Life is a fantasy.

It is about how well you can dream, and then how best you can set about fulfilling that dream. Throughout the centuries, people dreamed about flying. Many of them died trying to do it. But they did not sacrifice in vain: look how well and how far we’re flying all around the world today. Reality begins its life as a baby fantasy. The wildest ideas, the vainest concepts, one must never disregard them, for they may just materialise one day.

Otherwise what is there to live for?

We love music, movies, science-fiction novels. We spend millions and millions making filming writing them, and then many millions more consuming them. For what? So that we may hide from the blunt reality of life. So that we may not think about the pointlessness of life. And we have succeeded. Hollywood is a billion-dollar enterprise, its stable of stars millionaires in their own rights. All of them enjoy the finest things money can buy, their lives a modern-day fairytale that we can only stare at. And we pay them to continue this ostentatious lifestyle, just so that we can have a slice of it: in our dreams.

Let’s face reality.

All of us have some fantasy that we conveniently put aside as the realities of life catch up with us: a job that pays well, a car that screams “I’VE ARRIVED!”, a house that cost at least half a million. These things are not impossibles, but to get them one will have to sacrifice something else. And what else better than that fantasy which may not even materialise. Yet, it is precisely this fantasy which brings us progress, revolution, which transports humanity to another level of greatness. Sadly, only a few amongst us dare to carry such dreams, to make them into reality. The rest of us, we just spend a few dollars and watch someone on screen realise it for us. It’s easier that way.

But life should not be easy.

So perhaps it’s time to recover that lost fantasy of ours. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate that ridiculous concept, it’s time we make it reality. Things never happen in random. We are the living testament of the choices we made, and all the choices that we didn’t make. Rationally, it isn’t wrong to be safe, but, more importantly, we should never be sorry. What’s the point of avoiding that puddle in the street if it is the door that leads to where you want to go? The music is getting so loud I can barely hear myself, so can someone please tell me how to lower the volume -

They say that hegemonies, like humans, have a lifespan, and that a new one will come to replace the old once the latter expires. We can see this in the current peaceful protest led by Burmese monks against the country’s military junta. After four decades of dictatorship, the regime is finally being challenged by what many consider the nation’s highest moral authorities; we can only speculate as to the reasons why they did not act earlier.

The government declared a dawn to dusk curfew on the 26th of September, in a bid to control the protest. Ignoring the curfew, Burmese monks and citizens took to the streets of Yangon. The protest then took a turn for the worse as soldiers fired tear gas and hit out at unarmed protesters with their batons in order to break up the crowds. Apart from fueling the anti-governmental sentiments of the protesters, the military regime’s violence on its people now has the world paying attention to the current political situation in Myanmar.

The important thing to ask is: why have the monks turned political? One possible reason might be that ascetic, otherworldly beings as they are, as they are deemed to be, they are nonetheless humans, and as human beings, they have this inherent drive to fight (or take flight) when a situation is not in their favour. Commendably, they have chosen the former. Another way to see it could be that they are reacting out of the great love they have for their country and their fellow-citizens, all of whom are suffering under the military junta. The words on a banner carried by some of the Burmese monks-in-protest sum it up: “Sufficiency in food, clothing and shelter, national reconciliation, freedom for all political prisoners.”

From video clips and photos taken of the protest and posted on the Internet, one can see the protesting monks moving like a human traffic along the streets of Yangon and Mandalay, two of the major cities in Myanmar. The monks wear red or burnt-orange robes, a stark and symbolic contrast to the current bleak political climate of the country. Like a red river snaking through the metropolis, the monks bring life and set emotions rising wherever they trend; the people would join in the protest or put their palms together in prayer and hope whenever they see the monks marching pass. Some pictures even show protesters tending to wounds that their comrades have sustained from encounters with the military. The power of collective behaviour in times of great social change is never to be underestimated.

