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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/workplace-discrimination-age-jobs-recruitment-3900191 14 jobs and 5 industry changes later - marketing and editorial professional Imran Johri found himself facing ageism in the job market. SINGAPORE: “The team is quite young and we intend to nurture a hustle culture with them.” This, I would soon realise - in hiring terms - was code for, "I don’t think you’ll fit in, old man". That in itself didn’t bother me much, but what did bother me though, was that I was beginning to see a trend. In the most recent batch of about six job interviews I’d attended, there began to emerge an archetype of hiring managers that, within minutes of talking to me, would in high probability reject my candidacy. At first, my thought was “Am I the problem here?”. After much self-reflection I can wholeheartedly say, maybe. Before you judge my annoying prata-flips, let me give some context. GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN Ageism in the workplace has been under the spotlight recently, with a survey released by the Ministry of Manpower in July showing that age was the most common form of discrimination experienced by jobseekers. Across age groups, those aged 40 and over had a much higher incidence of being discriminated against. Considering that Singapore’s retirement age is 63 - and is set to be raised to 65 in 2030 - being told that you’re too old for a job while in your 40s is unnervingly early. Singapore’s population is not only ageing, but ageing rapidly - with 25 per cent of Singaporeans expected to be 65 and older by 2030. This will be a massive change not only for society, but the workplace too. Luckily for older workhorses like me, the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices will soon be enshrined into law. Now, anyone who’s ever seen my resume will either brand me an incorrigible job-hopper or commend me for my extensive and varied work experience. To be fair, both of these cursory judgments are valid. Right out of university, I was fuelled by abject idealism, and despite growing older and wiser, this intrinsic motivation or rebellious passion to go against the grain has fuelled most of my career choices. This of course came at a cost - for I knew this was not the path to wealth, fame or meteoric success, but rather, a self-gratifying journey of personal wins. Despite this - never would I imagine that after 24 years of chasing that next new exciting project - I would come to a head-on collision with ageism. FROM YOUNG UPSTART TO OLD BIRD The first five years of work were often peppered with, “let’s do this, you’re clearly hungry” from my first bosses. And I absolutely was, my risk appetite was bottomless and I wanted to do more, all the time. I went from being scriptwriter for an award-winning TV show to being the editor of two men’s magazines. I was on a career warpath, and I worked myself very close to burn-out. Luckily for me, I eventually recalibrated, mostly from stints overseas and really started to pace myself, but by then the publishing industry was starting to decline. I then had to make the hard decision to switch industries and at that point, it was plausible and easier, in fact, to change, mostly because my next batch of bosses in marketing saw my editorial experience as a huge plus. By 2018, I had become the head of marketing for a venture capital (VC) but alas, I had also come to a point where I had to make another tough choice. I had to either become an entrepreneur, as per the philosophy of the VC, or choose an alternate pathway, which the organisation would fully endorse and support either way. So after five years with the VC, I chose to leave and to explore what the market held for a 49-year old man with a chequered CV. YOUNG GUN MARKETEERS ARE A DIME A DOZEN The rejections were varied and in volume, some of them coming in fast and furious. “You don’t have the necessary experience,” was a common reply. So was “We’re looking for someone less senior”. In retrospect, it’s hilarious to me now how I simultaneously didn’t have the necessary experience and yet be too senior for the job. Some rejections, however, were slow and painful, with multiple interviews across recruiters, managers and directors. To which I was either ghosted or simply sent a very tardy rejection email. One thing stood out for me though, during those tough job-search months - I became adept at identifying the specific type of hiring manager that would reject me after the first meeting. They were always early- to mid-30s marketeers, who’d attained an accelerated upward trajectory in the marketing world and were now the marketing heads. Now, I can absolutely empathise with their decision to reject me outright. Those hiring managers were under pressure to lead young, high-performance teams, all of whom were hungry and ready to hustle. The last thing they needed was an older man to second-guess their decisions in the midst of the fire-fighting and chaos. They needed to move ahead, unabated. But here’s the thing about being an older guy with experience, I will second-guess and challenge the decision-making process if I think there might be a better way of doing things. UNCLE CAN’T HOLD HIS TONGUE So am I the problem here? Maybe. Is ageism being practised? I think so. But not in an absolutist way. In fact, I would argue that it’s nuanced and contextual. In the end, just as I eventually knew what would not work in my favour - I started seeing what would. Some of the interviews I’ve attended were an absolute joy, with clear, transparent communication and hiring managers who saw the value I brought to the table. I have since made the transition to a technology company, one that has one of the most diverse team compositions I have ever worked with, with everyone driven to ensure we make a mark in the market. One of the annoying key drivers of ageism, it seems, is the belief that older employees can't keep up with technological advancements. Preposterous. I’m literally a tech-bro at 49 - and the assumption that older employees lack the vigour, adaptability or skills required for a “young person” role is unfounded. We older guys have too much at stake, with too many dependents and no time, to even consider ourselves being at a "disadvantage". So if you’re on the job hunt, keep at it. No matter who you are, or what you do, there will be an -ism working against you. But take heed, take notes and take charge of your own career - it’s the only way to go. Imran Johri is a marketing and editorial professional with extensive experience in the Asia Pacific region.

Hey there guys, So not a performance review this time ( next week will be another one though) but I did my first one on one interview with a known but very unpopular brand in South Africa ... Mahindra. I went to find out more about their range and history of the brand. a few very interesting facts came out that I didn't even know about. Was a fun one to do. https://youtu.be/lMwPzT_K0Dk Please let me know what you think.

What would u choose?

Lee Kuan Yew’s Two Younger Children File Case on Interview Deal http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-22/lee-kuan-yew-s-two-younger-children-file-case-on-interview-deal Lee Kuan Yew’s two younger children initiated court action in Singapore relating to an agreement between their late father, the city’s first prime minister, and the government. Lee Wei Ling and Lee Hsien Yang, executors of the elder Lee’s estate, filed a court application on Sept. 2, according to a record with the Singapore High Court. Their father’s agreement related to the "custody and use" of interviews given by the former premier to the government’s Oral History Department, according to a statement by the Attorney-General, the respondent. “The government will establish the proper interpretation and status of the agreement before the court,” it said in the statement. Further details of the case weren’t immediately available, and Lee Hsien Yang declined to comment. Lee Wei Ling wasn’t immediately available to comment. The Republic of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, died on March 23 at the age of 91, triggering a nationwide outpouring of grief. More than a million people waited for as long as 10 hours to pay their last respects. Lee’s death and celebrations to mark Singapore’s 50th year of independence helped the ruling People’s Action Party, helmed by eldest son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, extend its more than five-decade rule at the Sept. 11 election. The case is Lee Wei Ling, Lee Hsien Yang v Attorney-General, OS816/2015. Singapore High Court. Anyone heard anything about this ???

I recall when I first entered the workforce, I told the interviewer it's my passion to work in this industry. He said 'passion can 当饭吃?' I ended the interview with some nasty words for the director. No prizes if I got the job or not

Hi bros... I just got a call to go for an interview for Asst Electricity Trader... but I don't really know anything much about the job... Hope any of you guys here got experience can give me some advice? Thanks in advance!

