Author: CMR.sg

Last night was our first committee meeting for next year’s Club 100 dinner at PAHQ.

This year we have 9 members in our committee. Most of them have served in this committee before and grateful to have them back. Since this meeting was arranged at short notice at my request, a few of the members could not make it last night.

Mayor Alex Yam attended our meeting yesterday and provided valuable advise on the venue for our dinner and suggested having a calendar of events for the year. The secretarial kindly catered dinner from a variety of places.

We have set ourselves an ambitious target for new members and a full calendar of events for the year. Now to execute and hit our targets.

Last night was my thank you meal for the lunch buddies group. This was to thank them for their part in helping me with my BBM L.

Of course the one who played a key role would be Dr Teo Ho Pin.

He was the Mayor of NWCDC when I first joined as a District Councillor all those years ago up till 2020. He entrusted me with running the Cohesion magazine, chairing the Finance committee, later chairing the Skills Future committee and most importantly, trusting me to chair and run Club 100.

He spent a lot of time interacting with the councillors and would always listen to suggestions and feedback. Having started working with him in 2003, I am glad that I can still call him a friend and meet up for our meal sessions.

Vincent Chong, Michael Lau and Chuan San were all councillors as well but were more involved with Dr Teo in Bukit Panjang. Over the years I have worked with them on many projects, especially on Club 100 and as for Michael, as my co chair on the Skills future committee.

So I was glad to host a dinner to thank them last night. Since Dr Teo likes hot pot and they are all big meat eaters, I hosted the meal at Chamoon and the restaurant kindly gave us a private room for our dinner.

I had a wonderful lunch with Jonathan Yuen and Tze Phern, my colleagues today.

Jon had kindly arranged a birthday lunch for me at the Imperial Treasure Cantonese restaurant at Great World. And it was great to see TP there as well.

The food was good but Jon had ordered way too much.

I have known Jon since 2008 when we were both in the ACSOBA. I asked him to join Rajah and Tann in 2012. I still remember meeting up with him and his then associates at Starbucks at the then Singapore Land Tower to be formally introduced to his associates and to ask them to join us. He and his team have been such a good fit to the firm and have done very well.

TP I have known since he was a pupil from 2012. He too has done very well.

We had so much to talk about over a good lunch.

I meet up with Prasoon regularly and always, at his request, at Shangri la, by the poolside.

We try to catch up about once a month and it is always to talk about affairs in Singapore and in India.

Both of us were invited to be in Mexico during this period as the Singapore President was visiting Mexico with a trade delegation and the Mexican Ambassador had wanted us to be there.

I was tempted initially since I have never been there and it was going to be a high level delegation visiting Mexico. I started checking the flights there and then gave up. I would have to travel on ANA with a 12 hour layover in Tokyo on the return leg. I think Prasoon must also have felt the trip was not worth making.

I first met Prasoon when our former PM was leading a delegation to India. It must have been 2017 or 2018. I was introduced to him at the SQ lounge in Singapore and he very kindly invited me to a dinner he hosted in New Delhi on that trip.

He is well connected in India. His uncle was a very senior Congress Minister and later became the President of India. I have met many people through him. And as he makes it a point to know the ambassadors here in Singapore, I have also gotten to know a few as well.

He travels a bit and it is always good catching up and hearing from him the latest thinking on current issues in India.

Yesterday evening was another such catch up. He feels Singapore and India can do much more together with the right people fronting it. I tend to agree. Competency is important but connections and building relationships is vital in the long term.

I had lunch this afternoon with Murali at his office at the Treasury Building.

This is the first time I have parked there and I must say it is a very secure building. Multiple checkpoints both at the cark park and main lobby.

I met him at his 8th floor office, which has a very nice view, for a simple lunch as he couldn’t go far today. I just had a simple salad.

But we spoke of many things happening in Singapore now and of people we know. Of course I can’t write about what we spoke, but time flew by. We were talking for almost 2 hours and both of us thereafter had other things to attend to.

So happy that he is doing well. He is very sound and I am confident that he will do what’s right and best.

Yesterday at about 2pm when I was driving home, Dhinakaran, the owner of Madras Woodlands restaurant called and asked if I would be free to have dinner at his restaurant. He was meeting some friends and he wanted me to drop by.

I haven’t seen Dino in a while and since I was free, I said I would be there.

Fortunately I managed to get parking right in front of the restaurant and as I walked in, I noticed that the restaurant has undergone some renovations. It looked cleaner and brighter. Good for them. It was looking rather dated recently. Later Dino proudly told me that he got the renovations done in about 15 days without closing the restaurant.

Soon the invitees started arriving. The key guest was Graham Mayer, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy. Dino had invited me but the rest of the group was assembled by a Mr Renganathan, who apparently had just flown in and knew everyone. The others there were the GM of Indian Bank, TT Durai and Mustaq the owner of Mustafa.

