Why did the commuter ask to see Chan Chun Sing's watch?

QUIZ QUESTION:
Why did the commuter ask to see Chan Chun Sing's watch before he was convinced that the person he saw was indeed Chan Chun Sing?

Minister Chan Chun Sing came from a single-parent family. His poor background made him what he is - determined to succeed.

Quote:
“My mother is a machine-operator. I do not stay with my father because my parents are divorced. I think my poor background has made me more determined to succeed.”

He leads a frugal life. His choice of timepiece is a black plastic watch.

Quote:
"I have been wearing this make of Casio watch ever since I was young and continued into the army.

"It is just a practical thing as it is waterproof and can take the rough and tumble of infantry life. Usually it lasts quite a few years before I sometimes have to change the strap.

“The (Casio) watch fulfils the purpose of telling time. Never needed anything more than that. When I was a ground commander, I would sometimes add a small plastic compass onto the strap, like many army folks.”

Remembering our founding father: One year ago and one year later

29th March 2015 was the state funeral of Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

One year ago a nation was united through the death of our founding father Lee Kuan Yew.

One year later a nation is divided over the way we remember him.

Let's have some proportion in our perspectives.

Allow us, at this time of the year, the privilege of indulging in the memory of our nation's father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. After all, it was JUST A YEAR AGO that he left us and for many Singaporeans, the pain is still as fresh as yesterday.

He may not be our dad by blood ties, but we regard him as family nonetheless for the impact that he has made on our lives and he is our nation's dad.

If some of our expressions appear to be excessive it's because it was only a while ago that he left us.

With the passage of time, our expressions will become less exuberant and more reflective because far more important than the man are the values that he stood for and that is what we want to remember him for and to perpetuate those values. Then and only then will there be an enduring Singapore.

Not every expression of our memory of Mr Lee Kuan Yew will or must benefit the country or Singaporeans. Each of us remembers him in our own way. Some have chosen to come together to make a collective effort to remember Mr Lee.

Having an avenue for people to express their memory of Mr Lee is uplifting to the human spirit.

A portrait of Mr Lee may not benefit Singapore or Singaporeans who look at the finished work. But to those who came together to produce the portrait, the benefits to them will be their shared moments and thoughts, thoughts of the man and the lessons they learned from him reinforcing the values they learn from him, their teamwork, the expression of their artistic talents and the friendships they forged in the process and more.

One can choose to see the efforts as a sincere public expression of our love, admiration and respect for Mr Lee or one can choose to see it as glorification or adulation of the man,

There are numerous artists who also paint portraits of Mr Lee - oil painting, water colour paintings, on rice grains, fabric etc. Some are exhibited in art galleries. Do we find fault with these artwork and call it 'glorification' of the man or excessive expressions? Maybe every artist should stop making portraits of Mr Lee?

Then there are those who make much of people laying flowers at portraits of Mr Lee.

Some people think this constitutes worship. Really? Don't Christians also lay flowers every year at the tomb of their loved ones who have passed away? They call it 'in loving memory'. Loving memory. They aren't worshipping their loved ones.

The act of laying flowers just become more pronounced in this instance because there are many who did it. But then, it's probably because many people love him. So when you see so many people doing it, it's like a sound that has been magnified many times over. Does that turn an act of loving memory into worship?

We are a culturally diverse society, so we can expect people to remember Mr Lee in different ways.

You've got this HUGE Kranji War Memorial and the tombstones of soldiers who died fighting the war, and every year you commemorate their death and call them your 'WAR HEROES'.

Then one man did not die in the war but lived to give his life to build this country for you and to give you and your children better lives, and hope for the future, and you are so scared that he would become a 'hero'. And you start to worry when children call him their superhero.

Suddenly it becomes so wrong for someone to be your hero.

Please. As long as you understand that he is not a god and you don't pray to him, he can be your hero. A hero is someone you look up to, someone you would like to emulate. So you can look up to him and emulate him......i.e what he stood for that makes him a hero.

We do not worship Mr Lee. We love, respect and admire Mr Lee and draw much inspiration from his writings and his words.

And we are determined to do our duty to ourselves and to Singapore by remembering the man and all that he stood for, to perpetuate those values in our memory of him.....for an enduring Singapore.

And we would like to do it in a manner that unites Singaporeans.

Photo: Portrait of Mr and Mrs Lee by renowned artist Tan Swie Hian.

SGH Hep C Cluster: Don'tconflate accountability with naming and shaming

Nowadays the call for 'naming and shaming in public' seems to be the fashionable thing to do - all in the name of accountability or transparency, never mind the circumstances.

It's like a silent infection that spreads on social media and goes undetected for months and months and years even with casualties falling by the wayside and frankly speaking, no one can be held accountable.

