Lee Kuan Yew's advice on aging

Last week Kim's mother, already 86, was admitted to hosipital because she suddenly could not sit up due to sever pain whenever she moved any part of her body. Four years ago my mum fell and broke her pelvis and since then become bed riden until she ended her journey and mission in this world two years ago at the age of 83.It was really quite a task to take of care of old folks, especially when they fell ill. I wanted to share our experience in taking care of old people. Coincidentally a few days back Dr Salmah forward to me an article titled " Lee Kuan Yew's advice on aging" which both Salmah and me felt that we can benefit form this article. I thought may be it is a good idea that I post it here to share. It is a four pages article, be patient to read it through. Below is the reproduction of the article, I hope I would not be sued by Mr Lee for doing this.
"Lee Kuan Yew On Ageing :

MY CONCERN today is, what is it I can tell you which can add to your knowledge about ageing and what ageing societies can do. You know more about this subject than I do. A lot of it is out in the media, Internet and books.So I thought the best way would be to take a personal standpoint and tell you how I approach this question of ageing.

If I cast my mind back, I can see turning points in my physical and mental health. You know, when you're young, I didn't bother, assumed good health was God-given and would always be there. When I was about -'57 that was - I wasabout 34, we were competing in elections, and I was really fond of drinking beer and smoking. And after the election campaign, in Victoria Memorial Hall - we had won the election, the City Council election - I couldn't thank the voters because I had lost my voice. I'd been smoking furiously. I'd take a packet! of 10to deceive myself, but I'd run through the packet just sitting on the stage, watching the crowd, getting the feeling, the mood before I speak. In other words, there were three speeches a night. Three speeches a night, 30 cigarettes, a lot of beer after that, and the voice was gone.

I remember I had a case in Kuching, Sarawak. So I took the flight and I felt awful. I had to make up my mind whether I was going to be an effective campaigner and a lawyer, in which case I cannot destroy my voice, and I can't go on. So I stopped smoking. It was a tremendous deprivation because I was addicted to it. And I used to wake up dreaming...the nightmare was I resumed smoking.

But I made a choice and said, if I continue this, I will not be able to do my job. I didn't know anything about cancer of the throat or oesophagus or the lungs, etc. But it turned out it had many other deleterious effects.Strangely enough after that, I became very allergic, hyper-allergic to smoking, so much so that I would plead with my Cabinet ministers not to smoke in the Cabinet room. You want to smoke, please go out, because I am allergic.

Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, Mr Rajaratnam, meeting foreign correspondents including some from the London Times and they took a picture of me and I had a big belly like that (puts his hands in front of his belly), a beer belly. I felt no, no, this will not do. So I started playing more golf, hit hundreds of balls on the practice tee. But this didn't go down. There was only one way it could go down: consume less, burn up more.Another turning point came when -this was 1976, after the general election - I was feeling tired. I was breathing deeply at the Istana, on the lawns.. My daughter, who at that time just graduating as a doctor, said: 'What are you trying to do?' I said: 'I feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen.' She said: 'Don't play golf. Run. Aerobics.' So she gave me a book, quite a famous book and, then, very current in America on how you score aerobic points swimming, running, whatever it is, cycling. I looked at it sceptically. I wasn't very keen on running. I was keen on golf. So I said, 'Let's try'. So in-between golf shots while playing on my own, sometimes nine holes at the Istana, I would try and walk fast between shots. Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said: 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15 minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run.'

I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand yourself. And the knowledge now is all there.When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn't there. I had to get the knowledge from friends, from doctors. But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave me was one day, when I said: 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.' So he gave me a medical encyclopaedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it.

As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically. Mentally, you carry on and on and on until I don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons. That's what they tell me.

So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then craft a programme for yourself to maximise what you have. It's just common sense. I never planned to live till 85 or 84.! I just didn't think about it. I said: 'Well, my mother died when she was 74, she had a stroke. My father died when he was 94.'