The dictatorship that the military generals enjoy in Myanmar is long overdue; it ought to have climaxed when the regime decided to dishonour the 1990 general election results and placed Aung San Suu Kyi (whose party won the election) under house arrest. The fact that they did not probably implies that the Burmese, like their rightful leader Aung San Suu Kyi, prefer peace to political unrest. The fact that they are reacting now surely indicates that the peace they so yearn for can only be arrived at through certain sacrifices.

I like attending the L G sessions and watching some twenty-or-less adults transform into child-like creatures for three hours, their eyes bright and wondrously animated, their breath fast and urgent, all of them fighting to speak what they think, to share what they know. For a while, you forget that you’re working in a Department where the officers are generally quiet and somber, going about their daily tasks with a candid seriousness which shows on their faces and the way they walk.

And it is moments like this that you realise we never really grow up. We simply pretend to a semblance of being grown-up. But the child in us, it is still very much alive, within us, and it only takes a catalyst to bring it forward, up from the deep recesses of our unconscious.

So that is what the L G sessions are to me. They allow the child in the officers, some of them hailing from senior and high-senior management, to come up and take a walk around. To see all of them laughing and moving around the room as if they have shaken off twenty years of their age, their movements fluid and uninhibited, their speech sincere and natural, it takes the stress out of work, at least for a while. Although the issues to be discussed – they assume – are serious and pertinent to the security of the nation, the brainstorming activities that the external facilitators guide them in doing do help to break the cold chains of adulthood and free the man-child within. A priceless moment.

Exhausted, I stare
Straight ahead, a blank
Nothing more, nothing less
Frightfully real, yet surreal
Can it be?
I shudder to think
Instead, I choose
To hold my breath
With my mouth
Clam shut -
Within it, my faith
My spirit
My will, my entirety
They twitter
I shiver
My mouth, it twitches
At the corner
I smile
My lips
A thin straight line
I dare not open it
Lest they fall out
No
I shouldn’t
Wouldn’t
Needn’t
My eyes
They gaze
Serenely
Across the years
They take me back
To where
I don’t belong
A sudden blur
I close them
A black-out
And I am back.

There were once three little pigs who lived together in their ancestral manor. Life was slow-paced, and they always had enough to fill their stomaches, so they had nothing to worry about. One morning, Big Brother Pig decided that he had something to say. “My fellow brothers, lend me your ears. I have something to announce. I believe that it is time we venture out of our fathers’ house and find new homes for ourselves. We are not getting any younger, and this will be a good opportunity for us to find some place where we can settle down and start our own families.”

The other two pigs listened attentively, nodding and snorting in agreement whenever their brother made a significant point. Finally, Second Brother Pig replied: “My brothers, I concur with what Big Brother has said. Let us go forth from here and find ourselves new homes and new families so that we may carry on the family-line. Good luck to you both, and may peace be with you always!”

With that, the three little pigs packed up their belongings – which were not many – and left the manor. As they passed the gate which marked the end of their home, and the beginning of the rest of the world, they shook hands one last time and went their separate ways. Big Brother Pig decided to go north, up towards the mountain which stood behind the manor, where he knew laid plenty of natural resources like oil, coal, and fruit trees. There, he firmly believed, he would never need to worry about food and other necessities. Being a materialistic pig who ravelled in luxury and comfort, he trotted eagerly up the rocky gravel path.

Second Brother Pig decided to go east, where he knew he would find plenty of green pasture. A vegetarian by choice, Second Brother Pig also knew that green pastures were all he needed, and all he would ever want. He only hoped that he could find a mate who was also a vegetarian, for that would make things so much more convenient. Thinking wistfully of his future partner-to-be, he headed out in the direction where the sun was still rising.

Little Brother Pig decided that he would go south, down the river, and into the forests that his forefathers had for centuries avoided because of the thick undergrowth and the cosmopolitan forest community that was to be found there. A bookworm by default, Little Brother Pig was curious to know more about these different creatures of the forest that he had read so much about. He was also looking forward to trying his hand at building a real cottage-house, the architectural details of which he had taken care to memorise from books and magazines that he had read. With hurried steps, Little Brother Pig trotted happily down the soft morning grass towards the river.