Not sure if this is true or not.... some of the questions are really http://www.impactinterview.com/2009/10/140-google-interview-questions/ Google Interview Questions: Product Marketing Manager •Why do you want to join Google? •What do you know about Google’s product and technology? •If you are Product Manager for Google’s Adwords, how do you plan to market this? •What would you say during an AdWords or AdSense product seminar? •Who are Google’s competitors, and how does Google compete with them? •Have you ever used Google’s products? Gmail? •What’s a creative way of marketing Google’s brand name and product? •If you are the product marketing manager for Google’s Gmail product, how do you plan to market it so as to achieve 100 million customers in 6 months? •How much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads? •Name a piece of technology you’ve read about recently. Now tell me your own creative execution for an ad for that product. •Say an advertiser makes $0.10 every time someone clicks on their ad. Only 20% of people who visit the site click on their ad. How many people need to visit the site for the advertiser to make $20? •Estimate the number of students who are college seniors, attend four-year schools, and graduate with a job in the United States every year. Google Interview Questions: Product Manager •How would you boost the GMail subscription base? •What is the most efficient way to sort a million integers? •How would you re-position Google’s offerings to counteract competitive threats from Microsoft? •How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? •You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do? •How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? •How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory? •Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew. •How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap? •You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do? •Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval? •Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens? •In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country? •If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)? •If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!) •Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes? •You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager? •How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? •You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings? •You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.) •You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process. •Describe a technical problem you had and how you solved it. •How would you design a simple search engine? •Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco. •There’s a latency problem in South Africa. Diagnose it. •What are three long term challenges facing Google? •Name three non-Google websites that you visit often and like. What do you like about the user interface and design? Choose one of the three sites and comment on what new feature or project you would work on. How would you design it? •If there is only one elevator in the building, how would you change the design? How about if there are only two elevators in the building? •How many vacuum’s are made per year in USA? Google Interview Questions: Software Engineer •Why are manhole covers round? •What is the difference between a mutex and a semaphore? Which one would you use to protect access to an increment operation? •A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? •Explain the significance of “dead beef”. •Write a C program which measures the the speed of a context switch on a UNIX/Linux system. •Given a function which produces a random integer in the range 1 to 5, write a function which produces a random integer in the range 1 to 7. •Describe the algorithm for a depth-first graph traversal. •Design a class library for writing card games. •You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number? •How are cookies passed in the HTTP protocol? •Design the SQL database tables for a car rental database. •Write a regular expression which matches a email address. •Write a function f(a, b) which takes two character string arguments and returns a string containing only the characters found in both strings in the order of a. Write a version which is order N-squared and one which is order N. •You are given a the source to a application which is crashing when run. After running it 10 times in a debugger, you find it never crashes in the same place. The application is single threaded, and uses only the C standard library. What programming errors could be causing this crash? How would you test each one? •Explain how congestion control works in the TCP protocol. •In Java, what is the difference between final, finally, and finalize? •What is multithreaded programming? What is a deadlock? •Write a function (with helper functions if needed) called to Excel that takes an excel column value (A,B,C,D…AA,AB,AC,… AAA..) and returns a corresponding integer value (A=1,B=2,… AA=26..). •You have a stream of infinite queries (ie: real time Google search queries that people are entering). Describe how you would go about finding a good estimate of 1000 samples from this never ending set of data and then write code for it. •Tree search algorithms. Write BFS and DFS code, explain run time and space requirements. Modify the code to handle trees with weighted edges and loops with BFS and DFS, make the code print out path to goal state. •You are given a list of numbers. When you reach the end of the list you will come back to the beginning of the list (a circular list). Write the most efficient algorithm to find the minimum # in this list. Find any given # in the list. The numbers in the list are always increasing but you don’t know where the circular list begins, ie: 38, 40, 55, 89, 6, 13, 20, 23, 36. •Describe the data structure that is used to manage memory. (stack) •What’s the difference between local and global variables? •If you have 1 million integers, how would you sort them efficiently? (modify a specific sorting algorithm to solve this) •In Java, what is the difference between static, final, and const. (if you don’t know Java they will ask something similar for C or C++). •Talk about your class projects or work projects (pick something easy)… then describe how you could make them more efficient (in terms of algorithms). •Suppose you have an NxN matrix of positive and negative integers. Write some code that finds the sub-matrix with the maximum sum of its elements. •Write some code to reverse a string. •Implement division (without using the divide operator, obviously). •Write some code to find all permutations of the letters in a particular string. •What method would you use to look up a word in a dictionary? •Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval? •You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you fine the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings? •What is the C-language command for opening a connection with a foreign host over the internet? •Design and describe a system/application that will most efficiently produce a report of the top 1 million Google search requests. These are the particulars: 1) You are given 12 servers to work with. They are all dual-processor machines with 4Gb of RAM, 4x400GB hard drives and networked together.(Basically, nothing more than high-end PC’s) 2) The log data has already been cleaned for you. It consists of 100 Billion log lines, broken down into 12 320 GB files of 40-byte search terms per line. 3) You can use only custom written applications or available free open-source software. •There is an array A[N] of N numbers. You have to compose an array Output[N] such that Output will be equal to multiplication of all the elements of A[N] except A. For example Output[0] will be multiplication of A[1] to A[N-1] and Output[1] will be multiplication of A[0] and from A[2] to A[N-1]. Solve it without division operator and in O(n). •There is a linked list of numbers of length N. N is very large and you don’t know N. You have to write a function that will return k random numbers from the list. Numbers should be completely random. Hint: 1. Use random function rand() (returns a number between 0 and 1) and irand() (return either 0 or 1) 2. It should be done in O(n). •Find or determine non existence of a number in a sorted list of N numbers where the numbers range over M, M>> N and N large enough to span multiple disks. Algorithm to beat O(log n) bonus points for constant time algorithm. •You are given a game of Tic Tac Toe. You have to write a function in which you pass the whole game and name of a player. The function will return whether the player has won the game or not. First you to decide which data structure you will use for the game. You need to tell the algorithm first and then need to write the code. Note: Some position may be blank in the game। So your data structure should consider this condition also. •You are given an array [a1 To an] and we have to construct another array [b1 To bn] where bi = a1*a2*…*an/ai. you are allowed to use only constant space and the time complexity is O(n). No divisions are allowed. •How do you put a Binary Search Tree in an array in a efficient manner. Hint :: If the node is stored at the ith position and its children are at 2i and 2i+1(I mean level order wise)Its not the most efficient way. •How do you find out the fifth maximum element in an Binary Search Tree in efficient manner. Note: You should not use use any extra space. i.e sorting Binary Search Tree and storing the results in an array and listing out the fifth element. •Given a Data Structure having first n integers and next n chars. A = i1 i2 i3 … iN c1 c2 c3 … cN.Write an in-place algorithm to rearrange the elements of the array ass A = i1 c1 i2 c2 … in cn •Given two sequences of items, find the items whose absolute number increases or decreases the most when comparing one sequence with the other by reading the sequence only once. •Given That One of the strings is very very long , and the other one could be of various sizes. Windowing will result in O(N+M) solution but could it be better? May be NlogM or even better? •How many lines can be drawn in a 2D plane such that they are equidistant from 3 non-collinear points? •Let’s say you have to construct Google maps from scratch and guide a person standing on Gateway of India (Mumbai) to India Gate(Delhi). How do you do the same? •Given that you have one string of length N and M small strings of length L. How do you efficiently find the occurrence of each small string in the larger one? •Given a binary tree, programmatically you need to prove it is a binary search tree. •You are given a small sorted list of numbers, and a very very long sorted list of numbers – so long that it had to be put on a disk in different blocks. How would you find those short list numbers in the bigger one? •Suppose you have given N companies, and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are theres to merge? •Given a file of 4 billion 32-bit integers, how to find one that appears at least twice? •Write a program for displaying the ten most frequent words in a file such that your program should be efficient in all complexity measures. •Design a stack. We want to push, pop, and also, retrieve the minimum element in constant time. •Given a set of coin denominators, find the minimum number of coins to give a certain amount of change. •Given an array, i) find the longest continuous increasing subsequence. ii) find the longest increasing subsequence. •Suppose we have N companies, and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are there to merge? •Write a function to find the middle node of a single link list. •Given two binary trees, write a compare function to check if they are equal or not. Being equal means that they have the same value and same structure. •Implement put/get methods of a fixed size cache with LRU replacement algorithm. •You are given with three sorted arrays ( in ascending order), you are required to find a triplet ( one element from each array) such that distance is minimum. •Distance is defined like this : If a, b[j] and c[k] are three elements then distance=max(abs(a-b[j]),abs(a-c[k]),abs(b[j]-c[k]))” Please give a solution in O(n) time complexity •How does C++ deal with constructors and deconstructors of a class and its child class? •Write a function that flips the bits inside a byte (either in C++ or Java). Write an algorithm that take a list of n words, and an integer m, and retrieves the mth most frequent word in that list. •What’s 2 to the power of 64? •Given that you have one string of length N and M small strings of length L. How do you efficiently find the occurrence of each small string in the larger one? •How do you find out the fifth maximum element in an Binary Search Tree in efficient manner. •Suppose we have N companies, and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are there to merge? •There is linked list of millions of node and you do not know the length of it. Write a function which will return a random number from the list. •You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number? •How long it would take to sort 1 trillion numbers? Come up with a good estimate. •Order the functions in order of their asymptotic performance: 1) 2^n 2) n^100 3) n! 4) n^n •There are some data represented by(x,y,z). Now we want to find the Kth least data. We say (x1, y1, z1) > (x2, y2, z2) when value(x1, y1, z1) > value(x2, y2, z2) where value(x,y,z) = (2^x)*(3^y)*(5^z). Now we can not get it by calculating value(x,y,z) or through other indirect calculations as lg(value(x,y,z)). How to solve it? •How many degrees are there in the angle between the hour and minute hands of a clock when the time is a quarter past three? •Given an array whose elements are sorted, return the index of a the first occurrence of a specific integer. Do this in sub-linear time. I.e. do not just go through each element searching for that element. •Given two linked lists, return the intersection of the two lists: i.e. return a list containing only the elements that occur in both of the input lists. •What’s the difference between a hashtable and a hashmap? •If a person dials a sequence of numbers on the telephone, what possible words/strings can be formed from the letters associated with those numbers? •How would you reverse the image on an n by n matrix where each pixel is represented by a bit? •Create a fast cached storage mechanism that, given a limitation on the amount of cache memory, will ensure that only the least recently used items are discarded when the cache memory is reached when inserting a new item. It supports 2 functions: String get(T t) and void put(String k, T t). •Create a cost model that allows Google to make purchasing decisions on to compare the cost of purchasing more RAM memory for their servers vs. buying more disk space. •Design an algorithm to play a game of Frogger and then code the solution. The object of the game is to direct a frog to avoid cars while crossing a busy road. You may represent a road lane via an array. Generalize the solution for an N-lane road. •What sort would you use if you had a large data set on disk and a small amount of ram to work with? •What sort would you use if you required tight max time bounds and wanted highly regular performance. •How would you store 1 million phone numbers? •Design a 2D dungeon crawling game. It must allow for various items in the maze – walls, objects, and computer-controlled characters. (The focus was on the class structures, and how to optimize the experience for the user as s/he travels through the dungeon.) •What is the size of the C structure below on a 32-bit system? On a 64-bit? Google Interview: Software Engineer in Test •Efficiently implement 3 stacks in a single array. •Given an array of integers which is circularly sorted, how do you find a given integer. •Write a program to find depth of binary search tree without using recursion. •Find the maximum rectangle (in terms of area) under a histogram in linear time. •Most phones now have full keyboards. Before there there three letters mapped to a number button. Describe how you would go about implementing spelling and word suggestions as people type. •Describe recursive mergesort and its runtime. Write an iterative version in C++/Java/Python. •How would you determine if someone has won a game of tic-tac-toe on a board of any size? •Given an array of numbers, replace each number with the product of all the numbers in the array except the number itself *without* using division. •Create a cache with fast look up that only stores the N most recently accessed items. •How to design a search engine? If each document contains a set of keywords, and is associated with a numeric attribute, how to build indices? •Given two files that has list of words (one per line), write a program to show the intersection. •What kind of data structure would you use to index annagrams of words? e.g. if there exists the word “top” in the database, the query for “pot” should list that. Google Interview: Quantitative Compensation Analyst •What is the yearly standard deviation of a stock given the monthly standard deviation? •How many resumes does Google receive each year for software engineering? •Anywhere in the world, where would you open up a new Google office and how would you figure out compensation for all the employees at this new office? •What is the probability of breaking a stick into 3 pieces and forming a triangle? Google Interview: Engineering Manager •You’re the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive? Google Interview: AdWords Associate •How would you work with an advertiser who was not seeing the benefits of the AdWords relationship due to poor conversions? •How would you deal with an angry or frustrated advertisers on the phone?

