Talking Cock

Dear Friends,

I am partially Hainanese and my childhood years were mostly with my maternal grandma, who originated from Hainan Island, China. After my father's passing when I was seven, I spent weekdays at my 'Popo's house and would only return to my mum on the weekends.

Those were polar days. The old house was situated in a 'Hainanese enclave' in Old Town, Petaling Jaya. All the neighbours were Hainanese. We all spoke Hainanese. If I was screamed at by my 'Popo', the entire neighbourhood would know the transgressions I have committed because they understood.

One of the things that I grew up with was having chickens raised at the backyard. 'Popo' would purchase them as little chicks from the market and ingest them with corn feed and dried pounded bread until they were big enough to be our 'feed' on the dining table.

Until today, I still have the image in my head on the slaughtered chicken, blood dripping until it laid there motionless and lifeless. Then , it would be put through a 'hotbath' process in boiling hot water for the feathers to be stripped. All these for a luscious meal of 'HAINANESE CHICKEN RICE'.

The chicken is prepared in traditional Hainanese methods which involve the boiling of the entire chicken in a stock, reusing the broth over and over. This stock is not used for rice preparation, which instead involves chicken stock created specifically for that purpose, producing an oily flavourful rice. The Hainanese prefer using older and plumper birds to maximise the amount of oil extracted, thus creating a more flavourful dish. The bird is dipped in ice after cooking to produce a jelly-like skin finishing. The dish is usually served with several dips, including chilli sauce and pounded ginger. It is common in Hainan Island to also offer a third sauce involving oyster sauce mixed with garlic, while dark soy sauce is more commonly served in Malaysia and Singapore.

I also remember moisturising my hands making those chicken rice balls better known in Hainanese as 'Pui Cin'. My 'Popo' told me during her China times, the rice was originally shaped into balls because it needed to be kept warm from the time it was cooked (often earlier in the day) until mealtime. Eating 'Pui Cin' at my 'Popo's house was more a novelty than anything else.

In the newspaper this week, our beloved Tourism Minister was quoted as saying, "Chilli Crab is Malaysian. Hainanese Chicken Rice is Malaysian. We have to lay claim to our food”, unquote. She was clearly upset that 'OUR' food was being claimed by others, in this case Singapore. Needless to say how the Indonesians were upset when they claimed that Malaysia 'hijacked' their Bali Pendet dance. A little "do what you want others to do unto you" here?

Some points for consideration here, Auntie Yen. Did you know?

* Hainanese Chicken Rice is the 'national' dish of Singapore. During my former travels abroad for international trade shows, the Singapore trade delegation would always serve it as a delicacy during their 'Singapore Night' dinners. On the contrary with our 'Malaysian Night' dinners, we would be serving 'Satay' and other local Malaysian delicacies that I know are 'Truly Malaysian'.

* Hainanese Chicken Rice is also one of the few local dishes served on board Singapore Airlines flights. I have flown umpteen times with Malaysia Airlines and not once have I experienced 'flying chicks' in the Malaysian air.

* There are more Hainanese owned coffee shops and restaurants in Purvis Street and Seah Street, Singapore that serves the Chicken Rice compared to any other streets in Malaysia. But, in terms of our Ramadhan Bazaars, we win hands down. Singapore can't even come near.

Our learned Minister should forget her strategies of going about labelling 'Malaysian' dishes like the Hainanese Chicken Rice after identifying them. Hainanese Chicken Rice is 'discovered' to be a Singaporean original. We Malaysians should continue preaching about how good our 'Satays' or 'Lemangs' are and leave the Hainanese Chicken Rice to the respective 'ownership'.

Since we are at this topic of wanting to draw the line of what is others and what is ours; I would appreciate if measures are drawn to keep 'our people' from being 'their people'. In recent months, an honourable Singapore school, the ST. NICHOLAS GIRLS SCHOOL came to offer secondary education places, to deserving students where my daughter was studying. I am proud that Charmaine was chosen to be accessed as a deserving student. Being 'my' daughter, I reckoned she should be closer to me. The choice was made to pay for her education at a local private school here instead of earmarking her to receive 'free education' in Singapore. Which means; I was also declining the allowance that was to be given to Charmaine, by the Singapore government for living expenses should the offer be accepted (I am not going to regret this now :D). The draining of Malaysian brains by our smart intelligent neighbours should be managed, instead of who actually 'owns' the Hainanese Chicken Rice.