Sin Chew Jit Poh
8th Aug 2007

A few days ago, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) cancelled the permit for a public forum scheduled for 7 Aug 07 which would have featured a talk on the topic, sexual orientation in international law, a case for Asia”. The reasons cited for the ban here that “the event is contrary to public interest”, “Singapore’s domestic politics is the domain for Singaporeans and foreigners should refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Singapore”, and “our laws are an expression and reflection of the values of our   society; the discourse over a domestic issue such as the laws that govern homosexuality in Singapore must be reserved for Singaporeans”. 

The statement, issued by MHA, alarmed many. We envy Singapore for its high level of internationalisation and economic development, and pursuit of novelty and change in recent years: building integrated resorts cum casinos, bringing in the Crazy Horse, allowing bungee jumping, and staging F1 night races – all of which seem “uniquely Singapore” (its tourism slogan). Yet, the truth is that deep down inside, it is only concerned about economic considerations and vigilantly keeps out all “unhealthy trends”.

I remember Long Ying Tai (a Taiwanese writer) saying that “Singapore is too clean” and that “fish do not come when the water is too clear”. I myself had stayed in Singapore for short spells several times this year. If you stay there for too long, you will find that everything is too comfortable. The schools, shopping centres, the MRT and food courts are like hospitals. Even the air at the airport is sterilised.

In a television interview with America’s Public Broadcasting Service in 2000, then Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew mentioned that “if one day, it is proven that homosexuality is genetically determined, the government will reconsider the penalties”. (Note: Under Singapore law, gay sex is punishable by a fine or jail regardless of whether it occurred in public or in private.) On 21 Apr 07, MM Lee talked about homosexuality at a public event. When interviewed by Reuters on 24 Apr 07, he expounded his “gene theory” of several years. He said, “If in fact it is true – and I have asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual, because that’s the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes, you can’t help it. So why should we criminalise it?” “Let’s not go around like this moral police…barging into people’s rooms. That’s not our business.” Gay groups in Singapore thanked MM Lee for his remarks. There is a ray of hope for gays.

More importantly, MM Lee also said that “homosexuals are creative writers, dancers”. “If we want creative people, then we have to put up with their idiosyncrasies as long as they don’t infect the heartland.” His remarks promptly sparked criticisms and fear, which were reported by Singapore’s largest English language paper. From MM Lee’s personal comments, we saw more ignorance and “homophobia”. So, gays are creative and imaginative. To inject “vigour” into the country, Singapore needs such talented homosexuals. Hence, heterosexuals have to put up with their idiosyncrasies (sexual behaviour between persons of the same sex is a idiosyncrasy) as long as homosexuals do not affect the lives of the heterosexuals. Going by MM Lee’s threads of thought, gays who do not have any talent and skills, we are sorry to say, have nothing to contribute to the country and hence, heterosexuals do not have to put up with them and can even dscriminate against them!

Readers who responded to MM Lee’s comments in the press said such things like “Singapore is unique in that it has a low crime rate, it is clean, it has no pornographic publications, it is wholesome” and “Gays cannot have children; we are faced with a greying population and broken families”. In the readers’ letters, gays are linked to the crime rate, pornography and broken families. Once the government legalises homosexuality, it will open a Pandora’s box, polluting the “clean” and “wholesome” country.  

Singapore’s MHA does not allow foreigners to make gay comments in the Republic. Outsiders cannot talk about Singapore’s internal affairs. So, in reality, gays have already been excluded from Singapore’s “public interest” beforehand. Singapore’s gays are still living “in the closet”.

The Straits Times, Singapore
5th April 2007 

Following up on protests at the Australian National University (ANU). In the context of the global contest for talent, how much does it matter that some people see Singapore as a place that restricts individual freedoms?

