TR EMERITUS

Maturing as a young man in Singapore in the early 80s,I always remembered a phrase that Lee Kuan Yew used- “These are the rules of the game”. He was referring to the diplomatic protocol which is understood the world over when leaders meet. A Prime Minister of a host country always has to go to the place where a visiting Head of State is staying, be it a hotel or the official guest house, to meet the VIP. It is important to follow these and other diplomatic rules in order to avoid creating embarrassing situations or offending the opposite side. Like many, I was mortified when Vivian Balakrishnan greeted the visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi without wearing a tie. Wang Yi had turned up in jacket and tie.To his great credit,the quick thinking Wang Yi immediately took off his tie when he saw that Vivian was not wearing one. This was a highly embarrassing incident which could have been easily avoided. For those who follow international affairs,when have you ever seen Wang Yi without a tie when he meets the foreign minister or leader of another country? He is always immaculately turned out in jacket and tie.His appearance projects the power of the country he represents-China.Did Vivian enquire whether Wang Yi would be without a tie before deciding not to wear one? In International affairs,everything is choreographed. Nothing is ever left to chance.Earlier this year,President Xi received President Macron of France in a State Visit in Beijing.President Macron delighted the Chinese leader with certain remarks he made in Beijing. Later,when Macron left Beijing to visit Guangzhou, Xi flew in to join him.They met at a famous garden where they took tea and Xi gave the French leader some lessons on Chinese history and philosophy.Both men were without ties, wearing only jackets. But do you think both men not wearing ties on that occasion was a coincidence? Of course not. Everything would have been planned and agreed by both sides.The informality was intended to convey that each felt at ease with the other and the great friendship which existed between the 2 nations. Vivian has not learnt after all these years. Still remember his remarks at the Kim/Trump summit in Singapore several years ago,that Singapore’s role was to serve tea and coffee? The great Victorian British Prime Minister Disraeli said that prestige is the currency in International Relations. Vivian has never as Foreign Minister been able to project Singapore’s prestige on the world stage.Is it any wonder when he relegated Singapore to serving tea and coffee at such an important International Summit?   Lim Tean      Read More →

I seldom agree with Calvin Cheng over anything, definitely not on Covid Vaccination which now proven that he has got it all wrong. But for this post with regards to the coming Presidential Elections, I must concede he got it right. Click to enlarge PAP Gov has tightened the criteria so much that most probably nobody other than themselves and their own cronies will qualify. However they have missed out my dear friend, Mr Tan Kin Lian! It's clear to me that only Tharman and Tan Kin Lian could qualify for the Presidential race. Ng Kok Song is somewhat in the same situation as Andrew Kuan (AK), who was the CFO of JTC. Andrew Kuan was disqualified because the Constitution stated clearly the criteria is CEO of the company or entity with XXX millions. NKS cannot qualify but if they qualify him, that will be basically inconsistent and differential treatments between NKS vs AK! Similarly for George Goh, he is in the same situation as Farid Khan. Farid Khan was disqualified even though all his companies added together have more than 500m capital. However, the constitution stated clearly that in order to qualify, you need to be the CEO running a SINGLE BUSINESS ENTITY with a paid up capital of 500m! If George Goh is qualified now, then there will also be inconsistency again. Such inconsistencies will be viewed as Rule by Law instead of Rule of Law. Thus, unless PAP wants to be seen as Kelong King, else it is clear that there could be only 2 eligible candidates for this coming PE. In Chinese, we call it, 作繭自縛.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” (Carl Jung) The Holy Grail of my journey as a blogger is pursuit of the size of our national reserves, which is as mystical as the misty lake in which lay the Excalibur, the stuff of Arthurian tales forever etched in the recesses of memories of schoolboys of my generation. I am taking a breather from some research work to pen this blog on an inconsequential dream, actually banging away on a laptop with a faulty keypad. I spilt some water on it and a few of the buttons aren’t functioning anymore. Necessity is the mother of invention and so I resort to a methodology of copy and paste the dead characters. A poor workman has to learn to live with his tools. Darn it, I now realise my dead button “T” is the most used letter in English alphabet. In younger days on my first visit to London, I purchased a collection of hardcover books, classics that I had intended to read in my golden years. Well, I do admit in part I thought they will look impressive on display bookshelves behind my desk in the study room. There were Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, Water Margin (Chinese classics in English translations as I cannot read original scripts), Readings of Edgar Cayce, and others. Much to my regret, I lost the copy of Cayce’s book on ‘Dreams’ before I had a chance to read it. It would be great to see if this celebrated clairvoyant