By the way, I heard the CEO of Singapore Airlines is actually Malaysian. So is their Traffic Chief in the Police Force. And also, the many heads at their Government Investment Corporation (GIC). Now, we should be claiming all that instead of all these 'TALKING COCK"!

Oops, I meant the adult male bird.

Living High or Living On The High?

Dear Friends,

I came across this article written by Lee Wei Ling, daughter of Singapore's Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew. Is life really more than just material possessions?

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In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience Institute, I wrote: 'Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is eventually followed by slump time. Slump time in the public sector is always less painful compared to the private sector.'Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.Decades of the good life have made us soft. The wealthy especially, but also the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities.A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working order. A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol. For millionaires who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed more appropriate. The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times that of the foreign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.

The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption. Perhaps it is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the recession from getting worse. I am not an economist, but wasn't that the root cause of the current crisis - Americans spending more than they could afford to?I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't think I have a soul that will survive my death. But as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother once told me: 'Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul.'My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal. My parents and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today's standards, but it is simple - in fact, almost to the point of being shabby. Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our street, we are not bothered by the comparison.

Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn. We have been told to tighten our belts. There will undoubtedly be suffering, which we must try our best to ameliorate. But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970 who have never lived through difficult times.No matter how poor you are in Singapore, the authorities and social groups do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore. Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They would hardly notice the difference. Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy. Enjoying the fruits of one's own labour is one's prerogative and I have no right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously. But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and hankering. After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to? Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye.When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it? We know which is the correct choice - and it is within our power to make that choice. In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has just ended, let us again try to choose wisely. To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we should not follow the herd blindly.

You want brains, he's got brains.

Dear Friends,

I have always been an ardent fan of Singapore's MM Lee Kuan Yew. I have read his memoirs a few years ago and have admired his styles and thoughts ever since. Below is an interview conducted with him recently.

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SINGAPORE'S MINISTER MENTOR LEE KUAN YEW WAS INTERVIEWED ON CNN'S "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS"
SEPTEMBER 21, 2008
SPEAKERS: LEE KUAN YEW, MINISTER MENTOR OF SINGAPORE
HOST: FAREED ZAKARIA

ZAKARIA: When I first met Lee Kuan Yew in 1994, I was absolutely struck by him. Richard Nixon once compared him to legendary statesmen like Disraeli, Bismarck and Churchill. But, Nixon said, he occupies a small stage. That stage doesn't look so small anymore.
Lee Kuan Yew took a small spit of land in Southeast Asia, which became independent in 1965 after great struggle and anguish, with no resources and a polyglot population of Chinese, Malaysian and Indian workers, and turned it into one of the economic centers of the world.
To do this, Lee had to have smart economic policies, but also a shrewd foreign policy that, allied with America, kept China happy, kept Russia and Japan at bay.
This week I sat down with Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. His son now serves as prime minister, but Lee Kuan Yew is called "minister mentor." And he is still indisputably the father of Singapore.
I was struck by the depth of his understanding of the world -- China, Russia and the United States -- all at age 85.
Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (on camera): You have achieved remarkable success for Singapore in your lifetime. You've seen it go from a tiny, poor, backward, Third World country to one of the richest countries in the world. But lots of people feel that you have been -- you have exercised too tight a control, that you should have opened things up more, that it has been too domineering and coercive a state. What do you say to that?

LEE: I say, ask my people. They are given the vote. It's secret. Nobody has ever alleged any chicanery -- no bribery, no coercion, no nothing. We have never won less than 60, two-thirds of the vote.

ZAKARIA: But it's difficult for opposition parties to form and...

LEE: It is not the business of the government to enable the opposition party to overturn us. Right? Do you expect the Republicans to help the Democrats to overturn them?

ZAKARIA: No, but leave aside even just the issue of political competition. I just mean you have laws, for example, that allow random testing of people for drugs. You have, you know, the famous ban against chewing gum, which exercised people's imagination. Do you feel that you should have let up a little bit?

LEE: No, not at all. Because of that, we are now a safe, secure, fun city. The night scene has been transformed in the last 10, 15 years -- any number of nightclubs, the night life, al fresco
dining by the riverside.

ZAKARIA: And people can even chew gum now.