On CNA now interview this dr park. Erp is cheap.

Hi, I had made an OD claim against my own insurer. The loss adjuster and surveyor had contacted me and ask me for an interview. Anyone have similar experience? May i know what kind of questions do they ask?

hi guys. anyone working in civil service/statboard? can share some ideas on the working enviroment/culture? as well as the interview process/ commonly asked questions? thanks!

Do read this article if you have the time. He is much better and more qualified than most MPs yet humble. Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. http://www.straitstimes.com/vgn-ext-templa...0000a35010aRCRD

Something to read about the man who refuse to give up fighting. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporesc...-050517946.html

非你莫属 is a TV show on job interview. (ok, i admit it is not really a very popular show but the recent episode is interesting to have a glimpse on the society, be it culture, value, priority...) The following video is about a lady contestant (studied and stayed in NZ for a total of 6 years and went back to China) and host (张绍刚) http://v.ku6.com/show/IeRx8NwWkyHb2jSkxAUf8Q...html http://dzh.mop.com/whbm/20120117/0/Sz7777I28a72c1Fz.shtml The following video is a follow up comment in another programme. http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzQyNjEwNzg0.html There are many discussions on this contestant. http://club.china.com/data/thread/1011/2736/39/06/7_1.html

Hey everyone found a very interesting interview of the owner and brain behind the Koenigsegg brand. This is a very interesting video where you discover where the idea to create this supercar brand was born. High quality video and sound. Hope you all enjoy

this is what tony tan has say http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkBlcxt50as...feature=related the reaction of the crowd to tony tan on nomination day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFo9OzROkmA..._embedded#at=18

http://www.hellodamage.com/top/2010/12/05/...ura-hello-work/ 19

Is it a norm? Lazy to wear one..

very enlightening. He explain there is a place for civil disobedience. in fact Ong Teng Cheong sanction strikes for worker in shipyard before

Abstract from Nicole FB NSP lodged 3 complaint against TPL for breach of Cooling Day . Election Department can ignore 1 queries.. but it cannot ignore 1million queries. please do your part and call 1800 818 0088| Email: [email protected] to SEEK OFFICIAL RESPONSE ON THIS MATTER http://theonlinecitizen.com/2011/05/toc-br...cebook-posting/

