STRAITS TIMES, 19 Iune 2010.
A love story
Love at first sight is romantic but may not hold a candle to love that lasts a lifetime & is for better or for worse
By Lee Wei Ling
An advertisement for the 'Sassy Miss 2010 Workshop Series' in The Straits Times caught my eye recently. The headline was: 'The Power of First Impressions.'
The text claimed: 'It takes just 30 seconds for your first date or prospective employer to form an everlasting impression of you. So flash your X-factor, from the way you look to the style in which you carry yourself. Come uncover all the trade secrets of image-making at this power workshop!'
I was amused. If I want to make an impression, it would be to show my competence, sincerity, pragmatism and willingness to fight for what is right. My appearance and how I carry myself are highly unlikely to make an impression in a 30-minute encounter, let alone a 30-second 'flash'.
As for assessing someone on the first encounter, it would take me at least five to 10 minutes to appraise a person. I do not base my judgment on whether the person is good-looking or how he carries himself. Instead I would focus on his facial expression and body language.
If these contradict what he says, I would be wary of him. Body language and facial expressions are rarely under voluntary control and hence are better indicators of the true intent of a person than speech.
I am fairly good at sizing up people. There have been quite a few instances when I have accurately assessed someone at the first brief encounter. But even then, I seldom depend solely on first impressions. I will reassess the person on subsequent occasions. Only if I observe certain traits repeatedly would I be confident in my assessment.
Some people do indeed judge others on the basis of first impressions. Their judgment may well be strongly influenced by the person's appearance, how well he carries himself and how eloquently he speaks. I think such people are shallow. In life, we have to interact with people; and the more accurately we judge people, the fewer mistakes we are likely to make about them.
Research on interpersonal relationships between strangers shows that physical appearance does influence first impressions. But this does not explain why people stick together in long-term relationships. Commitment is a key variable in sustaining such relationships.
The one remarkable relationship I have personally observed is the one between my father and mother. Theirs was certainly not love at first sight. Nor were looks the main factor in their mutual attraction. Rather, it was personality and intellectual compatibility.
They are not only lovers, they are also best friends. There has never been any calculation about how much each had invested in the relationship. Theirs is an unconditional love.
Before my mother suffered her first stroke in 2003, she lived her life around my father, taking care of his every need. The stroke and the resultant disability made my mother quite frail.
From that point on, my father lived his life around her. He was still in the Cabinet, first as Senior Minister and then as Minister Mentor, but he tried his best to arrange his working schedule around my mother's needs.
He also took care of her health, strongly urging her to swim daily for exercise, and supervised her complicated regime of medication. He would also measure her blood pressure several times a day, till I got in touch with Dr Ting Choon Ming who had invented a blood pressure measuring equipment that is worn like a watch. Next day, when Dr Ting came to take the watch back to analyse the recorded blood pressure, my mother said to him: 'I prefer to have my husband measure my blood pressure.'
After my mother's second stroke in 2008, she became bed-bound and could no longer accompany my father on his travels overseas or to social functions here. Every night after returning home from work, my father now spends about two hours telling my mother about his day and reading aloud her favourite poems to her.
The poetry books are rather thick and heavy, so he uses a heavy-duty music stand to place the books. One night, he was so sleepy, he fell asleep while reading to my mother, slumped forward and hit his face against the music stand. Since the music stand was made of metal, he suffered abrasions on his face. He cursed himself for his carelessness but still carries on reading aloud to my mother every night.
I have always known my father was fearless, willing to fight to the bitter end for Singapore. When Vietnam fell in 1975, it looked for a while as though the domino hypothesis - which held that other South-east Asian states would also fall to the communists like dominoes - might turn out to be true. My father knew how ruthless the communists were, but he was determined to stay on in Singapore, and my mother was just as determined to stay on by his side.
I began this article because I was reading an article in a psychological journal on 'love at first sight versus love for a lifetime, for better or for worse'.
Love at first sight is rare and often does not endure. The affection my parents have for each other is also rare. They are each other's soul mates; their happy marriage has lasted beyond their diamond anniversary.
But they have never made a show of being a loving couple in public. Even in private, they have rarely demonstrated their love for each other with hugs or kisses. It was only after my mother's second stroke that I saw my father kiss my mother on her forehead to comfort her. They don't seem to feel the need for a dramatic physical show of love.