But I saw him, and he lived a long life, well, maybe it was his DNA. But more than that, he swam every day and he kept himself busy.. He was working for the Shell company. He was in charge, he was a superintendent of an oil depot.When he retired, he started becoming a salesman. So people used to tell me: 'Your father is selling watches at BP de Silva.' My father was then living with me. But it kept him busy. He had that routine: He meets people, he sells watches, he buys and sells all kinds of semi-precious stones, he circulates coins. And he keeps going. But at 87, 88, he fell,! going down the steps from his room to the dining room, broke his arm, three months incapacitated.Thereafter, he couldn't go back to swimming. Then he became wheelchair-bound. Then it became a problem because my house was constructed that way. So my brother - who's a doctor and had a flat (one-level) house - took him in. And he lived on till 94. But towards the end, he had gradual loss of mental powers...." - to be continued in the next post

How could Bank Negara allow this?

On monday morning I accessed my credit card account through internet. I got disturbed when I saw a bill amount of RM 897 charged by one company A in Bangsar and the transaction date was last saturday (30 May 2009). Kim and I never got out of the USJ area the whole of Saturday neither did we do online purchases; how could I incur such expenses. Furthermore the company's name was new to me. I started to get worried and called up the customer service of the credit card company to instruct them to stop payment on that bill and future charges as well as issue me a new card. Just as our conversation was to end, my wife suddenly recalled that we did a purchase on that day in the warehouse sale in USJ area. We checked the bill and the amount was exactly the same as appeared in the credit card account. On further checking, the customer receipt for the credit card payment was made to company B. I called up company B to seek clarification. It was confirmed that company A belongs to company B. Worrying that double charges could occur later, I asked for a black and white to state the fact but in vail. I' m waiting for the manger to give me better assurance when she came back from leave on tuesday.

Mean while I called up credit card company again, this time I was given a more assuring answer. The credit card company confirmed that the receipt was in the name of Company B but payment was to company A and therefore company A appeared in my credit account statement. This is incredible ! How can i be expected to settle the bill with company A when i have no S&P agreement with it. On paper I'll still owe company B after I settled the amount with the credit card company. How could this practice be allowed by Bank Negara ? Shall I bring this to the notice of Bank Negara as I feel that such acoounting practice will open up for abuse and it is not fair to the credit card holder that his right and interest are not considered and protected?

It has to do with the socio-political system and culture

I just read Su's latest post titled "Would they give away their wealth like Tun Sambanthan? "
She wrote :
"One of the first Ministers I had the great privilege of working for, almost 35 years ago, was the late Honourable Tun V.T. Sambanthan (1919-1979), the fifth President of the Malaysian Indian Congress (1955). ....................
............Although Tun V.T. Sambanthan was born into a rich family he spent all his personal wealth on the MIC and the people who approached him for asistance. It is a well known fact that Tun Sambanthan gave up his fortune for his people."

This led me to look at present day's China leaders, Singapore leaders, Ah Bien of Taiwan, the late Mr President Roh of Korea and our country's leaders, American leaders , leaders of the West, the Russian leaders etc.. I could not find a correlation between a clean leader and his family wealth before he becomes a leader. Neither can I find a country totally free from self serving leaders. But do not get me wrong. I am not saying corruption is tolerable . My point is we really need a socio-political system and culture that has the in-built effective check and balance mechnism to minimise s such intolerable practice of the country' leaders and those leaders who manage to escape the scrutiny of this check and balance mechnism will surely could not enjoy freely the wealth they have accumulated.

Keep Status Quo, No Future Is Certain! Go For Change, Better Future Is Possible

"Keep Status Quo, No future Is Certain!
Go For Change, Better Future Is Possible!"

A week before 308(March the eighth of 2008) I sent out sms carrying the above message to many people. My nephew , a young man in MLM business, on receiving my sms was very worried thinking that he had no future in this line of business. In actual fact he was and is doing very well. Another relative was angry with me;we had a dinner with her recently and she obviously had shed a lot of weight and looks nice and fit. But majority of the receivers relate it to 308. A professor in a local university called me excitingly saying it sounded like Obama's. I told her that I just want to contribute in a small way for the well being of my country during my last lap of my existence in this world. My wife was very nervous and worried I could be ended in jail. It is interesting to note that a message not specific will give rise to different response according to the experience, perception and the relationship one has with the sender of the message. If I were to continue to write vote for Party A or Party B, then all the responses would be along the same line.

