Every day, hundreds of thousands of passengers take the MRT, traversing across the island for work, school and leisure. The spate of disruptions and incidents, which the operators and authorities are looking to resolve, and the inconvenience caused to commuters, have brought into focus how the rail network has become a big part of our lives. So, too, are the countless faces we meet on the subway, some growing familiar over time and each with a story to tell.

In our Faces on the Subway weekly series, we speak to commuters who start their day while it is still dark, or call it a night when others are already fast asleep — people on the first or last train.

SINGAPORE — Flipping through a newspaper at home sometime in early 2015, Madam Lim Thuan Huay stopped to look an advertisement, and had to put her coffee down on the table to read it closely. There was a course on floristry under the Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) scheme run by a statutory board under the Manpower Ministry.

In her heart, she knew the time was ripe to pursue her childhood interest in flower arrangement.

Growing up in a kampung (village) in Chua Chu Kang in the 1970s, Mdm Lim used to help her father, a vegetable seller, when he tended to the family’s vegetable farms. There was also a small plot of land, where her father would plant flowers such as daisies.

“I remember picking the flowers, arranging them and wrapping the bouquet with a newspaper. I told my father, perhaps he could sell this as well, but he just laughed at my idea,” Mdm Lim recalled with a smile.

In response to the ad, she signed up for the one-month WSQ course. After the stint, her enthusiasm renewed, she went on to enrol in June Floral Art School for another one-month course. She would go for classes during the day and worked part-time as a waitress at her friend’s Chinese restaurant in the evening — a job she had been doing for about a decade.

Before she took up the part-time work, Mdm Lim was a stay-at-home mum who doubled up as a babysitter.

“My husband was working as an aircon technician and my kids were young. So, I wanted to stay at home to take care of them. In the end, I also cared for other people’s children,” she said.

With her two boys in their 20s, she decided to join the workforce full-time. Her older son is 28 and works at a tech firm, while the younger one, 25, is an undergraduate at the National University of Singapore.

“My children said, ‘Mummy you don’t need to work, can just rest at home’, but I thought that I can earn some money and, at the same time, do something I really enjoy,” Mdm Lim said. “Other than the housework, what else can I do to occupy my time?”

After she expressed the interest to work, her teacher at June Floral Art School helped her secure a full-time job in May 2016, to work as a florist at a shop in Chinatown Point which sells home decoration items and provides flower arrangement services.

Working from noon to 10pm, on some days Mdm Lim stays past her working hours to practice the art of flower arrangement. She will then take the last train from Chinatown to Bukit Panjang on the Downtown Line.

When TODAY met her on the train, the soft-spoken woman was carrying a bouquet of pink roses to be delivered the next day to a customer living in Bukit Batok.

Although there is a deliveryman for this service, Mdm Lim does not mind doing it herself for customers at times. “When I hand it to them personally, and I see that they’re happy with the flowers, it’s worth making the trip.”

Arranging flowers requires an eye for detail, and knowing what colours work well together. For instance, yellow carnations may go with pink roses to give the bouquet “a pop of colour”, Mdm Lim said.

“You also need to know what plant goes well with which flowers. If the flower is small, you don’t put it together with a large plant or leaf,” she added. “It’s like yin and yang, and a bouquet needs some balance.”

When she first started out, Mdm Lim said that she was “so slow” and took about an hour to arrange a bouquet.

The job is fast-paced because customers are constantly in a rush to go, she explained. Now, she takes about 15 minutes to prepare a bouquet.

Having worked at the store for close to two years, she has encountered only a handful of fussy customers who nitpick on every detail, requiring her to re-arrange the flowers repeatedly.

“There was one who asked me to arrange the flowers four times because she was not happy with how it looked. But she didn’t shout or anything. Most, if not all of the customers are nice,” Mdm Lim said.

“If they don’t like the arrangement, we change it to suit their liking. It’s really not that difficult.”

When asked if flower orders came more from companies or individuals, men or women, Mdm Lim said that they were usually women and individuals, and they buy flowers mostly to decorate their homes.

“Flowers have bright colours, which cheer you up whenever you are sad or angry. During those days in the kampung, I liked to watch them grow because it reminded me of life.”

These days, she gets her turn to be life-giving, in lifting the spirits of customers. It is no wonder that Mdm Lim sees her job more as her hobby, and said that age should not be a factor to deter anyone from pursuing his or her interests.

“Sometimes we don’t get to do what we’re interested in when we were young, because we have to support the family or take care of the children,” she said.

“When your children have grown up, you have a lot of free time, so why not take up a course to learn to do something that you have long been interested in? Your body and mind will stay active as well.

“For me, I don’t mind the long hours. I like the job and if my body can still go on, I will work many, many more years.”