SINGAPORE — A Singaporean TikTok user who missed his late grandmother during Chinese New Year decided to share a video on how he uses Google Maps to look at an image that the search engine captured of her when she was still alive, waiting at a traffic crossing in Hougang.

"Every Chinese New Year whenever I miss my late grandma, I come to Google Maps and she will be there," he wrote in his video caption. "Miss you, grandma."

Going by the username "retroridersg" on TikTok and giving his name as just "Jerome" when contacted by TODAY on Thursday (Feb 2), the 37-year-old said that his grandmother was on one of her daily grocery runs at the time and it reminded him of when he was young and "helping her carry the groceries".

"That was our Saturday morning affair," he recalled fondly.

The Chinese New Year season, when people often visit or pay their respects to older relatives, can heighten the absence of those who are no longer around.

The post resonated with TikTok viewers so much that they then talked about missing their departed loved ones and even places in Singapore that are gone, such as their schools.

The obvious question is why Jerome does not just look at an old photograph of his grandmother, something a user also asked.

In a reply on TikTok, he said that the family does have photos and videos of her but seeing her on Google Maps somehow felt different.

He told TODAY: "For some reason, I feel that photo albums freeze the moment, but seeing her on Google Maps somehow felt like she was standing there in real life."

Jerome, who did not want to disclose his profession, said that it was around 2017 that he first became curious about how his parents' car had changed through the years and began to use Google Street View's archival function to observe its progression.

He then got the idea of looking around places that his family members would frequent and came across this snapshot of his grandmother.

When he showed it to her at the time, she was surprised and asked how he had gotten the picture.

"I asked if she remembered seeing any car with a huge camera but she couldn't remember, haha," he said, referring to the cars used to capture the Street View imagery.

He told TODAY that he was overwhelmed by the responses to his video, which is a screen recording of the Google Maps mobile application on his smartphone, displaying a Google Street View of a traffic light crossing at 840 Hougang Central.

Scrolling through past Street View collections of the same traffic crossing over the years, he stops at a thumbnail labelled “Feb 2009”.

He then clicks on it to show his late grandmother, holding shopping bags and an umbrella as she waited to cross the road.

Jerome said that he comes from a big family. Every year, it used to be that his grandmother and mother would work together to "cook a big feast" for the family's reunion dinner during Chinese New Year.

However, the family had not been able to do this together for the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"This year, everything was back to normal as Covid measures subsided," he said. "However, it felt different as my late grandma was not around anymore."

The grandmother died of cancer in May 2020, in the midst of Singapore’s partial lockdown when the population had to stay home and movements were restricted.

After his family's Chinese New Year celebration this year, he felt her loss even more keenly and decided to post the video on TikTok last Saturday as "a little subtle message to (people) to cherish their grandparents while they are still around".

He did not expect it to go viral. As of Thursday evening, the video had already amassed 96,900 views and 140 comments.

STREET VIEW — A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

TikTok users were touched by his video, with many sharing similar experiences about their family members or places of sentimental value that are no longer around.

One top comment read: "This is making me teary-eyed. It is nice that you have this memory of her."

Another said: "I truly know how you feel, because my late grandpa could be found on Google Images and Maps, too 🥺 And the pictures were all located at his favourite places."

Others wished that they could also "find" their loved ones in the same way and lamented that the Street View technology had not come into existence earlier, when their grandparents were alive.

However, some TikTok users said that even such imagery might eventually be removed from the public domain.

A fellow Maps user said: "My late grandpa was once on Google Maps but they changed it."

Google said that this "time travel" function on Street View uses historical imagery from past collections dating back to 2007. It may also edit or remove imagery in response to user requests.

In another comment on TikTok, Jerome said that he had taken a screenshot for himself in case of such a scenario, and encouraged others to do the same as well.