To put it in another way, 'naming and shaming' is public trial by media where everyone online is an expert and a judge.

Lee Kuan Yew as told by Koo Tsai Kee

When I was a graduate student in London in the 80s, an erudite English gentleman asked me where I came from. "Singapore," I replied. A curious look came over him. I raised my voice and said: "Lee Kuan Yew." He nodded. Yes, he knew Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

For a long time, the world knew Mr Lee Kuan Yew before they knew Singapore. Letters from the United Kingdom often went to China first before they were redirected to Singapore. Like the postal workers, the Englishman thought Singapore was in China. In the 80s, China was a very poor country. The English gentleman was too polite to ask if I was a Chinaman.

How times have changed. Mr Lee's model of political governance has transformed Singapore from Third World to First World in one generation. LKY made a nation and make us proud to be called Singaporeans.

His style of government and governance has become a school of thought. On an official visit to Israel, the then Foreign Minister of Israel, Mr Shimon Peres, remarked that Lee Kuan Yew was not just a name but a "concept of government". LKY has become an "ism" - LKYism has become a serious course of study for political and economic scientists.

In the week of LKY's death, the then Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Tony Abbot, moved a motion in the Australian Parliament to grieve the loss of a great leader and friend of Australia. He said Singapore under Mr Lee had grown richer than a rich country like Australia. In 1965, the gross domestic product per capita of Singapore was about one-third that of Australia's. Today, our GDP per capita is twice that of Australia. When I was a student in Sydney, the Aussie dollar fetched three Singapore dollars. Today, they are almost at parity.

Mr John Howard, the most successful prime minister of Australia post-Sir Robert Menzies, had a ringside view on Singapore's progress. His very first overseas trip as a young man was to Singapore on July 24, 1964 - one year before Independence - to visit a relative. He came in the middle of the race riots. He witnessed Singapore's incredible metamorphosis from chaos to order and from poverty to affluence. Like so many great world leaders, Mr Howard is a fan of LKY.

FOUNDING PRIME MINISTER

My father-in-law was a Malaysian, an Ipoh boy. He was a bright student from a poor family. He worked hard and obtained a state scholarship and came to Singapore to study medicine in the 1940s. His study was interrupted by the Japanese invasion, and he finished it only after the war. After completing his housemanship, he went back to Malaysia to practise medicine, until the racial riots of 1969 forced him to make a decision to relocate overseas.

He had two choices: return to Singapore, or leave for Australia, to settle in Melbourne. My mother-in-law was Singaporean. She wanted to come back to Singapore. But my father-in-law had no faith in Singapore. He saw the extreme poverty in Singapore when he was a student and thought Singapore had no future.

He was mistaken. LKY proved him wrong. It was a mistake which my mother-in-law regrets to this day. My father-in-law was in Ipoh so he did not hear Mr Lee's 1965 fiery speech: "Here we make the model multiracial society. This is not a country that belongs to any single community - it belongs to all of us. This was a mudflat, a swamp. Today, it is a modern city. And 10 years from now, it will be a metropolis - never fear!"

When LKY published The Singapore Story, I bought the book and gave it to my father-in-law as a gift in Melbourne. He left it on his desk in his study room and never touched it for the entire week I was there. Two years later, I went down again to visit my in-laws. My mother-in-law asked me on the last day of my visit if I had brought Part 2, From Third World to First, for him. I said "no", because he did not even touch Part 1. She hurried into the studyand brought out the first book. It was filled with footnotes and underlined sentences. She said my father-in-law avidly read the book probably twice over.

He came from a generation which did not reveal its true feelings. He never quite reconciled his ideals with LKY, but he had quietly revered LKY and acknowledged that he was a great leader.

A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT

In 1955, Mr Lee stood for election in Tanjong Pagar. At that time, he could have chosen from any of the 25 constituencies. But he picked Tanjong Pagar and he explained why. Tanjong Pagar was a largely working class area with a high proportion of workers. He was adviser to several unions and many of the unionists lived in the area. LKY told them that, if elected, he would improve their lives. Although he couldn't speak Chinese, and his opponents made this a big issue and ridiculed his Straits Chinese background, he won convincingly.

The people of Tanjong Pagar entrusted their lives to him and Singapore's modern history was made. LKY honoured his 1955 promise for 60 years. When Tanjong Pagar became a GRC, it was uncontested for five successive general elections from 1991 to 2011. No other GRC comes close to this record. Even LKY could not believe it. While preparing for the 2011 General Election, LKY asked me: "What results did we get in the 2006 General Election?" I said Tanjong Pagar GRC had never been contested. He was taken by surprise. How was that possible, he asked rhetorically. The reason is LKY.