MM Lee: Let me first challenge the assumption that people see Singapore as a place that restricts individual freedom. This is the stereotype that the Western media purveys of Singapore. But businessmen and talented people who work for these companies are better informed; otherwise we wouldn’t have attracted the talent we have.

The ANU knew they would get flak from the human-rights people for offering me an honorary degree. So too the Imperial College London for making me a Fellow just a few years ago; so too Melbourne University.

So what does it prove? These are people who understand what’s happening in the real world and understand the real Singapore.

The press works up a storyline that Warwick University finds Singapore’s academic freedom restricted, so they don’t come.

I think the real reason is they worked out their sums and they found it was not economical.

You’ve got some of the top names from America, and even Australia has got the University of New South Wales setting up a campus.

So let’s not ourselves be drawn in to purvey this line.

What is the individual freedom that you are deprived of? Are you prevented from saying what you want? Are you prevented from exercising your rights as a citizen?

Since we are trying to attract talent, does it matter that they see us in this light?

No. The people that have the talent will have the wit to investigate, to know what they are in for.

You know the number of unsolicited mails that I get and PM gets from people completely without motive? They’ve come, they know the old Singapore.

And what they are saying is, it’s a very good place – safe, wholesome, everything works – and they wish they could have the basics we have established.

And if you allow this to be degraded, you’ll never put the present Singapore together again.

If we didn’t have more self-confidence in what we are doing and we listened to what is prescribed for us, we wouldn’t be here.

You cannot bring Singapore from where it was to where it now is without long periods of stable government and experienced ministers.

You watch the development of Taiwan or South Korea.

The period of transformation took place when they had governments that stayed for a long time, ministers and civil servants who acquired experience and expertise and improved the system and got it to a high state.

And once they liberalised, like they did in Taiwan, you look at the growth rates. You look at their stability, you look at what their future promises.

I meet their journalists; they come to Singapore. If you read Tian Xia and several other very reputable papers, they are full of admiration for what we have achieved.

Now how does Taiwan get back to stability and growth and sanity?

It’s facing a very difficult future in which China is growing bigger and bigger year by year, stronger and stronger.

And they are not in a position to go independent because the Americans will not support them because it means war.

So what is the rational thing to do? Is the rational thing to say ‘I change the Constitution’ and provoke the Chinese into a clash?

That’s what the present President is attempting to do because then he thinks he will be able to rally votes. I mean, you are now into mass manipulation of attitudes in order to win votes by deceiving people that this is a way forward, when there is, in fact, no way forward.

You look at South Korea. They are now with a generation that voted in a new government completely at variance with US policies.

Without the US, South Korea is in dire difficulties with the North. But you have a younger generation that says, out with the Americans.

So does it make sense?

I want to ask about ministerial salaries. Your view on how well the system has worked to bring in talent?

Every time there is a pay revision to catch up with benchmarks, this debate will come up again.

But you ask yourself: Do you want the present system where it’s completely above board?

And while we are not recruiting all of the very best, we are recruiting some of the very best, because quite a few of the very best do not want to give up their private lifestyle and their family life.

Yes, you can get a person to give up and make a sacrifice for one term.

But will you get a man or woman to serve successive terms, gain experience, become a really competent person, a very competent minister and sacrifice his family, their welfare, their comforts and their children’s future and education, going abroad etc? It’s not possible.

They’re at the top of their cohort. We talent spot. We headhunt for people who not only have just academic qualifications but track records of performance.

How did I learn this? Because in the early days, looking for talent, I put in bright PhDs. Didn’t work. We even had a Rhodes scholar.

We found that we needed other qualities: character, motivation, judgment, stability, temperament, ability to connect with people.

So, finally, we worked out a system where we looked at a person in totality: How does he perform in real life, whether as a businessman, as a CEO, as a doctor, as a lawyer, whatever?

Supposing I had served just one term. Would I have known this? No. Because I’ve served since 1959, and successive elections we fine-tuned and learned in the process.

