video conferencing tools like Zoom, for instance, are an important part of my life now. I even picked up video-editing skills.

My biggest takeaway from the pandemic is that we need to take care of our mental and physical well-being, whether it is by travelling, reading or other means.

We have to look at the positive side of life and see how we can cope and not bring ourselves to such a level where we become so incapacitated. This is especially important for seniors.

Now that the measures have been relaxed, it is the time to encourage our members to get out of what we call the “cage syndrome We have locked ourselves in a cage and become so reclusive or stressed out.

In the next season of our lives, when we have the opportunity to travel, we should do so, and create lasting memories for ourselves. For seniors, our timeline is short, so we should make the most of things before we leave.

Silver Horizon has already rolled out plans for travel. We have a trip to Chiang Mai next month. We are also going to have another get-together at a hotel.

I was supposed to watch the Oberammergau Passion Play, which the Oberammergau villagers put up every 10 years, in 2020 but that was postponed to this year because of the pandemic. I look forward to going to Munich for that in September. It will be my first overseas trip since I travelled to Thailand in November 2019.

As told to Varun Karthik