I have great admiration for what my father has done for Singapore - and at age 87, he is still promoting Singapore's interests. But he being the first-born son in a Peranakan family, I would not have suspected him to have been capable of such devotion as he has shown for my mother, taking care of her so painstakingly. My admiration for him has increased manifold because I have watched him look after my mother so devotedly over the last two painful years.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute
Sunday, October 3, 2010
CONFIDANTE, COUNSEL AND COMPANION OF 63 YEARS
Oct 3, 2010
Confidante, counsel and companion of 63 years
Brilliant and intensely private, the late Madam Kwa Geok Choo is best remembered as Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's loyal partner, whose strength of character supported him as he built a new nation
By Lee Siew Hua, Senior Writer
She was the supremely capable wife who signed the cheques and kept the family strong, prompting her husband, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, to suggest, only half in jest, that he was a 'kept man'.
Many men will cringe at that status, believing that being kept is a contemptible station in life. Not so Mr Lee, who sometimes made counter-intuitive remarks about his wife that hinted at how equal their marriage was.
Married in 1947, their union spanned the decades from Singapore's vulnerable infancy to its arrival as a First World country. Telling the nation that he was a kept man was Mr Lee's way of acknowledging how central his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo, a brilliant cheongsam-clad lawyer, was in his career.
Because he had a resolute, able and successful wife at his side during the riotous 1950s, he had the freedom of mind to take arms against colonialism and communism, without worrying that their three young children might suffer if anything were to happen to him.
It was years later, in 1985, that he would say in Parliament: 'Over the years I've been a kept man. My wife keeps the family.'
That was a rare moment when the role in his life played by his intensely shy and private spouse surfaced.
For she had chosen all her life to support him from behind the front line. It was not her place to offer political advice, both appeared to agree, or advance her own agenda or take a direct part in politics.
When senior Straits Times journalists, interviewing him in the late 1990s for their book Lee Kuan Yew: The Man And His Ideas, wanted to know what 'influence' Mrs Lee had on him, he responded:
'Not in political matters. In political matters, she would not know enough to tell me whether this is right or wrong.'
Tellingly, though, he indicated that she was a discerning judge of character.
Other times, he valued her frugality and staid quality. 'She's a very caring person, very staid, very caring; she's not frivolous and does not like to socialise, which saves a lot of time,' he said.
Trusted intermediary
Mr and Mrs Lee, together with Mr Lee's brother Kim Yew, set up the Lee & Lee law firm in a shabby Malacca Street shophouse in 1955.
It was there that Mrs Lee, or Choo as her husband called her, 'first personified the whole hazardous balancing act that was to decide the fate of Singapore', according to the late British journalist Dennis Bloodworth, who authored The Tiger And The Trojan Horse.
There, under the radar, she played the unlikely role of 'cut-out' or trusted intermediary between Mr Lee and two irreconcilable enemies - the British Governor and the 'Plenipotentiary' of the Malayan Communist Party.
Governor William Goode would make contact with Mr Lee, leader of the radical People's Action Party (PAP), through his confidential secretary Pamela Hickley, who would phone Mrs Lee and communicate in hushed tones.
As for 'The Plen', Mr Fang Chuang Pi, he did not trust telephones. But Lee & Lee's clients then included petty gangsters, unlicensed hawkers and a whole host of other humble people, so it was easy for The Plen's courier to slip upstairs to her office.
As Mrs Lee drily pointed out to Mr Bloodworth: 'A four-digit lottery runner would look much the same as a communist agent.'
Mr Bloodworth was able to consult her in the early 1980s for his rich account of the duel between the non-communist PAP and communists. Her voice as it emerged in brief quotes in the book sounded coolly cogent and eloquent, hinting at a precise, lawyerly wit.
The same voice was also evident in the odd e-mail interviews she gave the media in her later years.
For example, when asked if she and Mr Lee had disagreements, she responded: 'Would you believe me if I say we never disagree or quarrel?
'Fortunately, these are over little matters. Kuan Yew leaves household decisions to me. Family matters have not been a problem.'