You go back to a revolving-door government: the first two years you learn how to do your job; next two, three years, you begin to do the job. Before you know where you are, you’re out. Next government comes in.

And that’s what’s happening in many parts of the world.

Carefully consider.

You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government.

You get that alternative and you’ll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again… and your asset values will disappear, your apartment will be worth a fraction of what it is, your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people’s countries, foreign workers.

Just think. We have a population of three-point-something (million) and we are carrying and able to give jobs to another 1.3 million people.

How does that happen? Why can’t the 1.3 million people get jobs in their own countries?

It must be something that we’re doing which is right, that creates economic prosperity, that creates growth, that requires talented people to join us, to help us produce all these extra goods and services.

You know the absurdity of all this?

The total cost of ministers’ salaries, of all office holders, the present cost is 0.13 per cent of government expenditure (and 0.022 per cent of GDP).

It amounts to $46 million. We are quarrelling about whether we should pay them $46 million or $36 million, or better still $26 million. So you save $20 million and jeopardise an economy of $210 billion? (This was the size of Singapore’s GDP in 2006.)

What are we talking about?

You know fund managers? I’m chairman of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and we put $5 billion, $10 billion with top fund managers, just to benchmark how we are performing against the best in the market.

We have about three or four top US investors and we track what they do and we compare what we are doing.

And you have to pay them not 0.13 per cent. Win or lose, whether the stocks go up or down, they take their cut. You ask GIC employees; I’m the chairman of GIC. I’m being paid as Minister Mentor, the Senior Minister before that, and even as Prime Minister before that, a fraction of what the top managers in GIC earn.

But they are handling over US$100 billion (S$151 billion). They make a mistake, we lose $10, $20, $30 billion overnight when the stock market collapses.

So for the average family earning $1,500, $3,000, we are talking of astronomical figures.

But for people in government like me, having to deal with these sums of money which we have accumulated through the sweat of our brow over the last 40 years, you have to pay the market rate or the man will up stakes and join Morgan Stanley or Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs. And then you’ve got an incompetent man and you’ve lost money, by the billions.

So get a sense of proportion.

Would you like to share how much you are paid?

It’s in the Budget. I’m paid $2.7 million. A top lawyer, which I could easily have become, today earns $4 million. And he doesn’t have to carry this responsibility. All he’s got to do is advise his client. Win or lose, that’s the client’s loss or gain.

But there are top people in other countries who don’t get paid as much but who are also corruption-free, who have also done a good job.

Let me put the American system and then you will understand why if we ran that system, we’re in trouble.

If you become President of the United States like Bill Clinton was, or George W. Bush, you earn about less than a million dollars. But you have the White House, you have Airforce One…When you leave office, you write your memoirs, you’re paid by the tens of millions. And Bill Clinton, for every speech he makes, it’s at least a million or half a million or he doesn’t go. And he starts a foundation. They all do this.

You take Alan Greenspan. He sacrificed his earnings as a very expert financial specialist and he took on as a job as chairman of the Federal Reserve, at a pittance. As Paul Volker did.

But he’s already got a huge sum of money and when he leaves, he can increase the huge sum of money because of the standing that he has.

He makes a statement and says there could be a recession in the second half of this year and the world stock market goes down.

Can we afford a revolving-door government? Suppose after five years, I go out and say ‘OK, I write my memoirs, I become a lobbyist’. How does that get the country going?

I say this is a system we worked out. It’s above board, it’s working. And if you’re going to quarrel about $46 million, up or down another $10 or $20 million, I say you have no sense of proportion; you don’t know what life is about. And just think, what would your apartment be worth with a poor government and the economy down?

We talk about the Government as fu mu guan (a Chinese phrase that refers to public officials as parents who care for their children). So people hope that leaders are not there for the money, that they are willing to make that extra sacrifice.