FORMER PRESIDENT ONG TENG CHEONG's INTERVIEW - INSIGHT INTO PROBLEMS BETWEEN HIM AND THE PAP!!! .....MOST REVEALING! President Ong's interview with Asiaweek - revisited Wednesday, 18 February 2009, 12:12 pm - In light of President Nathan's press conference where he explained why he approved the government's request to use the reserves, we re-publish former President Ong Teng Cheong's interview with AsiaWeek (10 March 2000) where he revealed the obstacles he faced when he asked for the copies of the government's accounts on the reserves and investments. 'I Had a Job to Do' Whether the government liked it or not, says ex-president Ong ONG Teng Cheong will go down in history as Singapore 's first elected president. But for twenty years before that, the Chinese-educated, foreign-trained architect was a stalwart of the nation's People's Action Party government led by its first PM Lee Kuan Yew. Ong, now 64, was minister of communications, of culture, and of labor; he was also deputy PM, secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress, and chairman of Lee's PAP. By common consent, he was the man who kept the Chinese ground loyal to the party; indeed, his command of the language was such that Lee always asked Ong to accompany him whenever he visited China . In the 1980s, Ong was one of the party's four senior 'second echelon' leaders who were considered as possible successors to Lee. It was Ong's longtime friend, Goh Chok Tong, who got the nod for the job. Ong, who was diagnosed as suffering from lymphatic cancer in 1992, chose instead to run in the first elections for the presidency the following year. He won - and soon became embroiled in a six-year long festering dispute with his former colleagues in government over how much information he should have in order to fulfil his role in safeguarding Singapore's prodigious financial reserves. The altercation came to a head last year when Ong and his mentor Lee and friend Goh clashed publicly and rancorously in a rare display of disunity among PAP heavyweights. He decided not to run for re-election as president - but not ! before he had spooked Goh's men by leaving the announcement until the last moment. He has now returned to the private architecture firm he set up with his late wife, Ling Siew May, and which is now run by one of his two sons. His doctors have given him a clean bill of health after a debilitating bout with lymphatic cancer - though he still wears a cap to cover the baldness caused by chemotherapy treatment. Last week, he gave his first in-depth interview about his presidency to senior correspondent Roger Mitton in a nearly two-hour long talk. Extended Excerpts: It's now six months since you stepped down. How do you feel about your time as president? I am satisfied with what I did. I hope it was all for the best. I was elected to do a job. And I had to do that job whether the government - or anyone else - liked it or not. It seems that often they did not like it, but let's go back: How did you first get into politics? In the early 1970s, Lee Kuan Yew asked me for an interview to get me involved to stand for election. I stood in 1972 and I won and became a PAP backbencher. A year later, Lee asked me to take up ministerial office but I turned it down because my younger brother was dying of cancer. I had to assist him and to settle his affairs after he died at the age of 25. Then Lee Kuan Yew approached me again and this time I agreed to take up office. Lee is very persuasive. He must have been impressed to make you a minister so quickly - you were a young architect with no experience of politics. Yes, I was not trained to become a minister or a politician, but you learn on the job. Whenever I went to a new ministry, I always asked myself basic questions: What is this job all about? What am I supposed to do? That's what I did in 1980, for instance, when I became minister of labor, in addition to being minister for communications. I went through all the legislation and I decided that the trade unions should not just be designed to organize and finance strikes, but instead shou! ld help improve the workers' social and economic wellbeing. You became head of the NTUC and also remained a cabinet minister - and Singapore remained strike free. Yes. But in January 1986 I did sanction a strike, the first for about a decade. It was in the shipping industry where the management was taking advantage of the workers. I did not even tell the cabinet about santioning the strike. And some of them were angry with me about that. The minister for trade and industry was very angry, his officers were very upset. They had calls from America , asking what happened to Singapore ? - we are non-strike. I said: if I were to inform the cabinet or the government they would probably stop me from going ahead with the strike. It only lasted two days. Then all the issues were settled. It showed that management was just trying to pull a fast one. So I believe what I did was right. It marked a trend - that you have never been afraid of doing something your ministerial colleagues might disagree with? No. If they don't like it, I can always come back here to my architecture firm. Around this time you were discussing the succession to PM Lee? Lee Kuan Yew had been discussing this since about 1983. At that time, the second echelon was Tony Tan, S. Dhanabalan, Goh Chok Tong and myself. Were you a candidate for the top job? I was considered as a member of the group. At that time, we did not know who would be the successor to Lee. We finally made the decision to pick Goh Chok Tong. He agreed on condition that I agreed to be his number two. So I was the second DPM; he was the first DPM. In 1988, Lee asked Goh to take over, but he was not ready. He said: two more years. So two years later, he took the job. Lee did not agree with your decision to pick Goh. No, he did not disagree. He said he would leave it to us. His own first choice was Tony Tan. Goh Chok Tong was his second choice. I was his third choice because he said my English was not good enough. He said D! hanabalan was not right because Singapore was not ready for an Indian prime minister. That upset the Indian community. There was quite a bit of adverse reaction to what he said. But he speaks his mind. He is the only one who can get away with it. Personally, you felt Goh was the right man? Well, among the four of us, he was the youngest. Tony Tan said no. I said no. And he sort of accepted being pushed into the position, on condition that we stay on to assist him. Soon after taking over, Goh called a snap election in 1991 - but the PAP's vote slipped and there was talk he would quit. Well, we did discuss about that. But he didn't indicate that he wanted to step down. At that time, you were no. 2 in the executive after PM Goh. Yes. Well, no. 2, no. 3, doesn't matter. So why run for president? The elected presidency was Lee Kuan Yew's initiative. He came out with the idea way back in '82, '83. After parliament passed the measure in 1991, I considered it seriously. At that time, after 20 years in politics, I was thinking of a way to ease myself out, to exit the political arena. I wrote to the prime minister twice to say that I'm prepared to go. You saw the presidency as a way to do that? Yes, the unionists egged me on. They came to see me a couple of times and they suggested that I take it on. I discussed it with the prime minister, being old friends, and he gave me his support. The well-known oppositionist J.B. Jeyaretnam wanted to run against you? Yes, but he was not allowed to because he did not qualify under the stringent criteria. Maybe too stringent. You were glad Jeyaretnam could not run? No, it's okay. I think it would have been more fun. Some of your colleagues did not think it was much fun when your only opponent, a former accountant-general, Chua Kim Yeoh, got so much support? Yes, all of them were quite worried. Some ministers even called me to say: Oh, we are worried about the outcome! . At first, we were quite confident about getting over 70 percent of the vote. But there was a swing of support over to my opponent's side, especially in the educated class - civil servants and the Shenton Way group. The issue was whether they wanted a PAP man as president to check on a PAP government, or whether it would be better to have a neutral independent like Chua. That's why they voted against me because I had the PAP government support. I would have been happier without the PAP's open support. I think I would have been better off with just the unionists' support and the Chinese-educated heartlanders. Without them I would not have been elected. But you did win and you had to figure out how to do this new job as Singapore 's first elected president. Yes. At the first opening of parliament after I was elected, I was given a speech prepared by the government. I read the speech carefully. Besides ceremonial functions, it said that I'm supposed to safeguard the reserves and to help society become more compassionate and gracious. So I decided that, well, if that is what is said in the speech, then that's going to be my job. And I am going to do it. That's what I tried to do. In fact, during the six years I was president, I was very busy. Doing what? Well, I got involved in a lot of things. The Istana presidential palace and other places had to be renovated. All this had to be planned and these places got ready one by one, so that ceremonial functions and other business could go on as usual. I had to press the government to finalize the procedures for the protection of the reserves. A lot of the teething problems and misunderstandings were because there was a lack of clearcut procedures of what to do. Towards the end of my term, I pressed the prime minister for a White Paper to be tabled in parliament that would set out all the principles and procedures for the elected president. Then I will announce my decision to step down. I want to get the job done. Initially, he did not wan! t to do that? It's not that he did not want to do that, but it had been dragging for a long time. They produced a White Paper eventually, tabled it in parliament last July, and that made the future president's job easier. We have already tested out many of the procedures during my term, except for asking the president to approve a draw on the past reserves during a deep economic crisis. That was never done. It's that part of procedure that was not tested. How to do it? It was this issue that caused the dispute between you and the government? Yes. But I don't want to go into details and upset everybody. The thing is that the elected president is supposed to protect the reserves, but he was not told what these are until five years later. From the day the Constitution was amended in 1991 to provide for an elected president, he was supposed to fulfil that role. My predecessor, Wee Kim Wee, although he was not elected, was supposed to play that role during the last two years of his term. But he did not actively check. So, when I came in in 1993, I asked for all this information about the reserves. It took them three years to give it to me. The holdup was for administrative reasons? Either that or they did not think there was any urgency. You see, if you ask me to protect the reserves, then you've got to tell me what I'm supposed to protect. So I had to ask. Why did they not want to tell you? I do not know. Don't ask me, because I don't have the answer. I've been asking them. In fact, in 1996, exactly halfway through my term, I wrote prime minister Goh a letter. At that time, everybody was expecting a general election in December or January. After the election, a new government would be sworn in. When that happens, all the reserves, whether past or current, become past reserves and are locked up on the changeover date. As president, I have to safeguard them and they can only be drawn upon with my permission. So I said to Mr Goh: It's already halfway through my term, but! until today I still don't know all these figures about the reserves. So the government had been stonewalling you, the president, for three years? Yes. What happened actually was, as you know, in accounting, when you talk about reserves, it's either cash reserves or assets reserves. The cash side is straightforward: investment, how many million dollars here and there, how much comes from the investment boards and so on. That was straightforward - but still we had to ask for it. For the assets, like properties and so on, normally you say it's worth $30 million or $100 million or whatever. But they said it would take 56-man years to produce a dollar-and-cents value of the immovable assets. So I discussed this with the accountant-general and the auditor-general and we came to a compromise. The government would not need to give me the dollar-and-cents value, just give me a listing of all the properties that the government owns. They agreed? Well, yes, they agreed, but they said there's not the time for it. It took them a few months to produce the list. But even when they gave me the list, it was not complete. It seems the Singapore government does not know its own assets? Yes. It's complicated. It's never been done before. And for the assets of land, I can understand why. Every piece of land, even a stretch of road, is probablysubdivided into many lots. There are 50,000 to 60,000 lots and every one has a number. If you want to value them all, it would take a long time. In the past, they have just locked everything up and assumed it is all there. But if I am to protect it, at least I want to know the list. When they eventually gave you the list - the incomplete list, did you have enough staff to do the checking and other work? No, I did not. I only had one administrative staffer and two part-timers from the auditor-general's office. For things like approving the budget of statutory boards, the auditor-general's office would normally go through that for me. They ! are very good. They check on everything. And they query and ask for information. For government financial policy matters that you had a veto over, did you get all the details? They finally came with an executive summary to say that they had checked through all this, and that this is what they have, this is how much they are going to spend, and that it won't need any draw from the reserves - or that there's likely to be a draw. There never was a draw during my time, but there were instances where it was a bit dicey whether the budgets of one or two statutory boards would require a draw. But finally we resolved that. Eventually then, with the list of properties and the executive summaries, you were kept informed? I wouldn't be able to say that. Even in my last year as president, I was still not being informed about some ministerial procedures. For example, in April last year, the government said it would allow the sale of the Post Office Savings Bank POSB to DBS Bank. In the past, when there was no elected president, they could just proceed with this kind of thing. But when there is an elected president you cannot, because the POSB is a statutory board whose reserves are to be protected by the president. You cannot just announce this without informing him. But I came to know of it from the newspaper. That is not quite right. Not only that, but they were even going to submit a bill to parliament for this sale and to dissolve the POSB without first informing me. What did you do? My office went to tell them that this was the wrong procedure. You've got to do this first, do that first, before you can do this. It was question of principle and procedure. We had to bring all this to their attention. That they cannot forget us. It's not that we are busybodies, but under the Constitution we have a role to play and a responsibility. Sometimes in the newspaper I came to know of things that I am responsible for, but if it had not been reported in the newspaper I would not know about i! t. You must have been pretty angry that this was still happening in your last year as president? Yes, I was a bit grumpy. And maybe not to the liking of the civil service. They did not like what I said. But I have to be a watchdog all the time, you see. So this is where they are supposed to help me to protect the reserves. And not for me to go and watch out when they do right or wrong. Under the Constitution, you have the right to all the information available to the cabinet. Yes. That's right. And I sourced much information from the cabinet papers. But they are not used to it. So I said: I understand, it's something new, and I know you don't like my interference and busybody checking up and so on. But under the Constitution it is my job to do that. Despite all this, it was widely believed that you wanted to run again for a second six-year term as president? No, I'd been telling my friends since late 1998 that my inclination was not to stand for re-election. But of course, life is unpredictable. In March last year, I went to Stanford and my American doctor confirmed that my cancer was in complete remission. He is very experienced, a world authority on my sickness. So I was fine after my treatment. I gave a complete report to the prime minister and we discussed it. I told him that my inclination was not to stand, but that I'd make the announcement later on. Then the cabinet met and they decided that if I were to stand again, they would not support me. You had been given a clean bill of health, yet your former colleagues would not support you. Did that annoy you? I told the prime minister over lunch: Well, I don't need your cabinet support. If I want to stand, whether I do or not, it will be my personal decision. And I'll make that decision nearer the date of the presidential election - because I have another checkup in June, July, and I want to know my latest position. Also my wife was sick with cancer and we knew that if she died, it would be difficult for ! me to stand without a first lady. She felt very apologetic and that was another reason why my inclination was not to stand. I hoped that if I stepped down I would have more time to be with my wife, because her prognosis was not very good. By waiting until July to announce your decision, were you ruffling the government for the way they had treated you? Maybe so. Maybe it was my miscalculation that my stated inclination not to stand again had not been good enough for them. But I had been telling that to all my friends. And I did not want to tell people my wife was dying, either. But the government worried that you might suddenly decide to run again. No, I made it very clear and I called a press conference in July to tell everybody. But I believe some people were still afraid that I might turn up on nomination day. Even friends asked me if I might do that. How could they? I had given my word that I would not stand. A straw poll apparently indicated you would beat the government's candidate, S.R. Nathan, if you had stood. Yes. But I gave my word that I would not run. And I don't think it's right. I'm a very old-fashioned man. Also, my wife passed away in September. And I became more sceptical about all these medical reports. Well, not sceptical, but certainly I find life more unpredictable than I thought. Full of uncertainties. In the end you were happy to stand down? Yes, I'd been preparing for that psychologically since late 1998. I was quite happy when the decision was made, happy to return to private life to do the work that I enjoy. How are your relations with PM Goh these days? They are okay. I just had lunch with him last week. I can't invite him now, so he invited me. When I was president, we took turns to invite each other for lunch in the Istana. Did Senior Minister Lee join you? No, we did that separately. Lee spoke out against you last year. How are your relations with him now? We've never quarrelled. It's said that your recalcitrance upset him and your former colleagues, leaving you estranged and bitter? I would not call it recalcitrant. I mentioned some of the problems - or many of the problems - that I faced. If they regard that as an attack on the government and on the civil service, then that is for them to interpret. The prime minister and I spoke at my farewell reception. We agreed that we would say what we have to say. I think it came out well. He said that my statements, and his rebuttal in parliament, were probably a good thing. They showed the transparency of the system. I stand by what I said.