Another time, in a light-hearted sequence when Radio Television Hong Kong quizzed the couple in 2002, she teased Mr Lee. The interviewer, who started by asking them if they held hands, wondered about changes since their romantic Cambridge years.
Mrs Lee gave a deliberately plain reply: 'The only change is that we've grown older.'
Cheekily, the interviewer said: 'Black hair to white hair.'
Mrs Lee, who often banters with her husband, looked at him and quipped: 'Black hair to no hair.'
Nixon's compliment
In 1973, then United States President Richard Nixon paid artful homage to her at the White House:
'Tonight, when you saw me turning to Mrs Lee, I said, 'Mrs Lee, tell me, is it true that you were No. 1 in the class at Cambridge Law School and your husband was No. 2?' And she said, 'Mr President, do you think he would have married me if that were the case?'
'But I probed further, and I found that, as a matter of fact, Mrs Lee... did receive a first at Cambridge Law School.
'Her husband did also, but like a very loyal wife, she said, 'He had a first with a star after his name, and that is something very special'.'
Mrs Lee was being modest, for she had outshone her husband academically - not at Cambridge but earlier, at Raffles College.
As Mr Lee related in his memoirs, The Singapore Story, he was the best student in mathematics, scoring over 90 marks.
'But to my horror, I discovered I was not the best in either English or economics. I was in second place, way behind a certain Miss Kwa Geok Choo.'
He sat up. 'I knew I would face stiff competition for the Queen's Scholarship,' he wrote.
They had first met at Raffles Institution. As the only girl in a boys' school, the principal had asked her to present the prizes in 1939, and he collected three books from her.
Their intellectual rivalry turned into friendship - and then love.
Her Prince Charming
The war from 1943 to 1946 disrupted their education. Together with Mr Yong Nyuk Lin, later a minister, whose wife was Miss Kwa's sister, Mr Lee started a small business making gum, which was then in short supply. The young Kuan Yew reconnected with Geok Choo in that context.
Later, he recalled: 'She told me... she was looking for her Prince Charming. I turned up, not on a white horse but a bicycle with solid tyres!'
It was often in his happy recollection of their love story - from his moonlight proposal to their secret wedding in 1947 while they were law students in Cambridge - that Mr Lee's forceful personality seemed to soften, even sparkle, most.
But then Mrs Lee regularly revealed a different side of the leader simply by her presence, or her well-timed words in a light British accent.
One day, for a Straits Times report to highlight healthy living, he hopped onto a bicycle on the Istana grounds.
The photographer and journalist found it awkward to instruct the leader of the land to keep cycling. Mrs Lee stepped to the fore, urging her husband to continue riding in circles until the photo shoot was complete.
In the public mind, however, she was very much the silent partner. 'I walk two steps behind my husband like a good Asian wife,' she said in 1976 on a visit to Kuala Lumpur. 'I am not used to interviews. I suppose I am interview-shy.'
In 1971, the Manila Times marvelled at the way the Lees kept out of the public eye. Mr Lee made sure there was 'no Lee Kuan Yew family with a capital F' and 'no Lee Kuan Yew cult', the paper said in a front-page story. And Mrs Lee was 'almost an invisible entity', the paper observed - in marked contrast to some first ladies elsewhere, including in the Philippines itself.
In this respect, she personified - and in many ways, set the model for - the Singapore-style political spouse: in the background, not a newsmaker, not flashy. She was always very quiet by Mr Lee's side in public. And by her manner and deportment, she set the moral tone for all the other political wives. Which was not to say she wasn't always observant - of situations as well as of people.
Mr Lee paid a glowing tribute to his wife in the preface to the first volume of his memoirs, The Singapore Story, which was dedicated to 'Choo':
'Choo was a tower of strength, giving me constant emotional and intellectual support,' he wrote. She would stay up with him till 4am while he laboured over his tome. 'A powerful critic and helper', she went over every word. 'We had endless arguments,' he wrote.
This was an echo of his early political life, when she used to polish his speeches because he had no time.
More significantly, she also had a hand in the 1965 Separation Agreement with Malaysia drafted by then Law Minister Eddie Barker.
Mr Lee had wanted the critical water agreements with Johor to be included in the Separation Agreement. He recounted in his memoirs: 'I was too hard-pressed, and told Choo, who was a good conveyancing lawyer, to find a neat way to achieve this.'