The food was good. Dinner started with a spinach soup, then a vadai, thosai, poori with vegetables and finally an appam. I ended up eating much more than I normally would.

The conversation was varied and I ended up speaking to Graham most. We talked about the current situation in the US re the scourge of drugs, immigration and their courts. We talked quite a bit about China and Singapore and the huge online presence of Chinese interest groups and their influence worldwide, including Singapore.

I did tell him the US has not been effective in presenting their message and with hardly any soft power and they need to do much more. I have said the same things to the previous Ambassador. Let’s see if anything changes.

For as long as I can remember, my parents have always made sure that we celebrate each others’ birthdays. This has always been a ritual and it was always a family only affair.

I remember simple birthdays when I was young at our one room rental flat in Queenstown. It was a small flat and I still can recall that address, although that flat no longer exists. It was Block 3, 34-C Margaret Close, Singapore 3.

Later we used to celebrate our birthdays with a dinner and almost always it would be at a North Indian restaurant. The ones we then frequented were the restaurants at Imperial Hotel, one at Colombo Court and one at Boulevard Hotel. None of these buildings or these restaurants exist anymore.

Now it’s just me and my mother here and we celebrate birthdays at lunch rather than dinner, since it is easier for digestion purposes and also because it is more convenient traveling in the day time for my mother. And so for our past few birthdays we have ended up having lunch at Straits Kitchen at Hyatt, which has a decent buffet with a North Indian section. We did try the one at Ritz Carlton for a while but the quality and offerings of the Indian food dropped so we stopped going there.

As It was my birthday yesterday, we again did lunch at Hyatt. Am now 63 and my mother turns 86 in January. Time has flown by but am still glad that we have kept our tradition going.

Last night was the birthday celebrations for Han Seng Juan’s mother, Doris, who turns 90.

What an incredible milestone. To cross 90 and still be able to have a birthday celebration and participate in it with your family and friends in good health is truly a blessing.

I remember attending the 80th birthday celebrations for Doris as well. That celebration was at the Capella. Then they had her favorite Chinese singers come to perform for her.

I went up to her last night, she remembered me, spoke to me kindly and said we will celebrate her 100th birthday as well. What a remarkable lady. The family had prepared a short video clip of her life, which showcased her colorful and energetic life.

With Patricia Mok as the MC, they had invited Richard Hadfeld, of the Collabro fame. He sang really well all the old classics. He flew in just for one night to perform. They also had a lovely erhu player,Callista, who played really well, though I wished more people would have paid attention to the performance.

The food was great and I felt it was a meaningful celebration so well planned by Han, his wife Susanah and the family. No effort had been spared in making this a truly special evening.

The highlight surely was Doris singing 2 beautiful songs on stage for everyone.

Such a meaningful evening for a wonderful lady with a huge beautiful cake.

Lunch yesterday was at Yantra restaurant, organised by Ashwani Kumar from the Indian HC with myself and Ramesh Selvaraj.

Actually the lunch came about because Ashwani wanted to get to know Ramesh and since I know Ramesh, I became the fortunate beneficiary of lunch.

I used to go to Yantra a long time ago when they first opened at Tanglin Mall. They used to do a buffet and I have been to their weekend buffets many times.

Now they do a weekday set lunch which I must say was good and substantive. But like all Indian food, one cannot have it on any regular basis and as I feared, my weight was up this morning.

In any case, we had a good discussion on many issues; Singapore public housing and the prices and sizes of our HDB flats, immigration, integration of the local Indian community and the coming impact of AI on jobs.

I have known Ramesh for a long time but have never sat down for a meal with him.

A good and productive session.

Yesterday I received a package from Min Liang. It was a special limited edition book celebrating the 20th anniversary of Razer.

I always look forward to receiving things from Razer. Anything from them is special. The way the product is packaged, the design work with their trademark colours of black and green and the placement of their logo on the product makes every item from them desirable.

This time, to celebrate their anniversary, they have produced a hardcover book. The book is so pretty that I haven’t had the heart to open and read it yet.

The company started in 2005 with just a concept of making a good quality gaming mouse that gamers would want to own.

I must have become a shareholder sometime in end 2006 or 2007. Certainly it was before the financial crisis of 2008.

Along the way, the company moved away from just making a good gaming mouse to producing all the things a gamer would want to have so as to be able to play their games well. Their logo was ” for gamers by gamers”, and they made the entire range of gaming products including laptops, apparels, gaming chairs, sound systems and headsets. They even did a gaming phone.

As a small shareholder, I watched them grow and was elated when they finally listed in 2017 in HK with 1337 as their stock code.

I made the trip to HK for the listing and there was just so much celebrations all around that day.

They delisted just before Covid to become a private company once again. Looking forward to even greater things from them as they celebrate this milestone.