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Dun bother with the local media as they dun provide the full content. Below is the full interview. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/world/asia/11lee.html?_r=1

CNN

MM Lee’s interview with NatGeo – transcript Transcript of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s interview with Mark Jacobson from National Geographic on 6 July 2009. Source Download in PDF Singapore Government Media Release Q: “I don’t think you’d be dazzled but this is what they give when they interview a big shot.” Mr Lee: “Okay. Barbara Poulson, she’s the CEO, owner?” Q: “She’s the editor. The writers don’t deal with the CEO. The writers go economy class.” Mr Lee: “Thank you.” Q: “It was interesting. The thing about National Geographic is the joke but it’s not really a joke, I guess, the photographers go business class and the writers go economy class. I never cared for that very much myself.” Mr Lee: “The writers go by economy class.” Q: “The photographers go business class.” Mr Lee: “They’d get tired. They don’t have, what do you call it, DVD?” Q: “No, you can watch it. In the airplane, the DVD is about this close to your face, so you can’t really move very much. It’s sort of like sitting in the first row of the movie theatre. So actually I’ve interviewed Presidents and I was born in 1948, there’ve been 10-12 American Presidents. They come and they go. But I’ve never interviewed anybody who has stayed the length that you have. It’s like interviewing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson rolled up into one, so it’s kind of nice.” Mr Lee: “It was one of these cataclysmic moments in history when empires dissolved and invading armies came in and lorded it over us for three-and-a-half years, in this case the Japanese Imperial army who were quite brutal and then the Communists who were armed to fight the Japanese, made a bid for power. So after all that, we came through as the Communists would call it the crucible of fire.” Q: “The crucible of fire. In your book, you said that the three years of Japanese Occupation were the most, probably the most important years of your life. Do you feel that way, do you still feel that way?” Mr Lee: “Yes, of course. First, I was in my late teens, they captured Singapore in February 1942. I was 18-plus and they didn’t leave until 1945 when I was 21-plus.” Q: “Those are significant years in anybody’s life.” Mr Lee: “So I was Chinese male, tall and they were going for people like me because this was the centre for the collection of ethnic Chinese donations to Chungking to fight the Japanese. So when they came in, they were out to punish us. So they slaughtered 50,000, well the numbers estimate go up to about 90,000 but I think verifiable numbers would be about 50,000. And just randomly but for a stroke of fortune, I would have been one of them.” Q: “Well, 1945 seems to be a, if you look back over history, 1945 was a cataclysmic year for humanity in general. You see difference between the combination of the detonation of the atom bomb and the discovery of the Nazi camps. So at that point, tell me what you think? It seems that humanity began to stop thinking of itself as made in the image of the creator so maybe it weren’t so wonderful.” Mr Lee: “I don’t think I ever started off with that hypothesis or that basis. I always thought that humanity was animal-like and that Confucian theory was Man can be improved. I’m not sure it can be but it can trained, it can be disciplined. I’m not sure you can actually change the character of a man but you can discipline him and make him, you make a left-hander write with his right hand but you can’t really change his natural born instincts to use his left hand. But a Confucianist belief Man is perfectible which is an optimistic belief.” Q: “I would say so.” Mr Lee: “And there are many American sociologists who also would like to prove that to be correct, the latest one being the professor who has done some research insists why ethnic Jews and Asians and West Indian Blacks do so well in America and they came to the conclusion that’s because they emphasised upbringing and education.” Q: “Actually, I went to the University of California at Berkley back in the 1960s and early 70s, I never graduated, then I went back and finished my degree in 2004 to show my children their father wasn’t a bum and it was interesting to see how the demographic composition of US, that’s the number one public college in the United States. It was like half of the graduating class was Asians and it was interesting and it made me feel like I would never have gotten there.” Mr Lee: “Most of the Asians settled in California because of the climate.” Q: “It was sort of striking because you feel like, what you’re saying is interesting because it’s like some people seem to thrive in certain environments and some people don’t, I don’t know why.” Mr Lee: “Well, we’ve got ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians here. The settled ones have become less hard-driving and hard-striving and we’ve got recent migrants, they are hungry, they’re determined to succeed having uprooted themselves and they’re doing better.” Q: “Is that okay? Is that fine, I mean?” Mr Lee: “No it worries the old citizens. They say look this is fierce competition, my children won’t be getting the scholarships because they’re doing well in schools, they push their children very hard. In fact, they need no pushing. They come here from China with no English language and they know that without English, they won’t get along. So there are many cases of boys and girls aged 12, 13 who come into our secondary schools and by the time, they finish the schools, they top the class in English.” Q: “That’s interesting, it’s like my grandparents came to New York. When they came in, they don’t speak English and they did great. They just really tried hard and made a life for themselves and I think after a number of generations, it’s very difficult to keep that kind of drive up.” Mr Lee: “Of course, of course.” Q: “Do you think that’s inevitable or do you think that people just get lazy or what?” Mr Lee: “No, I think the spurs are not stuck on your hinds. They are part of the herd, why-go-faster? But when you’re lagging behind, you must go faster to catch up with the herd. I’m quite sure that there are children of the migrants who strive arduously. When they grow up in the same schools as the Singaporeans, the same playing fields, same environment and they begin to adopt Singaporean habits in the ways of living and thinking. So I’m quite sure they’d become like us. Well, because we’re shrinking in our population, our fertility ratio is about 1.29. Q: “I actually wanted to ask you about that.” Mr Lee: ”So it’s a worrying factor. So we’ll need a constant inflow but we’re a small population, so we get the inflow and we get the inflow from the educated end of the population, both Indians and Chinese and they’ve got surplus populations. Well, I won’t say surplus but they’ve got huge population, huge numbers.” Q: “They have people to spare, that’s for sure.” Mr Lee: “No and they’ve got fierce competition there, so when they come here, higher standards of living for the time being, better social environment with jobs.” Q: “What would you say the parents of the second or third generation of Singaporeans and their children are not able to compete with the new people? How do you tell them?” Mr Lee: “We tell them look they have got to work harder or they’ll become stupid. It’s just that they don’t see the point of it. Why race when you can canter and save your energy and do other things? Art, ballet, sports whereas these new migrants, they spend all their time slogging away in the library or at home.” Q: “You’re not saying that arts, sports and ballet are not important, are you?” Mr Lee: “No, I’m not saying they are not important but an inordinate amount of time is spent on extra-curricular activities.” Q: “I told my son if you stop playing basketball, you do better on these tests but I like playing basketball. I said, well.” Mr Lee: “Well, I think it’s an inevitable evolution of any society and therefore, a regular inflow of migrants without too huge a deluge will keep that society on its toes.” Q: “You have 25 per cent here of people who are expatriates. Is that too much?” Mr Lee: “Well, there’s a little discomfort in some areas because in some areas, they seem to congregate, the new ones. The Indians somehow find the East Coast congenial. They concentrate there, so they become very obvious. The Chinese are more scattered, not so obvious except in the food courts where they are doing the hard work because Chinese cooks from China are willing to work for $1,000 less a month and they’re just as good. So the employer looks for them.” Q: “Well suppose, if you were the owner of a restaurant and you were going to hire a chef.” Mr Lee: “I’d choose the best chef.” Q: “You’d chose the best chef. It wouldn’t make a difference how much you have to pay.” Mr Lee: “Well, because the customer will make up for any difference. I mean, good chefs are difficult to come by. That’s as simple as that.” Q: “The talent.” Mr Lee: “It’s the taste buds, your nostrils, sense of colour, et cetera.” Q: “We ate dinner at Iggys, somewhere at the Regency Hotel. He was telling us, we were eating the food and he’s sitting there watching us eat which is so disconcerting I have got to say and he was explaining how they put together each dish. It was like listening to a painter telling you.” Mr Lee: “Yes, they make it an art.” Q: “It was an art form.” Mr Lee: “It’s not only just food. It’s presentation, it’s for the eyes, for the smell, for the texture and so on.” Q: “You have a favourite food hawker?” Mr Lee: “I can’t go.” Q: “Or is it really too good to say?” Mr Lee: “Well, I can’t go anymore because so many people want to shake my hands and I become a distraction, I can’t really get down to my food.” Q: “So can you have take-out?” Mr Lee: “Well, that’s not quite the same. I tend to go to restaurants when I go out and I try restaurants with a quiet corner where I can sneak in and sneak out with my friends and not have a crowd wanting to shake hands