The paragraphs she drafted later became part of the Malaysian Constitution, guaranteeing Singapore's water supply from Johor.
The couple were inseparable. One evocative photograph that has appeared in this paper shows Mrs Lee watching and listening to her husband from a private coign on a rooftop, as he spoke at Fullerton Square rally during the 1984 General Election.
Even after her first stroke in 2003, which occurred while she and her husband were in London, she would still accompany him on trips - whether it was to Chinese New Year dinners in his Tanjong Pagar constituency or on long visits to the Middle East.
At every turn of their marriage of 63 years and in the nation's life of over 45 years, Mrs Lee's love for the father of modern Singapore ran like a leitmotif in his and the nation's life.
In the end, her life, so quiet and yet so entwined with his, made her a vital partner in the Singapore story.
siewhua@sph.com.sg
________________________________________
ABOUT MRS LEE
Madam Kwa Geok Choo was born in Singapore on Dec 21, 1920. Her parents were Mr and Mrs Kwa Siew Tee. Her father was the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation's (OCBC Bank) general manager from 1935 to 1945.
1936: Completes secondary education at Methodist Girls' School. First in the Senior Cambridge Examination for the whole of Malaya.
1937-39: Joins Raffles Institution Special Class, where she meets Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
1940-46: Enrols in Raffles College in 1940 and returns in 1946 after end of World War II.
1947: Graduates from Raffles College with First Class Diploma in Arts, winning the Queen's Scholarship.
1947-49: Reads law as a second-year student in Girton College, Cambridge University.
Places first in Part II of the Law Tripos - the first woman in Malaya to win this distinction.
1947: Secretly marries Mr Lee in December.
1950: Passes Bar final in May. Both she and Mr Lee are called to the Bar at the Middle Temple on June 21. Returns to Singapore. Marries Mr Lee again on Sept 30.
1951: Is admitted to the Bar in Singapore on Aug 7. Joins and becomes senior partner of a local law firm.
1952: Gives birth to son Lee Hsien Loong.
1955: The Lee & Lee law firm is established by Mr Lee, his brother Kim Yew and Madam Kwa.
1955: Gives birth to daughter Lee Wei Ling.
1957: Gives birth to second son Lee Hsien Yang.
1959: Mr Lee Kuan Yew is elected Prime Minister of Singapore. His brother and Madam Kwa take over the reins of Lee & Lee. They remain as consultants even after retirement from active practice.
1965: Helps in drafting parts of the Separation Agreement when Singapore leaves Malaysia.
2003: Suffers a stroke in October while on a visit to London. Recovers soon after and continues to accompany her husband on official trips.
2008: Suffers two strokes in May and in June, which leave her unable to get out of bed, move or speak.
2010: Dies at age 89, 11 weeks before her 90th birthday.
Confidante, counsel and companion of 63 years
Brilliant and intensely private, the late Madam Kwa Geok Choo is best remembered as Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's loyal partner, whose strength of character supported him as he built a new nation
By Lee Siew Hua, Senior Writer
She was the supremely capable wife who signed the cheques and kept the family strong, prompting her husband, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, to suggest, only half in jest, that he was a 'kept man'.
Many men will cringe at that status, believing that being kept is a contemptible station in life. Not so Mr Lee, who sometimes made counter-intuitive remarks about his wife that hinted at how equal their marriage was.
Married in 1947, their union spanned the decades from Singapore's vulnerable infancy to its arrival as a First World country. Telling the nation that he was a kept man was Mr Lee's way of acknowledging how central his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo, a brilliant cheongsam-clad lawyer, was in his career.
Because he had a resolute, able and successful wife at his side during the riotous 1950s, he had the freedom of mind to take arms against colonialism and communism, without worrying that their three young children might suffer if anything were to happen to him.
It was years later, in 1985, that he would say in Parliament: 'Over the years I've been a kept man. My wife keeps the family.'
That was a rare moment when the role in his life played by his intensely shy and private spouse surfaced.
For she had chosen all her life to support him from behind the front line. It was not her place to offer political advice, both appeared to agree, or advance her own agenda or take a direct part in politics.