I knew Tanjong Pagar well before I became an MP. My wife and I bought a resale flat in Spottiswoode Park in the early 80s. It is a very quiet, green and beautiful estate inside Tanjong Pagar. I was then working in the Public Works Department. I walked to work. We walked to the railway station. We walked to Chinatown. We love the place. But when I went to teach in the then Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI), we sold the flat and moved to Jurong.

In the 80s, Jurong was most inaccessible from town. There were no expressways, MRT trains or direct buses. I had early morning lectures and it took forever to get from Spottiswoode Park to NTI. So with great reluctance we moved. Never did I dream that I would return as a member of Mr Lee's GRC team to find an even more beautiful Tanjong Pagar.

Mr Lee the MP, never left Tanjong Pagar because he never forgot that it was the people of Tanjong Pagar who gave him the opportunity to become their MP, which in turn allowed him to become the Prime Minister. He was always thinking of his residents.

At a Chinese New Year dinner gathering, he sat on the stage and saw the huge greying crowd of his residents below. He asked me why there were so few young people. I said there were no new flats in Tanjong Pagar. The children of Tanjong Pagar were forced to move to new towns, and the old were left behind to fend for themselves. He then instructed that we needed a gentrification programme to bring back the young so that they could look after the old. He also wanted more energy in Tanjong Pagar. From this was born Cantonment Towers, and then later the iconic Pinnacle@Duxton.

AS A MENTOR AND TEACHER

For me, the saddest part of LKY's departure was the loss of a mentor and teacher. I remember giving the maiden speech in Parliament in 1991. He was not in the House when I delivered the speech. After my speech, a note came to my seat.

He asked to see me. He told me he heard my speech. He advised that I should speak in a direct voice, with more pauses, and that I should slow down my speech. I thought, how awesome. He was not present in the Chambers when I spoke, but yet he was listening. No wonder senior MPs warned me, albeit half in jest, that LKY was omnipotent - he knew everything and he was everywhere! It was an exaggeration, of course. But the message was clear. He was watching over us and Singapore. He was always giving MPs encouragement, advice and guidance.

LKY used to invite small groups of MPs to lunch and discuss matters big and small. We called these lunch sessions "tutorials". Sometimes these sessions finished up with homework. We had to write papers for him to justify our views or positions.

It was a privilege and opportunity to work with and for him. We could not have had a better mentor and teacher. The Chinese have a saying, "Yi ri wei si, zhong shen wei fu". The meaning is lost in translation, but it loosely translates, "To be a teacher is to be like a father".

Singapore lost LKY. But his life's work remains for eternity. He never asked to be remembered. But we will never forget. Singapore remembers. And we remember.

By Koo Tsai Kee For The Straits Times
Published 22 March 2016

HE KNEW WE'D BE ALRIGHT

This time last year, we were fitful, restless. A part of us braced ourselves for an inevitable announcement. So this is it then.

It would be our "Where were you when Kennedy was shot" moment; when man landed on the moon. when the Twin Towers fell.

Where were you?

Only this time, it wasn't about an event over there, but one of the few significant moments that stay with you. And, when looking back years from now, it would be one of the milestones that you count on the fingers of one hand.

Yes son, it was that big a deal.

Yet also in the back of our minds this time last year, was the hope that this man, with his iron will and determination, would once again prove us all wrong.

And that within a matter of days, he would pull out of it and all our lives would return to normal.

And people would wonder what the fuss was all about.

There'd been false alarms with almost annual regularity.

Rumours would hit the market, there'd be a quiet but frenzied search for information.

Then calm when a picture would emerge of him, frail no doubt but in the company of a visitor, or an appearance at a forum packed with admiring business leaders from here and abroad keen to know from him the secret to the country's success, the impact of China's rise, India's place in the world, the United States, trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea... One more question please... Can we take a picture?

This time it was different.

Not a short routine hospital visit for tests, but a stay that stretched for weeks after the initial disclosure that he had been taken ill.

And over that lengthening period, people started to come together.

Curious, concerned. Drawn to the hospital in the hope and belief that their collective will, energy, thoughts and prayers could be focused, laser-like, to energise and nurse him back.

There was, bar the die-hard detractors, a sense of national unity, togetherness, a new-found understanding and an almost sudden realisation among young and old alike, that we got to be here, and have remained intact as a nation, largely as a result of what he and his pioneering generation of leaders and colleagues managed to achieve despite the odds.

And so there was no better time than that present moment, for an appreciative population, to pay him back by turning up in numbers, at all hours of the day and night, to will him back from the precipice.

But this time last year, it just didn't happen.

He'd decided to move on. Not because he didn't appreciate the gestures and the effort.