with me.” Q: “One of the things that I did when I came, I’ve been here about two weeks, and I know I have this interview with you. So they say what are you doing in Singapore? I say well, I’m going to interview the MM and they said, oh yeah. I said well, what would you ask him if you have a chance and people have a lot of question. So I have integrated my questions with their questions.” Mr Lee: “That’s all right.” Q: “I thought probably you would appreciate that.” Mr Lee: “I’m 85 coming on to 86 this September. I’ve had many eggs thrown at me.” Q: “One thing that really struck me, coming from an American perspective is how much people, as much as they may seem to complain, they obviously feel a sense of home here and they love this place and this is their home and whatever problems they may have with whatever, that love of it comes through which I don’t think the people really in a place like America can really appreciate that. In America, what do they know about Singapore? They know it has an exotic name, the chewing gum and the guy that got caned. That’s it. And one of my missions here is to kind of like explode certain mythologies that people might have about this place.” Mr Lee: “Well, the Americans who’ve been here and done business, stayed here especially, if you ask them, they produced, the Americans get together and help each other, so they produced a book for new commerce, new entrants. So every three, four years they change and they give out all the eccentricities of the Singapore society, where do you get good food, what you have to watch out for, where they give you a bum rap and so on. And I think high on the list is the clean environment, no graffiti, safe personally, health et cetera, clean air, clean water and clean food except for some isolated cases and a safe environment for their children. I mean, where can you go out and jog at three o’clock in the morning and nothing happens? I think you can see them. You’re staying at the marina around there?” Q: “I’m staying at Merchant Court.” Mr Lee: “Merchant Court? Opposite?” YY: “In fact, just next to Clarke Quay.” Mr Lee: “Yes, yes. You can. Nobody has been mugged, nobody has been raped. The crime rate is the lowest in Southeast Asia because we have a fairly disciplined population. Everybody is educated, nobody, there are a few dropouts who go in for glue sniffing and drugs and so on but we keep the numbers down and we rescue as much of them as we can. But the social delinquency rate amongst young people is at a minimum.” Q: “One thing that struck me is how you never see a policeman. I live in New York and I see police, cops all the time.” Mr Lee: “You have got to show your presence to scare people, I mean, that I’m around. But in Singapore, we’ve got what you call neighbourhood police, that they are stationed in the neighbourhood. There’s a little neighbourhood post for each precinct and they stay there for two, three, even four years, so they get to know everybody there. So any stranger comes in they know and they become friends with the neighbourhood. So apart from the occasional round in a car, they make sure that houses are properly locked up and not left open inviting thieves.” Q: “It’s not necessary to be driving around with the search light and all of the stuff like that. That’s the way it is in most places, really. This is a law abiding society in general.” Mr Lee: “Well, it’s the education in the schools and at home partly because we’re such a densely populated kind of buildings, all high rises, so you have got to develop habits which are considerate to your neighbours. If you have loud blaring noise going through the walls, partition walls to the neighbours, they’ll soon complain to the the neighbourhood police or somebody will come up to say will you tone your volume down because you’re waking up the neighbourhood. And they learn to accommodate each other because we don’t allow our ethnic groups to choose to live together. When they are resettled, they have got to ballot for their neighbours, so you get Malays, Indians, Chinese all shuffled around together when in the first generation, they used to sell and relocate themselves, so we have quotas and no precinct should have more than this quota of the population. So in other words, we bring about an integration by spreading them which means we spread them in the schools too.” Q: “And it’s worked.” Mr Lee: “It’s worked. And so we have a more homogenous and more homogenous in the sense that they haven’t changed their religions, the Malays are still Muslims and they go to the mosques every Friday and they’ve slightly different habits. The influence from the Middle East has made them have head-dresses for no rhyme or reason.” Q: “Actually, it’s an interesting question that just came up recently that I was going to ask you about. I know that you put a premium on racial harmony and religious harmony and it’s actually more or less legislated here, right?” Mr Lee: “Yes, because you can have enormous trouble once religions clash.” Q: “Well, the two things I’ve been interested to ask you about that because I agree with you is number one, the recent rise of Evangelical Christians in Singapore.” Mr Lee: “As a result of American efforts.” Q: “I don’t know if it’s American efforts but I went to the New Creation Church and you might as well have been in Tennessee , it was exactly the same. As soon as you walked through the door, it was exactly the same but it seemed very popular. Is that a new monkey (?) ranch in there?” Mr Lee: “No, I don’t think so. You see most Chinese here are Buddhists or Taoist ancestor worshippers, I’m one of them, so it is a tolerant society, it says whatever you want to believe in, you go ahead. And these youngsters, the educated ones, Western-educated especially, now they are all English-educated, their mother tongue is the second language. Therefore, they begin to read Western books and Western culture and so on and then the Internet. So they begin to question like in Korea that what is this mumbo-jumbo, the ancestors and so on? The dead have gone, they’re praying before this altar and asking for their blessings and then they have got groups, Christian groups who go out and evangelize. They catch them in their teens, in their late teens when they’re malleable and open to suggestions and then they become very fervent evangelists themselves. My granddaughter is one of them. She’s now 28. My wife used to tell her look, don’t go for any more of these titles, just look for MRS. It’s just around the corner, God will arrange it.” Q: “Well, in the US, as you say, it’s import from the US or an export. These people have been very politically active.” Mr Lee: “Well, they know here that if you get politically active, you will incite the Buddhist, the Taoist, the Muslims, the Hindus and others to do similar response. We used to teach in the schools in the 1980s to get back some moral values as a result of Westernisation, Confucian culture as a subject in itself for the Chinese whereupon the Malays, the Indians and so on, they reacted. They wanted not Confucian culture, they wanted their religion, so we decided we’ll stop this. So we took the concepts of Confucianism and put it into civic subject, that society is more important than the individual, that the individual must care for the society and the interests of the society must take precedence over the individual, which is contrary to the American or Western system which says the individual trumps everything, freedom trumps everything, freedom of speech, freedom of whatever you tolerate even at the expense of making others feel inconvenient. If I don’t like abortion, you’re a doctor who aborts people, I shoot you.” Q: “That may happen, that’s valid I think there is a rather large emphasis on individual autonomy in Western cultures that is sometimes detrimental to the larger society. But that’s the way you’re brought up, that’s what we’re used to, so it becomes….” Mr Lee: “No, it’s the philosophy of society you start with. You get all the Kantian theories and the Rousseau and so on, so gradually it evolved and then along comes Maddox and Jefferson’s the right to happiness of the society and so on. So it’s an optimistic sort of approach to life. The Chinese start off with a completely different end of the stick that all men are born the same and you have got to educate them and perfect them, otherwise, they will not improve. So they put a lot of emphasis on upbringing at home and in the schools. Well, we’re losing part of it because the Chinese schools have disappeared. We’re trying to preserve it or introduce it into the English speaking schools but the teachers now are also educated in English speaking schools and have lost the old traditions. So they’re trying to get them to go to China and see how they preserve these qualities. But we find that in the cities, they’re also changing.” Q: “So when, don’t take this the wrong way, but when you decided to close the Chinese stream education and the college, what was the rationale behind that and do you ever regret doing that?” Mr Lee: “No, I regret not doing it faster because politically, if there’d been a violent electoral protest in the next elections because they’re so wedded to the idea that language means, culture means, life means everything. But I’m a pragmatist and you can’t make a living with the Chinese language in Singapore. The first duty of the government is to be able to feed its people, to feed its people in a little island. There’s no hinterland and no farming, you have got to trade and you have got to do something to get people buy your goods or services or get people to come here and manufacture themselves, export, ready-made markets and multinationals which I stumbled on when I went to Harvard for a term in 1968 and I said oh, this could solve my unemployment problem. So we brought the semiconductors factories here and one started, the whole herd came and we became a vast centre for production of computers and computer peripherals. But they all speak English, multinationals from Japan, Europe, whatever European country they come from, they speak English. So Chinese-educated were losing out and they were disgruntled because they