can make sense of what dreams are all about. Personally, I think dreams come about when our brain does spring cleaning work when we sleep. Our brain has the memory the capacity of a mainframe computer, if not bigger. It is astoundingly huge. To maintain efficiency, it performs the equivalent functions of repartitioning, defragmentation, registry optimisation, etc whilst we sleep. As these bits and bytes of our memories are moved around, we get juxtapositions of broken pieces of visuals which we string into short stories of a dream. We inherit the chromosomes of our parents, which contain traces of their forebears or lineage. Similarly, I posit, we also inherit some memory cells of our lineage. This I think, explains why some people believe they are reincarnations of someone else, and which forms the library from which our dreams are drawn from. I had a vivid dream of an old school chum whom I shall call Seng. This dream was downright mundane if not for the fact the protagonist was someone whom I have never heard from nor heard of for 5 decades since leaving school. I wonder why he should appear in my dream in such a vivid manner. I saw him as in our teenage years, his mannerism, his voice, the way he talked, his gait, his dressing, and his smile, just as if it was yesterday. I thought I blog it for posterity, something to reminisce about and share with my scout brothers. Seng was one of our scout leaders, well-liked and respected. As a senior scout, he was one of the good leaders for the troop. Polite, obliging, responsible and to use a word from today’s vocabulary, inclusive in nature. He was way smarter than I was academically, what with him in the ‘A’ class and me in ‘B’. I was not really close to him to get a sense of his inner feelings. But I had always thought of Seng as one of those likely to reach some level of prominence in life. Much later after school did I learn that English Language was his Waterloo. English was a compulsory subject and his weakness of it averaged his scores down badly in the GCE examination. I also learnt decades later that he had some disagreements with our scout master, the matter of which no one really was privy to. Whatever it was, it seemed so damaging that Seng severed all relationship with the entire scout troop. He simply vanished from our orbit to this day. I wonder how Seng could possibly have an altercation with our scout master who we call Skip, short for skipper. Our beloved Skip was a gentle soul, a teacher with most empathy. He did not run a nanny scout troop. Instead he let the patrol leaders play leadership roles. He kept a watchful eye, helped to liaise with sponsors when needed, and kept out of the way, joining us occasionally to impart some moral wisdom here and there, or introduce some new games..Other school scouts often wonder how we managed to have military tents for camping events, complete with three tonners for transport, courtesy of the British Army. Skip was never interested in his charges acquiring all those scout badges to pin on the chest, like our generals. Whenever we attend campfires, our boys were the most under-decorated scouts present. All we had was just the minimum mandatory ‘tenderfoot’ badge. Instead Skip focused on leadership and basic fun survival skills, taught us to love and respect nature. We learnt how to keep the environment we occupied in much better condition when we leave, long before PAP started those anti-littering and keep the country clean campaigns. Unfortunately, Skip never had the blessings to enjoy his retirement. He was involved in a tragic fatal accident while holidaying in Australia shortly after his retirement. In my dream a few days ago, Seng was sitting on a bench looking for something in his wallet. As I approached him, his mobile rang. Anachronism is something we do not question in dreams. My dream had the feel of late1960s, and Seng had a mobile. He passed his wallet to me to hang on to while he managed the mobile with one hand and rummaged his knapsack for something with the other, then he said "Let’s go", all seemed to be in one single motion. As I too had some stuff to carry and my jean pockets were all full, I placed his mobile in my shirt pocket. Off we went to another place where the dreamscape looked like a park. There we were met by a group of our scout mates. As we engaged in animated chatter, a couple of policemen came up to us to conduct a random check. Except for Seng, all of us showed IDs and satisfied the lawmen. Both Seng and I had forgotten his wallet was with me. With no ID on him, Seng was led away to the police station. Several minutes after the trio departed, I realised the error of my ways. In haste to bring the wallet to Seng, I jostled myself out of dreamland. In the darkness of the night I pondered over a meaningless encounter in a dream which is our personalised matrix. We pursue dreams in our waking hours with busy schedules, building networks, meeting datelines. In sleep, dreams pursue us for purposes we understand not. Carl Jung said: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” For all his prowess at psychoanalysis, I think Jung plays with our mind. Seng, the policemen, whatever, the dream is only actionable for me if I was able to see the 4 digits of the patrol car registration plate that I can bring to the sweepstakes. Baring none, I am just grateful for a metaphysical and ephemeral experience to remember friends whose paths we never have the chance to cross.   Patrick Low * Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.      Read More →