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This afternoon was the launch event for this new 4.3 km by pass road that will connect Semenyih, where Anyara is, to the main highways. With this connection, the travel time from Anyara to KLCC will be about 25 minutes.

This is expected to substantially increase the value of the land prices in Semenyih, much of which are malay kampongs.

The launch event, which was originally scheduled for 22 January, was well attended and KHK had clearly put in a lot of effort in preparing for this event, especially the setting up of the huge tentage for hosting the event.

The Malaysian PM, Selangor CM, Hannah Yeo, another minister in the PMO, the Chief Cabinet Secretary and several other dignatories were present.

The program started off with a malay dance performed by young children. This was then followed by a short speech by a KHK representative and then there was the PM’s speech.

With the official segment of the event over, tea then commenced in the nearby tentage. I managed to get near the PM but couldn’t get close enough to take a picture with him or get him to autograph his book.

But still I managed to meet several owners who have purchased land in Anyara. They seem very nice and I think Anyara will turn out to be a nice community.

I was just walking around KLCC at about 130pm when I realized that I was hungry and needed to eat. Surprisingly the restaurants there were all quite busy during lunch time and so I decided that I shall have the set lunch at Nobu nearby.

The service at Nobu is always good. The section where I was seated was cold and they kindly switched off the air-conditioning for that area.

They have different set lunches but I picked the one costing RM 190. The starter was the yellowtail jalapeno, main course was sashimi and sushi with a miso soup. Fresh and nice! The dessert was really good.

I am off to KL now on the 705am flight . I was actually supposed to leave yesterday but because of an unexpected event, I couldn’t go. I also couldn’t visit the Art SG, which I religiously visit every year at MBS. And I have also decided to come back a day earlier. So this is a rather short trip.

The reason I am going is because have an event in KL tomorrow, which I have been looking forward to for some time. It was originally scheduled for 22 January but it was postponed to 27 at short notice.

I am hoping that the event works out well and that this short trip is well worth the effort!

For the record, my pick up from home was a 510am, reached airport at 525am, flight at 705am, reached KL at 810am, without luggage walked out of airport at 840am, took a grab at 845am and arrived at KLCC at 10am. So it looks like driving is probably slightly faster? Even with a short coffee break, I leave home about 6 to 615am and arrive in KL at about 1015am.

I have now completed my reading of this book. I started with the oral interviews and then went back to the documents. I thought I should set out my immediate thoughts since they are still fresh in my mind.

1. Clearly the picture that now emerges is different from the narrative that has been told to Singaporeans till now. We were always told Malaysia decided to kick Singapore out of the Federation against our wishes and we had to suddenly learn to survive on our own. The truth is that from very early on Singapore wanted a looser coalition with Malaysia, which Malaysia was agreeable to, and discussions on how to implement this were at an advanced stage when they were stymied by the British and Australian leadership. Thereafter in July 1965, it was Goh, on behalf of Singapore, who suggested to Razak that the best way forward would be to have Singapore split from Malaysia. And so the idea to separate came from Singapore. Thereafter there were intense negotiations between both sides in utmost secrecy to give effect to this. Goh was the prime mover and negotiator of separation. Lee actually played did not play any role in the negotiations process. His role appears to have been limited to getting Barker to draft the separation agreements and persuading some of the reluctant Malaysian born Singapore ministers to sign the Agreement. Singapore was also the party which drafted the agreements. To their credit, the Malaysians trusted Singapore to draft these documents. So we were never thrown out. We wanted out.
2. No explanation has been offered as to why it has taken so long for the true story to be told. The existence and the contents of this file were known since the 1980s. Without that explanation, unfortunately one is therefore left to speculate.
3. Considering how vague the terms were on setting up the Federation of Malaysia, I am puzzled as why we would even have wanted to be a part of Malaysia. Singapore only controlled health and labour. The key matters of defence, internal security, finance, industrialization and taxation were all left to Malaysia. And this knowing that UMNO, which was the key member of the ruling party in Malaysia, firmly was of the view that Malaysia should be ruled by Malays. Why in the world did we even agree to such an arrangement?
4. Even after the racial riots in Singapore in 1964 and all the problems with the UMNO Ultras, Lee still never thought that Singapore could survive as an independent nation as it lacked a common market and a sizeable population and therefore had to be a part of Malaysia in some form.
5. The then Malaysian ministers were no fools. They were educated and politically savvy, perhaps not to the extent of the Singapore ministers, but they were no pushovers. And upon reading the interviews given by the Singapore ministers, it is clear that they had high regard for Tunku and some of his key ministers.
6. All the Malaysian ministers had a problem with Lee. They seemed to have been comfortable with all the other Singapore ministers.
7. When Lee’s wife said he almost had a nervous breakdown, it was not because of the worries about what would happen after separation. It was specifically because Lee was worried for Devan Nair, as he was the only PAP MP left behind in Malaysia to fend for himself.
8. It was quite clear to me, reading between the lines, that PAP saw itself as the alternative party for all the non Malays in Malaysia and wanted to replace the MCA and MIC. Which also explains why the Malaysian leadership was wary of PAP, as they could see that the PAP would be quite happy to be in a position to replace them.
9. The current DAP in Malaysia is the successor of the PAP in Malaysia. PAP had started setting up branches in Malaysia and contested the 1964 elections. After separation since the PAP could no longer operate in Malaysia, they were renamed DAP.
10. We owe a great deal to Goh. He took the lead in getting Singapore out of Malaysia. He also single handedly worked out the details of the separation with the Malaysians. They trusted him and could work with him.
11. One has to form their own conclusions as to what extent Lee and the PAP were responsible for the deterioration of relations between Singapore and Malaysia. But as the Tunku subsequently said of Lee..” the friend who had worked so hard to found Malaysia and even harder to break it up.”