But because he knew that we would be all right without him here.

As we had been, in fact, for the many number of years since he stepped away from centrestage.

"Get on with it," he would likely say. "And don't drop the ball."

It is a fitting epitaph.

No frills, no fuss. Move on lads, there's nothing more to see here.

He gave of his time, perhaps more than was necessary. It was a good innings. It was tiring and it was, finally, time to rest. Deservedly. No one should begrudge him that.

Yet, as we know from experience, the failure to express appreciation when we ought to have gnaws away at us.

It's a deep and bitter regret that people addressed by showing up, whether in queues that stretched into the dead of night or in the downpour when the heavens opened up at the funeral, to nod, salute, contemplate, bow, clasp hands in prayer - any final gesture to say that I do appreciate, and wish I had said and done something sooner.

One year on, and the sky hasn't fallen in. The country remains intact. No one raided the reserves, investors didn't flee.

And the grumbling, a sure-fire sign of a return to normalcy, has resurfaced.

So now, on the cusp of the first anniversary of his death, there are no fewer than 100 events lined up - although not all may be public-access.

A connection, real or symbolic, can be found or, in some cases, will somehow be made, between events and something that he stood for and accomplished.

There is, in truth, little on this island nation that didn't escape his attention. Hence events at which trees are planted are a nod to his drive to green Singapore.

Outdoor activities like a planned brisk walk are billed as a reminder of his commitment to healthy living. Throw in the backdrop of the new city skyline and the narrative will include how Singapore had been dramatically transformed.

Hold anything on water, in a reservoir or cleaned-up river, and it reflects an appreciation of how he pushed for waterways to be cleaned up and transformed for leisure and recreational use.

There is no faulting the intent of what is being done to commemorate his passing.

And it is right, in this first year, that the appreciation of his contributions and the impact this had on the lives of everyone here continues to be acknowledged, and that the scale be kept modest.

No over-the-top mega event displays, like in the old Soviet era, or present-day North Korea. No need for a group or organisation to overstretch the imagination and slap an LKY label on to something, if only to show that, yes, we too have not forgotten that it's one year on.

It would not be too far off the mark to suggest that if he were somehow able to shape events this coming week, he would prefer that nothing be done.

A private remembrance among family, perhaps. Or a quiet coming together of longtime friends to reflect on his life and times.

What then for the rest of us?

By all means attend, take part and enjoy the events that will be out there this weekend and the week ahead because I think it would be discourteous to ignore the moment.

But the grandest tribute to him and his generation of leaders is that the country continues to exist and thrive; is not a failed state devoid of leadership, direction, energy, opportunity, and is not weighed down in mourning and moaning about the passing of a man, and men, of a particular generation.

That we have been able to move on, one year after, and that we remain intact, forward-looking, and continue to innovate, and nimbly and imaginatively navigate challenges, is not just a tribute to that league of extraordinary gentlemen and what they enabled for the country, but to everyone else in between - from as far back as you care to go.

Because, lest we forget, in commemorating and reflecting on the man that is LKY, we celebrate the Everyman too, and what we and our predecessors were able to also bring to the table because of what he did.

By Paul Jacob
Published Mar 20, 2016, The ST

Tribute to Lee Kuan Yew: by The Autumn Swallow

Lee Kuan Yew: You do not buy or sell this Government.

In the late 1950s, the CIA were worried about what they saw as the PAP's close ties with pro-communist elements. They even approached the British Special Branch about it but the SB told the CIA not to worry (the British knew Lee better than the Americans).

The CIA decided to take matters into their own hands, and mounted their own covert op to infiltrate Singapore's intelligence apparatus. This was discovered in 1960.

The CIA responded with a US$3.3 million offer to bribe Lee to hush up the matter.

Lee refused and counter-proposed US$33 million in aid to Singapore.

He was haggling when he could have simply accepted the bribe and been US$3.3 million richer. What he did instead was to use his advantageous position for the betterment of the nation.

The United States gave Malaysia US$3.5 million in 1963 and US$1 million in 1964. Singapore was still part of Malaysia then.

Dean Rusk, Kennedy's Secretary of State, who had inherited the mess, wrote Lee a formal letter of apology in 1961 for the affair.

But when Lee recounted the story a few years later, the CIA issued one of its automatic denials.

Lee was enraged - not only had the CIA tried to bribe him like some tin-pot third world dictator, now they were calling him a liar. He produced the letter and threatened to broadcast tape recordings of the incident.

The CIA retracted their denials, and Lee was sent a formal letter of apology written by then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Lee said, "The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny. They are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee. You do not buy and sell this Government.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/Security-CIA-II/CIA%20II%20013.pdf