February 2018 - You Write

Prince of Praise - What a Racer!

February 28, 2018 FLAI40 2 comments

The year was 1994. The date: Monday 4th April. The time: 4:00 pm The venue: Royal Ranwick Racecourse, Sydney, Australia. The crowd: easily over 400,000. The distance: 1,600 meters. I was six years old at the time. I was as nervous as ever at the start of that All-Ages race. There were a total of thirteen of us qualified for this final showdown for that year. Of the thirteen there were five from New Zealand and I was one of these five. The commentor’s voice over the public broadcast went something like this: “The thirteen runners over the 1600 m race […]

Stephen King’s Short Stories

February 24, 2018 FLAI40 Leave a comment

One of the many lessons I have learnt from writers like Stephen King is to keep the paragraphs short, and preferrable with conversations within speech marks. I have just finished reading Stephen King’s ‘The Bazaar of Bad Dreams’ which is a collection of short stories and the following is a brief review of this superbly written, hard-to-put-down, book. Story # 1: Mile 81 My recommendation is for you to skip this story, at least until last. Why? You may well ask. Firstly, the story is just too far-fetched. Secondly, the language can be coarse, bordering on the vulgar and thus, […]

The Year 2018 : part VI of VI Year 2000’s

February 18, 2018 FLAI40 Leave a comment

By the year 2001, I was 61 years young and I did notice that I was not half as strong physically as I was just two or three years ago. As an example, I found that my back spine was not as stable and by the later years of the 2000’s decade, I had several severe pains in the lumbar region. In one instance, it was so severe that I could not get up from the bed, nor walk to the car. The funny thing was that once seated inside the driver’s seat of the car, I could drive. What […]

Philip Yeo is one of those Singaporeans who had made Modern Singapore GREAT

February 14, 2018 FLAI40 Leave a comment

He redirected Singapore’s focus from traditional trading fields to new areas of businesses, including internationally exportable services, high-tech industries like biomedical science, semiconductors, aerospace. He nurtured local small and medium-sized enterprises, encouraging them to make direct investments abroad. He turned Batam into a household name. He created Jurong Island from seawater. He put Singapore on the biomedical map globally. Yes, he is Philip Yeo Liat Kok (杨烈国－烈国 Liat Kok is “passion for the country” in the Teochew [Chaozhou] dialect), the current chairman of SPRING (a Singapore government development agency to grow small and medium enterprises) since 2007. The persons […]

The Year 2018 Part V of VI - Years 1990’s

February 9, 2018 FLAI40 Leave a comment

I took a breather in the years 1996, 1997 and 1998 to complete my studies for the MBA (Technology Management) degree. It was an interesting experience for me, as I studied together with my No. 3 daughter, exchanging study notes and submitting assignments together. She finished just a term earlier but during this period, we did spend quality time together, usually in our weekly banter over the topics we studied. http://aseanvaluer.org/images/PDF/Valuation%20of%20Natural%20Resources%20-%20Francis%20Lai%20Pang%20Fee.pdf The earlier […]

The Year 2018 Part IV of VI - Years 1980’s

February 3, 2018 FLAI40 Leave a comment

Way back in the 1970’s it was difficult to immigrate to New Zealand. My application for me and my family to immigrate to New Zealand was rejected twice but thanks to Sir Robert Muldoon’s Export Incentive Scheme at the time, Fletcher Construction managed to convince the Government that my employment was part of Fletcher’s export schemes to obtain construction projects in Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and eventually to China. By 1980 my family had settled into our Pakuranga home off Cascades Road and my four children settled into Elm Park Primary, Farm Cove Intermediate, and Pakuranga College. […]