Category: General

Early this morning, my friend Joshua sent me an image from today’s ST reporting on the opening of the new Fuchun CC, which I had attended on Saturday evening.

One of the main reasons why I came back from my KL trip was to attend this event. I was invited because I had donated to the rebuilding of the CC some 3 years back.

It turned out to be a simple, standing only, event lasting an hour. Fortunately, in that time, I managed to say a few words to the PM, Mayor Alex Yam, Minister Zaqy and Hany Soh and also to meet up with some old friends.

Joshua noted that the ST picture, reporting on the article, had me in it.

Then I received quite a few more messages, all alerting me to this. Amazing how some people are so sharp that they scrutinize all the pictures appearing in the papers. I would never have given them a second glance!!

I visited Dynasty Antiques some months back. They had sold me a Li Shuji in 2013. That piece went straight to my art storage. In April this year, they called me and asked if I still had the piece and if I wanted to sell it. It was pretty incredible that they were able to track me and call me after 13 years. So that was how I came to visit their gallery, which is now at Trade hub 21.

Amidst the thousands of artworks there, I came across this calligraphy by Liu Kang. He wrote this in February 2004 and he passed away on 1 June 2004, at the age of 94. I suspect that this may well be one of his last artworks. The gallery owners were close to Liu Kang and his family and they have over the years collected and resold many of his pieces.

I immediately confirmed to them that I wanted to purchase this. I didn’t take delivery because I was still deciding where to put this. I didn’t think it should go into storage, considering it is one of the last artworks by one of Singapore’s foremost pioneer artists. I felt it needed to be seen and appreciated.

So two weeks ago, I finally found a suitable place for it. I was delivering something to an office at a new building. This office had just moved there and they have taken a 60 year lease. Their place was being done up. Having seen the place, I told them I shall be donating this piece to them and they have indicated to me that it will be in their main conference room, a place befitting his status.

So I took delivery of this piece yesterday and I sent it to its new home. Hopefully it will be seen and appreciated by many people in its new home.

Prasoon invited me to this dinner, which was organised as part of a 2 day SBF ASEAN event.

SBF had also signed me up for the 2 day event but there were just so many other things on both days for me and in the end I could only attend this dinner.

There were 5 Ambassadors at my table, mostly from European countries. The seating arrangement unfortunately was not conducive for conversation across the whole table and so I ended up talking to only the Indian High Commissioner on my left and Luis Coronado on my right. I didn’t even get to talk to Prasoon much yesterday.

Also they had a fireside chat during the dinner, which I thought was strange, because no one was able to have any conversations at the table. Not that they were listening to the speaker in any case.

The food was quite ordinary. My chicken was dry. And the appetisers had already been served and were sitting on the table by the time people were arriving for dinner.

Also it is a bit of a drive for me to reach RWS from home. I can now understand why RWS is not an attractive venue for conferences and conventions. The venue is isolated, there is no shopping nearby, the food served is ordinary and there is no readily available public transport. In these respects, MBS wins hands down.

After a very long time, the 4 of us managed to catch up for dinner at FX’s house. I flew back from KL just in time for this.

The food, cooked by Pandian, was simple and yummy. And his house is quite well done now and looks very nice. Just a pity that it is a rental place so there is never any permanence in your life.

The four of us got to know each other because we were all in the same firm. I joined in 1995, FX in 1998, Haq in 2006 and Harish in 2008. All of us were in the commercial litigation department. We used to meet every working day in the office, until Covid came by and people stopped coming to the office. That work from home mindset, which started during Covid, has continued for many people even till now. Now 3 of us are retired from the partnership, with the last one to follow year end.

We talked about a variety of topics, changes in the judiciary, bad behaviour by lawyers, and political changes amongst others. We only finished at 1015pm.

Someone in my law class posted these pictures on a group chat. These photos were taken in 1982, during an era when there were no handphones or hp cameras and every photo taken had to be printed out.

I am sure I had a set of these photos too, because they look so familiar. But then I have no idea where mine are now and whether I still have them. So it was amazing to find out that some one had kept these for 44 years now.

When I completed my A levels, I didn’t know anything about law or the law faculty and I was disrupting from NS after one year to study law in 1982. My classmates from JC who were attending university would either be one year ahead or one year behind me.

So I decided that I better attend the law camp to get to know some people before I actually attended law school. This camp was held about 2 or 3 weeks before matriculation and it was at some church premises in Changi.

About 40 people were there and I didn’t know anyone at the start of the camp. The residential camp was very well organized with many activities throughout a 5 day period. I had some wonderful times there and I got to know so many people and became friends with them. Sadly, have lost touch with almost everyone after law school. These were such good times I had then, both during the camp itself and in my first 3 years of law school. Not so much during my final year. And if I could relive that period I would do so many things differently but of course, one cannot turn back time.