Those are admirable sentiments, but we live in the real world. It took a lot of persuasion to get Ng Eng Hen, Vivian Balakrishnan, Balaji Sadasivan to give up their lucrative practices and become ministers and ministers of state, and no guarantee they would succeed.

Ng Eng Hen six years ago, when he first entered politics, was making $4.5 million and he came in and took a job that paid him about $600,000.

Balaji was earning also in the same category. He was a top brain surgeon with very high skills. He took a chance. When he was not made a minister in the selection process, Goh Chok Tong, then Prime Minister, said ‘Would you like to go back to your private practice?’

He says ‘No, I’m going to do this as a senior minister of state’. But he’s made sufficient to look after his family and children, and his wife is a doctor. So I think that’s a sacrifice.

I started off as a socialist, believing that all men should be given equal opportunities and equal rewards. I know that doesn’t work.

You have competition and reward the winner.

You look at golf, tennis, swimming, badminton, anything you like. The first prize is an enormous sum. And to get that first prize, you start spending your life, sweating your guts out to master a certain skill which (is) admired and supported by hundreds, if not thousands of millions of people watching you.

It is a competitive world in which we live and if we can’t compete, we’re not going to live well.

Believe me, they are still around, but you are not going to see them if you’re one who always takes the buses and the MRT. Try walking the less trodden paths, take a detour and never mind the extra time needed to complete your journey; sometimes you will find that these little adventures have got big payoffs. Trust me, I do that all the time.

For the past one week, I have been noticing an old lady who sat at the front facade of an MRT station in the West selling tissue paper early in the morning during the rush hour. The first few days I saw her, she was still fresh and alert, holding three packets of tissue paper in her right hand and extending it whenever a passer-by comes near enough to be able to notice her presence. Sadly enough, she was still ignored. On subsequent days, I saw that she was dozing off while holding the packets of tissue paper in her hand. The sight was not a pleasant one. Here was this old lady, her hair silvery-grey, her back hunched, her wrinkled hands holding on to her wares, and she seemed to have disappeared into the background as the working crowd, in their brisk walking pace, busied themselves about absorbed with their own daily concerns. What’s the point? I asked myself. The old lady probably asked herself the same thing, because I never saw her again after that.

It is a happy coincidence that I recently stumbled upon a short film (14 min) by filmmaker Martyn See – of Singapore Rebel fame – which features the old and the poor of our island. A meaningful exploration, I think, and one which sets us thinking about our own roles in society. Here’s the link, if you’re interested. Oh, and the songs are priceless.

It is disturbing to know that numbers can be so powerful. When collated and used in a particular way, statistics can tell a story or present a hypothesis which, when packaged the right way, can be passed off as authoritative opinions or even the “truth.” Thus it is that some time back in the Department I was presented with several statistical information which are to be assembled and presented as “facts” to the senior management, mainly to convince them that something has to be done with regard to an  issue that the Department has been preoccupied with for some time now. My officer-in-charge told me, in a rather subtle way, that we should be looking at how we can make statistics “work” towards our advantage, in order to convey the message that we want to the parties involved. Nicely put there. So then I shall be telling a lie, without actually telling a lie. “Because statistics are subjective; they will always be.” It all depends on how we choose to present or interpret them. Brilliant. Anyone of you remember Emily Dickinson: tell the truth but tell it slant? Let me first brush up on my SPSS.

Wide-eyed
You stare
At the picture in the frame:
So beautiful
It takes your breathe away
You struggle
To recall
Where have you seen it
Before?
The memory
Eludes you
You
Cannot pin down
Its
Exact
Location.
Nonetheless
It fascinates you
Makes you
Want to
Find out more
You press on.
It gets a little
Clearer
But still very
Distant.
You concentrate
The perspiration
On your forehead
Trickling gently
Down
Your temples
To no avail.
And then suddenly -
A streak
And then a glimmer
Of light
You pursue it
Slowly
Gradually
It comes back to you
You remember it
And it becomes meaningless.
You forget it.