LEE: You need to have a medical certificate to buy gum for those who want to give up smoking and have got to chew some nicotine. What is it I am trying to do? I am trying to create, in a Third World situation, a First World oasis. I am not following any prescription given me by any theoretician on democracy, or whatever. I work from first principles, what will get me there -- social peace and stability within the country, no fight between the races, between religions, whatever, fair shares for all, everybody is a homeowner. I want investments. I've got nothing except skilled manpower, infrastructure. I build up the infrastructure. I educate the people.
We have the best educated work force anywhere in Asia, and I would say, within another 10 years, anywhere in the world. They're all educated in English, which is our working language, and they keep their mother tongue, whether it's Chinese, Malay or Tamil, Urdu, or whatever. Must I follow your prescription to succeed? Do I want to be like America? Yes, in its inventiveness and its creativeness. But do I want to be with America, like America, with its inability to control the drug problem? No. Or the gun problem? No. These are my choices. I go by what is good governance. What are the things I aim to do? A healthy society that gives everybody a chance to achieve his maximum.

ZAKARIA: What do you think of the American campaign, watching it from Singapore?

LEE: What can I say? It's fascinating. Suddenly, Senator McCain produces this governor from Alaska, Palin, and is leading in the polls, and she's a hit. The first flush, she was a disaster.

ZAKARIA: What do you want from the next president?

LEE: Engagement with the world. Keep trade going. Don't backtrack, or you'll put yourself at a disadvantage and put the world at a disadvantage, and you make conflicts more likely. Try and maintain a balance, so that peace and stability is assured without more conflicts.

ZAKARIA: One thing you've been critical of the United States of in the past has been its efforts to spread democracy around the world. You were critical of it when it was Bill Clinton's America, leave alone the freedom agenda of George Bush. What do you object to in that push?

LEE: No, I don't -- I don't think it's doable. I'm a social Darwinist.

ZAKARIA: Survival of the fittest.

LEE: No. The survival requires you to change. If you don't change, then you are marginalized and you will become extinct.

ZAKARIA: But do you look at the way in which the United States has been trying to push democracy around the world...

LEE: Yes.

ZAKARIA: ... and you say...

LEE: Where have you succeeded? You went to Haiti in nation-building. And I was just listening to a BBC on Haiti recently. I mean, it's just undoable.

ZAKARIA: And we will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: What about Iraq? What do you think?

LEE: I was in favor of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. I did not believe it was possible to reconstitute Iraq as a democracy. I still do not believe that is possible.

ZAKARIA: So, what do you think will happen?

LEE: I think some compromise must be reached between the Shias and Sunnis and the Kurds to share the oil wealth and to share the country. And that is possible. But whether it is democracy, or whether it's a bargain between tribal chieftains, that's a different matter. You're going to bring democracy to Afghanistan? They have been warring with each other for hundreds of years. They enjoy warring with each other. Thirty-plus years ago they killed a king who was nominally holding the country together, and it's been shattered ever since.
How do you restore the writ of Kabul? By some 30,000 NATO troops, ISAF, and a few more brigades of Marines or special forces? The Russians had 140,000 boots on the ground with tanks, helicopters and the lot. And they left. I think nation-building is not doable. I mean, are you going to do nation-building in Pakistan? If you can't get Pakistan right, you will never get Afghanistan right. That Durand Line was arbitrarily drawn by the British between the Northwest Frontier Provinces and Afghanistan. They are the same tribes, brothers, cousins -- porous borders. They're in and out.
Now you've not only got Talibans, you've got Pakistanis joining the Talibans -- or that's the latest intelligence that I've been reading. It can go on for decades. Do we want to be in Afghanistan for decades?

ZAKARIA: A lot of people look at the Russian attack on Georgia and say this is the return of a kind of dark era of geopolitics. How do you view it?

LEE: The country is booming, has got enormous oil wealth. But the underlying problems are enormous. The system is no longer the Soviet system, where you press a button and things move across the country. The corruption will take quite some time to put right -- maybe a very long time. I don't know. The population is not on the increase, in spite of all kinds of incentives. And the incentives will only work in the cities. So, if you look at the long-term trends, it's 140 million Russians, who will go down to 120, 110 in 2050. How do you become a threat with just nuclear weapons?

ZAKARIA: Has America handled this crisis well?

LEE: It shouldn't have led to this crisis. You are dealing with a very adventurous leader in Georgia, and he acted in a very unwise fashion. It was just too silly for words. What was the point? What was he trying to score? And bad intelligence, because good intelligence -- what I read of the intelligence reports -- the Russian troops were there, ready. And if good intelligence, they would know what the reaction would be, and they would have blocked the tunnel, blown up the tunnel, and prevented the tanks from coming in. This is just bungling. And...