Still it was good seeing these pictures again, albeit in their very blurry form, after all these years. Brought back such good memories.

I am off to KL for 2 days and presently sitting in the lounge waiting for my 825am flight.

I just met so many people here I know. Chua Eu Jin, who was in the same firm in 1997 and is now in Temasek. Jimmie Tay from ACS, who has just invited me to a charity dinner. C W Tan, a client and friend who has just collected an arbitration award we won for him who is off to Jakarta and Elaine Giam, who was doing marketing in the firm many years ago.

All these meet ups in just half and hour.

I was expecting these changes in the later part of the year. Instead they were announced on Wednesday evening.

It was a smaller change than I expected. The PM has identified about 6 people in the last cohort of fresh candidates, who were elected in the GE, and promoted them. These are people he picked and brought into politics. He is building his own team of people in the Cabinet whom he trusts and relies on, as he should.

Sim Ann was the only exception as she was from an earlier cohort. She has been moved to MFA, presumably to understudy and take over the current Minister for Foreign Affairs. She has also been made the 2nd Minister at Home Affairs. These indications point to the fact that Shan will be stepping off some time soon, now that he has also been made a Senior Minister.

Ng Chee Meng’s appointment was a surprise. I didn’t think he would have moved up, especially since there is still a strong negative reaction to him. But I guess they owe him something. And this may be his last chance to prove himself, both as a Minister and as an MP.

I had expected some of the other younger Ministers to move up to take up more senior positions. To my surprise, they weren’t.

I expect the next reshuffle to be next year. Either the promotions of those in the earlier cohorts are going to happen then or they are not going to go anywhere.

We shall see.

I have known him for many years. I was a NWCDC councilor and he was a grassroots advisor there. A friendly, soft spoken and gentle man. Well liked by his residents and he was just promoted as Minister in charge of Muslim Affairs only last year after the General Election.

And by all counts he was doing very well. A popular MP and a Minister well liked by his community.

I remember when he was asked to move from Nee Soon to Marine Parade during the last election, he texted me and said “pray for me bro”. I thought all the stars were perfectly aligned for him at that time. Instead of facing the Workers Party, there was instead a walkover at Marine Parade, the only one. And immediately after the election he was promoted to become full Minister. A huge promotion for him.

Now this has happened. And it came as a huge shock to me. Reading the account of what happened from the press release, I wonder whether the matter was so serious that it required him to step down as a Minister and as an MP. Perhaps I am forgiving and perhaps I don’t know the full facts. Also I don’t know about the complainant, who might not have taken too kindly if there were no consequences for him.

The PM has however taken a firm stand that the party cannot lower its standards of what was expected of their office bearers and they have to show the public that they would not countenance any deviation from their expected high standards.

Nevertheless it is a serious loss for them. A popular MP and Minister now gone and they would have to face calls of why no by-elections are being called. Not to mention the inevitable bad publicity on social media about the conduct of their Ministers.

Finally it is over, after 39 days, and Spain won. I didn’t watch any of the games on tv, except for one game on day 2. I found that game so boring that after that game, I confined myself to watching only the highlights. But I told myself that I should at least watch the final. And I did.

The game was boring for most parts and Argentina didn’t look like they were playing to win. At the last world cup, I enjoyed their style of playing and was rooting for them to win. But not this time. I think they deserved to lose. Good for Spain. They have been consistent throughout this tournament.

I went to Russia and then Qatar for the last 2 world cup tournaments. Somehow the thought of traveling to the US for this year’s tournament was not appealing. And no one I knew was traveling to watch to finals.

I remember the first world cup final that I watched on tv. That was in 1974. With my father at our one room HDB flat in Margaret Close. That final was the first time Singapore started colour tv. Of course, we didn’t have a colour tv then. West Germany, which I supported then, won. They beat Holland that year. I have seen every final since that year. 52 years have passed.

Last night our group met to celebrate Crystal’s birthday, at Morton’s Steakhouse.

The choice of restaurant was Dr Teo’s. This restaurant has been around a long time. I used to frequently visit them. I recall they used to bring a trolley of all their cuts and have you choose what you wanted to order. They have stopped doing that now.

Anyway I think the place is rather expensive, especially their side dishes and was a wrong choice because Allen doesn’t take beef. He ordered fish and he thought it wasn’t that good.

Conversation as always was good. But it was a bit difficult to carry on talking because the restaurant was rather noisy with a very good crowd for a Tuesday night dinner.