When senior Straits Times journalists, interviewing him in the late 1990s for their book Lee Kuan Yew: The Man And His Ideas, wanted to know what 'influence' Mrs Lee had on him, he responded:
'Not in political matters. In political matters, she would not know enough to tell me whether this is right or wrong.'
Tellingly, though, he indicated that she was a discerning judge of character.
Other times, he valued her frugality and staid quality. 'She's a very caring person, very staid, very caring; she's not frivolous and does not like to socialise, which saves a lot of time,' he said.
Trusted intermediary
Mr and Mrs Lee, together with Mr Lee's brother Kim Yew, set up the Lee & Lee law firm in a shabby Malacca Street shophouse in 1955.
It was there that Mrs Lee, or Choo as her husband called her, 'first personified the whole hazardous balancing act that was to decide the fate of Singapore', according to the late British journalist Dennis Bloodworth, who authored The Tiger And The Trojan Horse.
There, under the radar, she played the unlikely role of 'cut-out' or trusted intermediary between Mr Lee and two irreconcilable enemies - the British Governor and the 'Plenipotentiary' of the Malayan Communist Party.
Governor William Goode would make contact with Mr Lee, leader of the radical People's Action Party (PAP), through his confidential secretary Pamela Hickley, who would phone Mrs Lee and communicate in hushed tones.
As for 'The Plen', Mr Fang Chuang Pi, he did not trust telephones. But Lee & Lee's clients then included petty gangsters, unlicensed hawkers and a whole host of other humble people, so it was easy for The Plen's courier to slip upstairs to her office.
As Mrs Lee drily pointed out to Mr Bloodworth: 'A four-digit lottery runner would look much the same as a communist agent.'
Mr Bloodworth was able to consult her in the early 1980s for his rich account of the duel between the non-communist PAP and communists. Her voice as it emerged in brief quotes in the book sounded coolly cogent and eloquent, hinting at a precise, lawyerly wit.
The same voice was also evident in the odd e-mail interviews she gave the media in her later years.
For example, when asked if she and Mr Lee had disagreements, she responded: 'Would you believe me if I say we never disagree or quarrel?
'Fortunately, these are over little matters. Kuan Yew leaves household decisions to me. Family matters have not been a problem.'
Another time, in a light-hearted sequence when Radio Television Hong Kong quizzed the couple in 2002, she teased Mr Lee. The interviewer, who started by asking them if they held hands, wondered about changes since their romantic Cambridge years.
Mrs Lee gave a deliberately plain reply: 'The only change is that we've grown older.'
Cheekily, the interviewer said: 'Black hair to white hair.'
Mrs Lee, who often banters with her husband, looked at him and quipped: 'Black hair to no hair.'
Nixon's compliment
In 1973, then United States President Richard Nixon paid artful homage to her at the White House:
'Tonight, when you saw me turning to Mrs Lee, I said, 'Mrs Lee, tell me, is it true that you were No. 1 in the class at Cambridge Law School and your husband was No. 2?' And she said, 'Mr President, do you think he would have married me if that were the case?'
'But I probed further, and I found that, as a matter of fact, Mrs Lee... did receive a first at Cambridge Law School.
'Her husband did also, but like a very loyal wife, she said, 'He had a first with a star after his name, and that is something very special'.'
Mrs Lee was being modest, for she had outshone her husband academically - not at Cambridge but earlier, at Raffles College.
As Mr Lee related in his memoirs, The Singapore Story, he was the best student in mathematics, scoring over 90 marks.
'But to my horror, I discovered I was not the best in either English or economics. I was in second place, way behind a certain Miss Kwa Geok Choo.'
He sat up. 'I knew I would face stiff competition for the Queen's Scholarship,' he wrote.
They had first met at Raffles Institution. As the only girl in a boys' school, the principal had asked her to present the prizes in 1939, and he collected three books from her.
Their intellectual rivalry turned into friendship - and then love.
Her Prince Charming
The war from 1943 to 1946 disrupted their education. Together with Mr Yong Nyuk Lin, later a minister, whose wife was Miss Kwa's sister, Mr Lee started a small business making gum, which was then in short supply. The young Kuan Yew reconnected with Geok Choo in that context.
Later, he recalled: 'She told me... she was looking for her Prince Charming. I turned up, not on a white horse but a bicycle with solid tyres!'