got the poorer jobs and lesser pay. So eventually our own Members of Parliament were Chinese-educated and graduates from the Chinese university said okay, we have got do something. We’re ruining these people’s careers. By that time, the university was also losing its good students and getting bum students. Because they took in poor students, they graduated them on lower marks and so the degree became valueless. So when you apply for a job with a Chinese university degree, you hide your degree and produce your school certificate. So I tried to change it from within, the Education Minister was Chinese-educated and English-educated to convert it from within because most of the teachers have American PhDs. So they did their thesis in English but they’ve forgotten their English as they’ve been teaching in Chinese, so it couldn’t be done. So I merged them with the English speaking university. Great unhappiness and dislocation for the first few years but when they graduated, we put it to them do you want your old university degree or you want English university degree? All opted for the English university degree. That settled it.” Q: “In recent events as China begins to ascend, I mean, would you?” Mr Lee: “No, no. It makes no difference. We are not going to tie ourselves to China to the extent it makes us hostage. I mean, we have many investments there because the older generation are Chinese-educated, they feel comfortable but the younger generation, they have enough Chinese who want to go there and do business and they can ramp it up if you want because once you are able to listen and speak and read without writing, you can pick it up. And not everybody wants to go there and we’ve been offering scholarships to their top universities, Beijing, Qinghua, Hudan, very few takers. They say nah, I want to go to America or Britain because they know they’re coming back here and competing in English.” Q: “Do you think that, I mean, one question I wanted to ask you was building a country from scratch is obviously an enormous achievement, accomplishment.” Mr lee: “No, it’s not a nation. It’s a society in transition. You need a few hundred years to build a nation.” Q: “Oh really?” Mr Lee: “Yes.” Q: “You have a lot of countries running around claiming they’re nations. You don’t think they really are nations?” Mr Lee: “Well, we make them say the national pledge and sing the national anthem but suppose we have a famine, will your Malay neighbour give you the last few grains of rice or will she share it with her family or fellow Muslim or vice versa?” Q: “Depends on the person, doesn’t it? No, it doesn’t?” Mr Lee: “No, I think there comes a time, I read a book by Edward Wilson who was Harvard.” Q: “I know who he is.” Mr Lee: “And he wrote about human beings.” Q: “Actual past ones.” Mr Lee: “And he described the Maoris. So when two tribes were fighting, the third tribe will come and see which tribe is more our side, more genes like us and they joined that side. So it’s an instinct. Can you overcome that instinct? Edward Wilson says culture can overcome because he’s American, he knows a mix of Europeans and others. But it takes many, many years. Yes, they all do the military service, equal treatment, equal pay, equal hardship, job opportunities but we live in concentric circles. Cross marriages, yes a few, usually the parents are most unhappy. Then where do you belong, the children of the cross marriages? Sometimes they get reabsorbed in their father ethnic group and they carry the father’s surname. Sometimes, if you become a Muslim then whether you’re male or female, you join the other side. But it has happened to the margins more and more. But I think the instinct, the human instinct is still there. I mean, it’s in America.” Q: “I live in New York which is similar to Singapore in a way.” Mr Lee: “No, I mean, I used to talk to an Indian. He was the administrator of Agra and we were driving back to Delhi. This was in the late 1970s. So he was telling me he was writing a thesis on Shakespeare, a highly-educated man. At that time, English-educated, that generation. So I said, supposing I pretend as a caste, supposing I pretend I’m a Brahmin, high caste and I invite you to dinner, he said yeah I’ll come. You give me a good dinner, I’ll come. Now supposing I want to marry your daughter? He says that’s different. The most thorough inquiries will be made. So I said supposing I tell you I came from Calcutta and how you’re going to find me. He says no, you’ve got to live somewhere in Calcutta, you must have your family, your neighbours, your friends in Calcutta, we’ll find out. Then we’ll know what caste you belong to.” Q: “So as long as you have enough human trail people will figure out who you are.” Mr Lee: “Yes, and in Japan, they do it a different way. They exclude the Chinese and the Koreans who have been there for generations. They’re still not Japanese citizens. Some had become since the West started criticizing them because you may have a Japanese name and you speak perfect Japanese, but for promotions, where is your home village? Never mind, I come from Tokyo, Osaka or Kobe. No where is your home domicile and they will trace you there.” Q: “So what you’re saying now is this somewhat contradictory to the programme that you have here where you have the quotas? It’s really human nature, the people hang out with their own kind. Can you legislate that? Can you do anything about that?” Mr Lee: “It takes times. You can have a certain, as I said, concentric circles. They overlap at the outer circles. You start with your family, your relatives, your immediate friends and then your school friends and other friends in the outer fringe. In the outer circles, you have common ground but you can even invite them into your home and visit each other on festive occasions and so on but when it comes to marriage and becoming part of the family, that’s a very different happiness.” Q: “Is it, will it be your goal to break down those barriers or it’s not worth doing, it’s just a waste of time?” Mr Lee: “I think we just leave it alone.” Q: “You just leave it alone.” Mr Lee: “You try to break it down, you’re going to cause a lot of unhappiness and the older generation vote solidly against.” Q: “As Singapore moves along, I mean, answer me this question, who has the hardest job?” Mr Lee: “Hardest job?” Q: “You or your son?” Mr Lee: “It’s to keep going at the same pace, same quality of governance at all levels, more integrated. I mean not assimilated but more integrated, more easy to get along with each other, a more cohesive society and a better-educated society at all levels, not just the few at the top at universities or polytechnics. Even the dropouts now we’re putting them into technical institutes where they learn hands-on preparing engines, electrical equipment and so on in a fairly splendid surroundings because otherwise the old trade schools, they’ll say ah, already you’re a failure. But now they go into air-conditioned buildings looking the same like polytechnics. You don’t feel shy about being seen there. You come out with a certificate and if you make the grade, they will go up one step to the polytechnic where you’ll learn nearly a degree status and if you do well in the polytechnic, you go on to university.” Q: “Do you think that the world is more complicated now than it was when you were a young man, when you were in the 1960s when Singapore first became independent?” Mr Lee: “Of course, I mean everyday is more globalised and more complicated. You look at this swine virus. In the old days, it’d have died in the village where the Mexican got it. He wouldn’t have been traveling to Mexico City. Now it goes to Mexico City, it infects people there, within 24 hours, it’s around the world.” Q: “That’s one thing I want to ask. As the country moves along, we won’t call it a nation, as the country moves along…” Mr Lee: “It’s a nation in the making. The optimistic view. We must have optimism.” Q: “Absolutely or else why bother to get up in the morning?” YY: “Mark, MM has another appointment if you want to spare two minutes.” Mr Lee: “I give you 45 minutes, you carry on.” Q: “Carry on?” Mr Lee: “Yeah, yeah, it’s all right. If you’ve come all the way two weeks, I can postpone my appointment later.” Q: “I appreciate that very much. But I will stick to only the questions I have.” Mr Lee: “No, when you say you spent two weeks here, that means you’re doing a serious piece.” Q: “It’s a serious piece and also as I told you, I’m very anxious to give a realistic portrayal of the place that people have a lot of illusions about. So therefore, I want to find out really what’s going on. Let’s ask you a question about Singapore. One of the things that people say about Singapore is it’s too, life is too easy here. People have lost their curiosity and that’s the problem. How do you respond to that?” Mr Lee: “No, I don’t think that is so much.., that’s a stereotype view. If they’ve lost their curiosity, they wouldn’t be striving so hard to get to university, to travel abroad, to go to higher education institutes abroad, to learn higher skills. I mean, I’m undergoing physiotherapy because I had a fall on the bicycle, so I’m stuck there for one hour talking to the physiotherapist and she’s upgrading herself, she’s done her training here. Her next stage is to go to Australia and get a degree in physiotherapy. I said is the hospital sending you? She said no, I’m paying on my own. I said will you get a pay rise when you come back? She said no but my chances of promotion will be there. So you see it’s not that they have lost the curiosity. I mean, they’re prepared to spend two years in Perth or Brisbane or Sydney. That’s where they get the most physiotherapists because their children are great sportsmen.” Q: “It’s truly they keep on driving their motorcycles into the wall and then they get up and say, let’s do it again.” Mr Lee: “So there is this curiosity to find out about the world and it’s affecting how they live. I mean, she was 32-years-old. I said are you married. She said no. I said you shouldn’t leave it too late. She said well, I haven’t found the right person. I said how is that? you are meeting fellow nurses, you better