Kathlyn Tan could finally see clearly in 2016—and not just metaphorically. Plagued with debilitating myopia, she had lens implants that gave her clear vision for the first time since she was a child. “It’s like having a new set of eyes. It was life-changing,” she tells me over a morning coffee. Excited by her ability to see without contact lenses, she ratcheted up her scuba diving activities to train as a dive master. “Suddenly, I could demonstrate all these things [to students] with my mask flooded and my eyes open.”
We are ensconced in a cafe in her neighbourhood, where I’m following up on her email responses to my preliminary questions. As an introvert, she feels more comfortable writing out her thoughts, she says. Her considered replies fill five printed pages, written in bursts over a week. In person, she is the embodiment of the “!” and “:)” that peep
