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The National Day Reception at the Istana was yesterday evening. This is the first time I have been invited to the National Day event. I have been invited to the CNY garden parties before but this was better. It was a lot less people and you get a chance to mingle and talk with people.

I had so much fun talking to people I know there. It was good to say hello to the President and the PM and some of my favorite Ministers and MPs.

I didn’t eat anything because it’s just so difficult to stand and eat and talk all at the same time.

The getting in and out of the Istana was a breeze because of the smaller numbers.

Today I was invited by Sim Chuan San to the 70th anniversary celebration lunch for Malayan Daching.

The event was at the Holiday Inn Atrium. So kind of him to invite me and seat me at the VIP table.

The event had the usual cake cutting, speech and a lovely rendition of Wonderful World. The host was very entertaining. Good MC and singer.

I didn’t realize that the group was so big and diversified.

Overall a fun event with so many friends for company!

On 30 July, at about 235 pm. I was at Mandarin Gallery. I just had lunch at Straits Kitchen with my mother and my sister and I wanted to come over here to have some tea.

I was sitting in First Luxury, when I received a text giving me some truly wonderful news! Unfortunately I cannot say anything since the news is embargoed till 9 August.

I am so grateful to have been awarded this on the 60th birthday of Singapore. I found out that I was being awarded this award last week but the news was embargoed till today.

I remember when I was first awarded the PBM in 2011. I received a call some 2 weeks before National Day from Crystal Teng, the then CDC GM, informing me about the award and obtaining my confirmation that I will accept it. I was really surprised as I didn’t know anything about these National Day awards then. I just served and did my best.

Then came my BBM in 2015, on the 50th birthday of Singapore and now this.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to serve and help others. I am also grateful to everyone who has worked with me through all these many years in all the various different committees to make this happen. Thanks so much!

Today’s lunch was to celebrate Kaling’s birthday. Actually today is not his birthday. Its next week but since Virginia was going off on her travels, we fixed it for today.

We had it at Summer Palace. Very nice ambience and the food was good.

Its always nice to catch up with both of them. I got to know Kaling through Virginia many years ago. And of course I then found out that he was a big investor in Razer when it was still a start up. So good to have friends who will remember and celebrate your birthday!

Summer Palace arranged a very nice platter of lotus buns to celebrate his big day.

I woke up this morning to the news that the US will be imposing an additional 25% on imports from India with effect from 25 August. This is to penalize them for continuing to buy Russian oil and supporting the Russian economy thereby enabling Russia to continue its war on Ukraine.

This additional tariff will be on top of the 25% tariffs already announced.

This will be a huge blow to India. They supply, inter alia garments, pharmaceuticals and machinery to the US. Many foreign companies did set up factories in India to pivot from China in recent years and to take advantage of the huge “Manufacture in India” campaign initiated by the government. If the additional tariffs kick in, there is going to be a huge economic impact on India.

India has been complacent and incompetent in their trade talks with the US. Complacent because they assumed that there was a special relationship between Trump and Modi and therefore they will get off with minimal tariffs. Also they believed US needs India as a partner to counter China. Complacent because whilst other countries read the US correctly and carefully, Indian officials were caught with their pants down. I had many Indian friends telling me that the negotiations with the US were done and dusted as of 3 weeks ago with minimal tariffs and only needed Trump’s sign off. How wrong they were.

Well I guess it’s time for India to now wake up and start planning their next steps. Am sure Trump is using the threat of additional tariffs to put pressure on India a d other countries buying oil from Russia, such as China and Turkey to put pressure on Russia to end the war. We shall see.

Perhaps there is magic in the madness after all…

Tonight was the National Day Dinner at Bukit Panjang. A grand total of 106 tables.

Lots of good food, performances and singing of National Day songs. Everyone was in a celebratory mood to mark the 60th birthday of our country waving the Singapore flag.

And it’s wonderful to see all the young children performing and their parents so proudly watching them!

Jonathan called me over the weekend and suggested a catch up. I have not seen him in a while. He was training for his tae kwon do competition and then he was in Canada for quite a bit during the actual event. He won his competition and I was surprised that there was no mention of it in the media.

I suggested dinner at Empire Hotpot as it was closing this weekend. Jonathan wanted to order some meat as he was trying to put back his weight. Unfortunately they have stopped serving any barbeque meats. So we just ordered 3 dishes.

It was a good catch up but we didn’t spend much time there as he had reserved durians at Dempsey.

The durians at Dempsey were disappointing. Expensive and the quality was not quite there. I was shocked that they were charging $37 a kilo for rather mediocre durians. We both agreed that this was our last time eating durians there!

Whilst reading Einstein in Berlin I came across a very interesting fact.

Lenin and his political party created communist Russia. We also know that Hitler hated the communists, second only to the Jews.

However, Russia, like Germany, during the start of the First World War was a monarchy. And both were at war with each other. Germany desperately needed to end the war on the Eastern front with Russia so that it could concentrate all its forces on the Western front against Britain and France.

And so it was cultivating Russian dissidents who were in exile to agitate and create trouble for the Russia government. To this end, they cultivated Lenin, who was then in exile in Switzerland, and Trotsky and in 1917 sent then back to Russia with lots of gold, cash and resources to overthrow the government. This led to the October 1917 revolution and the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin took power and made Russia a communist country.

Truly incredible. Communist Russia came about because of Germany cultivating dissidents, including Lenin, to destabilize and overthrow the then government for its own selfish reasons. That giant then smashed Germany in the Second World War and occupied parts of Germany for a long period thereafter. And the giant created then by Germany still looms large.

This morning was the launch of this festival at the Causeway Point. An annual event to drive home the importance of continuous skills upgrading and providing residents with one on one career guidance.

There was also a launch of an AI assistant which will guide you on the courses to take depending on your interest. You key in your interest areas, answer a few questions such as whether you want the courses full time or part time etc and it identifies courses for you. It will even email you a list of these courses. This is very useful as I have always found the Skillsfuture website listing all their available courses much too unwieldy.

There was also the launch of an online job matching portal. This one had a feature of listing jobs within the North West district. Most of them being part time and with flexi working hours.

The launch was by Mayor Alex Yam and SMS Zaqy was the special guest.