It was often in his happy recollection of their love story - from his moonlight proposal to their secret wedding in 1947 while they were law students in Cambridge - that Mr Lee's forceful personality seemed to soften, even sparkle, most.
But then Mrs Lee regularly revealed a different side of the leader simply by her presence, or her well-timed words in a light British accent.
One day, for a Straits Times report to highlight healthy living, he hopped onto a bicycle on the Istana grounds.
The photographer and journalist found it awkward to instruct the leader of the land to keep cycling. Mrs Lee stepped to the fore, urging her husband to continue riding in circles until the photo shoot was complete.
In the public mind, however, she was very much the silent partner. 'I walk two steps behind my husband like a good Asian wife,' she said in 1976 on a visit to Kuala Lumpur. 'I am not used to interviews. I suppose I am interview-shy.'
In 1971, the Manila Times marvelled at the way the Lees kept out of the public eye. Mr Lee made sure there was 'no Lee Kuan Yew family with a capital F' and 'no Lee Kuan Yew cult', the paper said in a front-page story. And Mrs Lee was 'almost an invisible entity', the paper observed - in marked contrast to some first ladies elsewhere, including in the Philippines itself.
In this respect, she personified - and in many ways, set the model for - the Singapore-style political spouse: in the background, not a newsmaker, not flashy. She was always very quiet by Mr Lee's side in public. And by her manner and deportment, she set the moral tone for all the other political wives. Which was not to say she wasn't always observant - of situations as well as of people.
Mr Lee paid a glowing tribute to his wife in the preface to the first volume of his memoirs, The Singapore Story, which was dedicated to 'Choo':
'Choo was a tower of strength, giving me constant emotional and intellectual support,' he wrote. She would stay up with him till 4am while he laboured over his tome. 'A powerful critic and helper', she went over every word. 'We had endless arguments,' he wrote.
This was an echo of his early political life, when she used to polish his speeches because he had no time.
More significantly, she also had a hand in the 1965 Separation Agreement with Malaysia drafted by then Law Minister Eddie Barker.
Mr Lee had wanted the critical water agreements with Johor to be included in the Separation Agreement. He recounted in his memoirs: 'I was too hard-pressed, and told Choo, who was a good conveyancing lawyer, to find a neat way to achieve this.'
The paragraphs she drafted later became part of the Malaysian Constitution, guaranteeing Singapore's water supply from Johor.
The couple were inseparable. One evocative photograph that has appeared in this paper shows Mrs Lee watching and listening to her husband from a private coign on a rooftop, as he spoke at Fullerton Square rally during the 1984 General Election.
Even after her first stroke in 2003, which occurred while she and her husband were in London, she would still accompany him on trips - whether it was to Chinese New Year dinners in his Tanjong Pagar constituency or on long visits to the Middle East.
At every turn of their marriage of 63 years and in the nation's life of over 45 years, Mrs Lee's love for the father of modern Singapore ran like a leitmotif in his and the nation's life.
In the end, her life, so quiet and yet so entwined with his, made her a vital partner in the Singapore story.
siewhua@sph.com.sg
________________________________________
ABOUT MRS LEE
Madam Kwa Geok Choo was born in Singapore on Dec 21, 1920. Her parents were Mr and Mrs Kwa Siew Tee. Her father was the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation's (OCBC Bank) general manager from 1935 to 1945.
1936: Completes secondary education at Methodist Girls' School. First in the Senior Cambridge Examination for the whole of Malaya.
1937-39: Joins Raffles Institution Special Class, where she meets Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
1940-46: Enrols in Raffles College in 1940 and returns in 1946 after end of World War II.
1947: Graduates from Raffles College with First Class Diploma in Arts, winning the Queen's Scholarship.
1947-49: Reads law as a second-year student in Girton College, Cambridge University.
Places first in Part II of the Law Tripos - the first woman in Malaya to win this distinction.
1947: Secretly marries Mr Lee in December.
1950: Passes Bar final in May. Both she and Mr Lee are called to the Bar at the Middle Temple on June 21. Returns to Singapore. Marries Mr Lee again on Sept 30.
1951: Is admitted to the Bar in Singapore on Aug 7. Joins and becomes senior partner of a local law firm.