Frankly I was hesitating to send out this sms and finally after some pondering I decided to make it vague. With this inccident I suddenly realised that all this while I thought and felt that I was living in a democratic and free country but in relaity my wife and I have this deep rooted fear inside us. My goodness I've been "slaved" in certain way for so many years.

Government servant- a mouse deer between two fighting elephants

I really feel sorry for the Perak State Secretary and the State Assembly Secretary. At the moment they are like what the Malay proverb says: when two elephants fights, the mouse deer stands between them will perish.

I recalled my personal experience when I was working in Penang. Around 1989 and early 90s, when Anwar was in BN , he was wrestling with Pak Lah for the control of Penang Umno. Shariff Omar was aligning with Pak Lah and he was the Parliamentry Secretary of the then Ministry of Agriculture where my department was in. During this period when he came back to Penang , through my boss in KL, JPS Penang would take care of him for his official visit to JPS works in Penang. Once we were asked to launch a official opening of a project for him to officiate. Although these were federal functions none of the senior officers in KL appeared in these functions. As he came in as Parliamentary secretary of my ministry and my boss in KL so decided to instruct me to do it, I had no choice but to carry out the order. The political undertone was so obvious that once an EXCO member friendlily told me that I could be an UMNO member already. I had to explain to him my predicament.

When the dust had settled, not long after, I was transfered back to KL with short notice to hold a post less prestigious than State director although i still held the same rank. I had mentioned in my first post , later my boss apologized to me. Until today i was still not sure the exact reason for this transfer.

If we are heading towards a two party system, it looks like there is a need for the heads of Civil Service to take the lead of showing the government servants how to stay neutral or above politics so as not to get perished whenever there is a change of government.

May 13 Inccident

On the night 0f 13 May 2009 when I got into Su's blog then only realized it was May 13. I admired Su's courage to write about her personal recollection of the ugly day of May 13 in 1969 and at end of her post she wrote: The Malays and Chinese could not have suddenly decided to fight. I don't think it was like that. I blame it all on politics and the politicians.

Two days later (15 May 2009) I read P. Gunasegaram's column"COMMENT" in The Star. The title of his comment that day was "Forgetting May 13". He started off by saying " It (May13 incident) rose out of a confluence of unfortunate factors fanned by politicians...." and he went on to say without giving names: " The politics of that era is the realm of his (current PM) predecessor's predecessor, now a ripe 85, who was viewed as a young and upcoming Umno ultra at that time." This is very interesting and amazing. As a young and upcoming young Umno member without holding any major post how he managed to do that. 

The question here is what is the point of getting to the bottom of the truth. As P. Gunaegaram put it, it will be better off forgetting May 13 and cutting it out of our memory but with one caveat , history needs to be retold more accurately.  To me it is important to get the record straight as it is part of the whole check and balance system so that in future the leaders would take decision with utmost care lest his wrong doing will be exposed and recorded in history.

For Malaysia to achieve greatness and oneness, to me one of the prerequisite is its people is courageous, forthright and open-minded in discussing issues freely to get to a solution which is fair and rational. 

It is internet service provider's doing

Since last month very often I could not get connection to internet for my home PC. My wife and I are not IT savy and our children are not with us at the moment, Phei Yuin is working in Penang and Chern Yuik is studying in US . We (my wife and I) felt so helpless. We restarted the router; retarted the computer, unlugged and plugged back all connections including telephone line and even the wall plug. Once I pushed the plug of the router before I switched on the computer, ha I thought I solved the problem because I got the internet connection. I tried the same trick again the next time it did not work. It was so frustrating but at least I knew that my router was alright. We were without internet service for a few days. My wife tried again. This time she pushed the wall socket . She was so happy because she got the internet connection. I doubted this was the solution. True enough, we could not get the connection again the next day. I started to think it all over and suddely realised could it be the Streamyx service provider trying to shed load because of congestion. I suggested to my wife to call up streamyx and we found the root cause of the problem: it is the internet service provider doing. The customer service person tried to explain the problem but we were not interested with their problem . We just want our problem solved. They did something to their server and we got our internet connection back. We were told next time it happens again just call 100 to inform the problem and they will fix it for us. But hello Mr CEO of TM when are you going to give me a permanent solution! Are we going to get our rebate for the days without the internet service !