It is a tradition that the Prime Minister of Singapore gives a National Day Rally (NDR) Speech shortly after August 9, Singapore’s National Day. This year, as usual, my family was looking forward to it. To be honest, I was never interested in long speeches from people who run countries as they tend to be…
When I was a kid under twelve, this was the time of the year for me. We celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival on the lunar calendar, which usually fell in early June. I used to indulge myself with yummy rice dumplings. My grandma (Chan Yin-Mui陳賢妹小姐) made the best rice dumplings (with peanut fillings) in the…
Marathon Man is a movie that has little to do with a marathon. I was a runner during my school years and have been running semi-regularly for a while. Even though I have never run a marathon in my life, I am always intrigued by marathons. I have always had a healthy dose of fear…
What is “Rojak”? Rojak is a dish served in Malaysia and Singapore. It is essentially a local salad. The ingredients in a typical rojak dish include turnips, cucumbers, pineapples, bean sprouts, peanuts, fried tofus, banana flowers, green mangos and a delicious dressing that consists of lime juice and prawn. However, there is really no specific…
Have you ever felt lonely in the dark? Are you fearful of darkness? I, for one, have been a little fearful of the dark, especially when I was a small boy. I would try not to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night as I perceived it was a long distance for…
(Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of my blog on Leadership Camp – the week of mourning in Singapore and tribute to the late Lee Kuan Yew) Little do people in Singapore know that the death of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was widely reported in Hong Kong (HK) media too. Nowadays, with the help…
(Click here to read Part 1 of my blog post on Leadership Camp) When my wife and I decided to move to Singapore in 2003, we simply filled out a form and paid an application fee. We were required to provide a lot of information for that form and I remembered there was a big emphasis…
I was privileged to be born in Hong Kong (HK) in the mid-60s and grew up there. I had witnessed a few decades of prosperity as a young man. My family enjoyed that time too, just like many other families in Hong Kong. We enjoyed free schooling there until 15 years of age. Medical treatment…
As Singapore is mourning for the passing of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, I decided to run over to Parliament House this morning where Singaporeans are paying their respects to the late Mr. Lee. Numerous people queued up yesterday and it took close to 8 hours to get to the end of the line at one point. As a result, the organizers extended the time to 24 hours to enable more people to have an opportunity to bid farewell to Mr. Lee.
Compared with many Asians a generation ahead of me, my generation was the lucky one. We had a minimum of 9 years of compulsory school education in Hong Kong. It was ‘compulsory’ because parents could go behind bars if they failed to send their kids to school. I was born in the 1960s. The generation…
Bits and Bites from Dr Ansgar Cheng 