ZAKARIA: By Washington also, because we should have managed this better?

LEE: I do not want to guess why the Americans were so keen to bring Georgia into NATO. But at Bucharest, when the NATO meeting was held, Americans should have known that it wasn't warmly received by the people who would be on the front line, if ever there's a conflict. And the Russians know that.

ZAKARIA: And we will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: When the world saw the Beijing Olympics, and they saw the opening ceremonies, they saw a kind of birth of a new great power. How should we think about it? Should we be apprehensive?

LEE: What we saw -- and I was there with a lot of other of the VIPs -- was a reflection of their capabilities, their potential. It's not what they have achieved industrially or technologically. This was a show that they had seven years to prepare for. And they were carefully thoughtful about what they wanted to present to the world. They wanted to remind the world that they are an old civilization, 5,000 years. They discovered gun powder, paper, movable type, printing. They built the Great Wall. That's the kind of capabilities for disciplined effort that built the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and eventually will build them a technological society.

ZAKARIA: So you don't worry about them.

LEE: What do they want? Every year they know they are closing the gap. That gap is a huge one.

ZAKARIA: Technologically between them and the West.

LEE: Technologically and industrially. I mean, what you see along the coastal provinces is just about 20, 30 percent of the population, the advantaged part of China. If you go to the inland parts, you will see a very different China. So they know that to catch up is 30, 40, 50 years. So, let's not quarrel with anybody. That would abort the whole process. Every year they grow stronger economically, industrially, catching up technologically. Any external problems will diminish their growth.
What do they have to worry about? Internal problems, social unrest, disparity in development, wages, farmers against the city dwellers, and so on. The danger comes when you have, say, in 20 years a new generation that didn't go through the Cultural Revolution, never went to the Long March, and who believe that China has arrived. So, this is a new phase they are moving into. And worldwide problems -- the biggest problem of all is climate change, energy.

ZAKARIA: Do you think the Chinese will be willing to reduce their own CO2 emissions, which would involve in some way placing limits on their growth? It doesn't seem that they are willing to do it.

LEE: For the time being, I think they are hoping it's not so bad. Per capita, their consumption is so low compared to the Americans. But when the glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau, in the Himalayas melt away, and they are doing it at about four meters per year, and the big rivers that feed off these glaciers become seasonal only with rain, and that affects their crops and their farmers along the river basin, I think they'll have to sit back and ask themselves, do you want this huge upset in your demography? Do you want Shanghai and their coastal cities to be inundated? So, I hope the message – the penny will drop within five to 10 years.
You look at the way the Chinese are spread across the world -- not just in Asia, you know, all over, Arabia -- all Chinese workers construct. What is it you want? New palace? New conference hall? New airport? They've got 1,300 million people. You've only got 300 million. So, they've got four times your number. So, and they are using those numbers. Every mission they have in Southeast Asia, their diplomats speak the language of the country. And in the Gulf, when I went there, I found that every mission, the Chinese mission speaks perfect Arabic.
And I'm sure they do the same in Latin America and in Africa.

ZAKARIA: This is sounding like a power to be feared.

LEE: No, no. This is an ancient power that kept its language skills. This is not a new power. This is an old power revived. That was the lesson I took from the opening of the Olympics.

ZAKARIA: You turn 85 tomorrow. Is there a lesson? What are the secrets to longevity and success?

LEE: Your life span depends on what you've inherited from the two helixes you got from your mother and father. My father lived to 94. My mother died at 74 with some heart problems. I had my first heart problem when I was 74 in 1996. Fortunately, unlike her time, they could do an angioplasty and a stent. So that solved it. The day before yesterday I had atrial flutter, so I don't think I'll reach my father's 94.

ZAKARIA: But you're going strong. I mean, you could...

LEE: But day after tomorrow, something could go wrong with the ticker, and then, that's that.

ZAKARIA: Do you have any regrets?

LEE: No. I've discharged what I had to do. As long as – every day is a bonus. I take every day as it comes. I see the sun rise, I see the sun set. I eat less than I want to. I swim and I cycle. I sleep well of nights, and I enjoy my work. But 70 to 80 percent is what I inherited from my parents.

ZAKARIA: Lee Kuan Yew, a great pleasure to see you.

LEE: Thank you.