join, you have got a social development unit where you meet men above board, they are looking for spouses, you are looking for spouses and you meet in groups, unless you decide we are friends, and you want to cultivate a closer relation, and she said no, no, no, I’m a Christian, that limits my choice to 20 per cent of the population and we meet in Church.” Q: ”Do you feel a complacency among the people here?” Mr Lee: ”No, a complacency in the sense that their expectations are high and they expect their expectations to be met. But they want higher and higher opportunities, more and more opportunities.” Q: ”Why does Singapore have to be number one in everything? Why can’t you just be one of the ten great cities of Asia? What’s wrong with that idea?” Mr Lee: ”If we don’t strive to be number one, you won’t be number ten. You will be number ten. You try to be number one, you might be number two or number three. Do your best. You don’t have to be number one but do your best and try to be number one. That’s our attitude. Look, we have got no natural resources, we have got nothing except human beings in a small strategic location.” Q: ”You have got a good location.” Mr Lee: ”But you must have people with training, with skills, well-organized, disciplined and productive. I mean so if we didn’t have an efficient port, we wouldn’t be the biggest container port in the world. Where are the container TEUs from? We are not a big manufacturing China centre, they are from China, they are from Europe or Japan, but they transit through to Singapore because that’s where they come in and six hours before they are in, they telegraph what containers they want removed, where they are.” Q: ”I was there, I was very impressed. It was pretty cool.” Mr Lee: ”So they arrive, immediately work starts, cleared, loaded, off they go in four or five, six hours depending on the number of containers.” Q: ”Do you use a personal computer?” Mr Lee: ”Yes, I do.” Q: ”And do you are really up on this stuff?” Mr Lee: ”Well otherwise I’m out of the loop. I used to correct my copies and fax it back. Then I find the young ministers are all correcting each other’s copies on the net. So I decided I better learn this or I’ll be out of it altogether.” Q: ”What do you think really the overall effect that the internet is going to be in the general sense and especially in a government like the one that you have here where suddenly like there is this degree of personal freedom as given to people by using the internet and a lot of this stuff on the internet is not stuff you really want your children to see for instance.” Mr Lee: ”What can you do?” Q: “What can you do? Is that the answer?” Mr Lee: ”You have got to decide as the Chinese have decided that they have to take the risk and they try to minimize the risk and censor this and censor that.” Q: ”Do you approve that?” Mr Lee: “No, but we cannot censor it because you just go to some server outside and you have got access, so it’s a waste of time.” Q : “And also no matter what you do, you are not going to be able to, these hacker guys, you can’t beat them.” Mr Lee: ”You have got to leave it to the parents and the schoolteachers and peer groups, to say look don’t waste your time doing this.” Q: ”One thing that puzzles in Singapore is actually a very interesting place because of different paradoxes I find in this country. What would be, forgive me if this a little bit on the lewd side, why would you ban Playboy for instance and allow prostitution?” Mr Lee: ”We banned Playboy in the 1960s when it was a different world in a different standard. It is still banned, that’s all. I mean why do you want buy Playboy now if you can go into the internet? You get more than what you get in Playboy, that’s that.” Q: “I’m not going to ask you if you looked at it recently.” Mr Lee: ”No, you can’t, I mean it’s not possible. It’s part of the globalized village we live in and we have got to learn to adapt and live a sufficiently wholesome life to succeed. If you become addicted to all this porn and drugs and gambling on the net, then you are finished. I mean in Korea, they have become addicts at this.” Q: ”I think that there is a lot of addiction in that, yes, there’s no doubt about it. Speaking of that, so what made you decide to have these casinos?” Mr Lee: ”When I was a student in England, the only casino in Europe was in Monaco.” Q: ”I remember that.” Mr Lee: ”The younger ministers have said look, we must have a casino, otherwise, we are out of the circuit of this fast set that goes around the world, with F1 and so on. And it will increase the tourist trade because the casino will pay for all the shows. Otherwise, the shows are too expensive. So I’ve been resisting it and I’ve told the Prime Minister, I said no, no, don’t do that, you’ll bring mafias here and money laundering and all kinds of crime.” Q: ”I think it is a definite risk.” Mr Lee: ”Then I see the British having casinos and Switzerland having casinos. I said God, the world has changed. If I don’t change, we’ll be out of business. So alright, we’ll put up two casinos, so obviously they are not going to target Singaporeans because there are not enough numbers for two casinos. So they got to bring them in from China, India and elsewhere and we have passed legislation to say that any family can ask for a ban on …” Q: ”A person from that family.” Mr Lee: ”And the Singaporeans when they go in, they have got to pay $100.” Q: “That doesn’t sound quite fair.” Mr Lee: ”No, they are going, driving up to a place called Genting, Star Cruises come in and they go outside the territorial limit and they gamble. So I said you do that because I do not want to be blamed and the Prime Minister doesn’t want, and his Cabinet doesn’t want to be blamed for those who get addicted. And there will be those who will get addicted.” Q: ”How do you, are you still morally opposed to them or does pragmatism always take precedence in your thinking?” Mr Lee: ”Well, it is useless to resist when it is everywhere.” Q: ”Well, the fact that it’s everywhere, maybe it is the reason to resist.” Mr Lee: “No, you cannot stop it. You want to cut off the internet? You want to cut off your cellphones? You want to cut off satellite TV? Then you will become like Myanmar. It’s not possible.” Q: “No, thank you. That’s interesting. I hate to be jumping around but I don’t want to take so much of your time. What do you do about this kind of thing? I would assume in a government, it is easier to legislate people having less children than it is to legislate having them more children.” Mr Lee: ”No, we can’t legislate. We don’t legislate, we just encourage and we say if you have the third child, you will get these benefits.” Q: ”Well, legislate is the wrong word but …” Mr Lee: ”We encourage them with incentives. Yeah, we pay for full pay leave, we don’t burden the employer because the employer will then say look I’m not going to employ these women. So the government pays for them, the employer is entitled to two-three months, three months?” YY: “Four months now.” Mr Lee: “No, no. Employer two months, we pay two months and it will become six months and so on.” Q: ”During the 1960s and the 1970s, you ran a programme ‘Two is Enough’. Did the government succeed too well?” Mr Lee: “No, it has happened all over Asia. It has happened in Hong Kong, it has happened in Korea, they never had this Stop at Two, it has happened in Japan, it is the education that the women and equal job opportunities. Once the women are educated, they have equal job opportunities, some of them earning as much if not more than men, there is a certain independence of choice. I mean they say what’s the hurry? Singlehood is no burden, my daughter is 55, unmarried, mother has been nagging her when she was in her 30s, she’s quite happy.” Q: ”Do you feel an urge to have more grandchildren or is it.” Mr Lee: “I’ve got two boys who have got grandchildren but I feel sad for her. Because when my wife is gone and I’m gone, this hotel which keeps her going. She will have to manage it.” Q: ”I mean the thing is like, occasionally, it seems like the Singapore Government succeeds as I was talking to a gentleman today, he said in India, they propose a lot of things, and fairly high percentage are never going to get done right but in Singapore, things are proposed and you do it. And you finish it. Therefore, if it is a mistake, then you have to redo it.” Mr Lee: “No, what is the mistake? We can’t undo women’s education, equal job opportunities. But the whole problem springs as I was talking to this physiotherapist, I said suppose you were not educated to a point where you are independent, your mother and father would have got you matched off.” Q: ”Matched off, what does that mean?” Mr Lee: “Father and mother will look for another father and mother with an appropriate background, no inherited diseases and similar social affluence and then they marry them off, they get them together and meet and no objections and then you are married. Then you love the man, or you love the woman you marry. But she’s educated and she’s thinking of a degree in physiotherapy and upgrading herself and so…” Q: ”There is this feeling that you want to keep the society going.” Mr Lee: “Well, fortunately for us.” Q: “And reproduction is an important part of that, right?” Mr Lee: “I’ve been urging them. The only developed societies that have succeeded are Sweden and France and that’s not that they have succeeded, they have just about reached replacement rate. And we’ve studied their incentives and they are enormous. Cr

SHE was being interviewed for the post of administration and marketing executive when her interviewer pulled her close and kissed her on the lips. Lim Peng Heng, 36, who told her that he was the boss of the advertising company called Imadgination, also bragged about the size of his penis and his sexual experiences. On Wednesday, the 36-year-old pleaded guilty in a district court to outraging the modesty of the 25-year-old woman. His lawyer Edmond Pereira will present arguments on Friday and press for a light sentence. Lim can be jailed for up to three years, fined and caned. http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/S...ory_467328.html