A thoroughly interesting read. I do feel I learnt so much about what happened during that period but more importantly about all the people who were involved in that tumultuous 1964 to 1965 period.

Yesterday’s lunch was at Ah Yat seafood restaurant at Hotel Miramar.

Until recently I was always under the impression that the restaurant has closed for the period of the hotel refurbishment since everything is hoarded up. Till last week when the owner’s wife messaged me with their menus. Since then I have been there several times.

I was slated to meet U Zyn and his cousin, Yheu Shen, for lunch yesterday and since the restaurant was giving me a private room, I decided to host lunch there.

A simple but good lunch and the purpose of the lunch was to understand the process of building a house in Malaysia, since Yheu Shen is a Malaysian registered architect. A useful session and I told him it would be better if he saw that site for himself as it will give him a much better idea of what might be possible.

A spontaneous lunch yesterday. I wasn’t even planning to have lunch. I was just walking back from Raffles Place when Harish suggested lunch. When I came back to Marina One, Francis was there as well. A very pleasant surprise to have friends meet and share a meal, especially now when it is getting so much harder to meet.

So we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant at Level 1of Marina One. The food was decent and we chatted for about 2 hours. No topic of any significance with Francis doing most of the talking.

Last night was once again time for our ACS dinner and since it was to be hosted by Peng Tiam and he has just moved into his new house, we had our dinner at his place.

The house is very well thought through and nicely done. He had torn down the houses that were there and built 5 new houses to house his entire family of his brothers and sisters and children and grandchildren. A good way of ensuring a family stays close is by keeping them near and having regular sessions by meeting up and dining together. And he has facilitated that. Good for him.

He catered steak from Rubicon, which was nice. The garlic bread and soup were prepared inhouse, both of which were delicious. For desserts, there were 3 cakes, cherries and durians.

We did a tour of the house before starting dinner. We finished early. Somehow there wasn’t that much conversation last night. Most of it revolved around new furniture, cutlery sets, Trump and Guangzhou.

PS Victor was away and couldn’t make dinner.

I was invited to this lunch time talk at the Ritz Carlton today. This is the first time I have attended such a talk by JB.

I usually don’t find these presentations by banks useful. Most of the time I have found their predictions at the start of the year generally off. But since I was invited by my banker and good friend, I decided to attend this one. The food was surprisingly good.

The way they did the presentation was also quite good. It wasn’t boring. Parts of it were actually interesting. Key takeaways..US interest rates will come down this year and thus the dollar will depreciate, the number one concern of Americans, especially young people, is the issue of affordability and cost of living, there is now a huge impetus to build more housing in the US, Chinese yuan will appreciate and their high tech industries are getting better and becoming global, AI is growing but to look out for Open AI and its burn rate. But I do think that if one follows the news diligently and read the Economist regularly, nothing of what they said was really new or earth shattering.

I was seated with my friend U Zyn. We didn’t get a chance to speak much cos the presentation lasted through the entire lunch.

Also I met a fellow ACS band mate, Mervyn Beng, at the presentation. I remember he was my senior in school and he played the euphonium.

He runs a charity called Resound Collective, which promotes small orchestra and chamber music. I must look out for their performances.

Last night was the performance of this very well known piece by Czech composer Dvorak at the Esplanade by the SSO. This piece was first performed in New York in 1893.

I remember hearing and playing the melody from the 2nd slow movement of this symphony years ago when I was playing in my school band, probably when I was in secondary 2. I loved that melody. It was only much later that I heard all the 4 movements of this symphony. One of the rare symphonies where all the 4 movements are memorable with beautiful and captivating melodies.

The guest conductor was Kolja Blacher and he did a very good job coaxing a very impressive performance out of the orchestra. The tempo was good and the playing excellent. No surprise therefore that he was given a standing ovation.

This has always been one of my favourite classical music pieces and I am glad it turned out to be an evening well spent. I didn’t care much for the 2 pieces they played before the intermission and so the hour long wait to hear this was well worth it.

I do find the audiences here a bit annoying; constant coughing and fidgeting during the performance and clapping in between the movements..sigh.. also some were in t shirts and shorts…

And surprisingly, I met so many people there I know.

I have heard of Hongqi for some time. And I knew they were starting to do ev cars. So I was glad when I found out last year that Eurokars would bring this car to Singapore.

It was launched at the motor show last week. Since I was in KL, I missed it. So they very kindly arranged a viewing of the car this morning.

It was the Chinese left hand drive version and I was told that there would be some differences with the final version coming to Singapore.

The car looked gorgeous and I can’t wait to test drive this. Fingers crossed that the drive is as good as how the car looks!

Now the dilemma. To switch or not to switch.