1952: Gives birth to son Lee Hsien Loong.
1955: The Lee & Lee law firm is established by Mr Lee, his brother Kim Yew and Madam Kwa.
1955: Gives birth to daughter Lee Wei Ling.
1957: Gives birth to second son Lee Hsien Yang.
1959: Mr Lee Kuan Yew is elected Prime Minister of Singapore. His brother and Madam Kwa take over the reins of Lee & Lee. They remain as consultants even after retirement from active practice.
1965: Helps in drafting parts of the Separation Agreement when Singapore leaves Malaysia.
2003: Suffers a stroke in October while on a visit to London. Recovers soon after and continues to accompany her husband on official trips.
2008: Suffers two strokes in May and in June, which leave her unable to get out of bed, move or speak.
2010: Dies at age 89, 11 weeks before her 90th birthday.
DIFFICULT TO ACCEPT A LOVED ONE'S SUFFERING
Aug 29, 2010 , STRAITS TIMES
Difficult to accept a loved one's suffering
Feeling compassion with a detachment is wise, but tough when it comes to Mama
By Lee Wei Ling
The writer, then 19, with her mother and father in Rajasthan, India. Those were happier times before her mother suffered a stroke in May 2008 and became bedbound. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF LEE WEI LING
I awoke with a start, a while ago, from a dream. I looked at my watch. It was 4am.
It was a dream worth remembering, so I decided to write it down immediately. If I had not done so, I would not have been able to remember it later.
In my dream, I seemed to be simultaneously at home and outdoors at some unfamiliar place. Suddenly, a monster appeared and attacked me. I struggled with the monster but it matched me strength for strength. I did not utter a sound, nor was I frightened. Instead, I wrestled silently with it.
Suddenly my mother appeared. She walked towards us, but did not say anything either. Instead, she made a dismissive gesture and the monster turned tail and ran away.
That would be Mama's way of tackling problems, I thought: no need for unnecessary words or actions; just do things quietly and effectively.
At that point, I woke up. I got up from the floor where I was sleeping and went into my mother's room to see how she was doing. She was sleeping peacefully. I am now back in my room recording what I can still remember of my dream - for a 'dream' indeed it was, as it cannot be classified as a nightmare.
For two years and three months already, my mother has been too weak to get out of bed. But in that brief moment in my dream, I saw her again as she had been - physically normal.
I wished I could have dreamt on, and after some time, together with Mama, vanquished the monster in the dream and then walked off together.
In dreams, everything seems possible. That my mother appeared magically in my dream did not surprise me - either while I was dreaming or when I awoke. This is because between Mama and me, there was always some form of telepathy.
Once, when I was staying with my brother Hsien Loong, my toothbrush was worn out and needed to be replaced. I hardly ever shop, so I did what I had always done before: I told Mama I needed a new toothbrush.
Since we were in different houses and I did not want to wake her if she was sleeping by calling her on the telephone, I e-mailed her: 'Ma, I need a toothbrush.'
She e-mailed back: 'I am telepathic. I just got a toothbrush for you. But one day, the commissariat will not be around. If you don't know the word 'commissariat' go look it up in the dictionary.'
She was correct: I did not know what the word meant. And since I did not know where the dictionary was kept in my brother's house, that evening at dinner, I asked him what the word meant.
He knew, of course. 'Commissariat', he explained, is a department in the army charged with providing provisions to soldiers.
Now Mama is no longer in a position to be my commissariat. Worse yet, she is bedbound and no longer able to read - a favourite activity of hers.
Mama had wide interests. She knew things that even many highly educated people would not know or be interested in, as would be obvious if one rummaged through her bookshelves, as I did recently.
There were several books on the flora and fauna of Singapore. There was a hardcover book of children's nursery rhymes, which she had used to read to her grandchildren. Of all her grandchildren, my albino nephew enjoyed reading the nursery rhymes with her the most.
There were several books on Buddhism and Hinduism. There was a King James version of the Bible printed in a large font so that she could read it even without her reading glasses. There were many books on the Indian caste system, and a book describing the ancient city of Harappa in the Indus valley. The city dates back about 4,600 years ago, and was an important trade centre in the ancient world.
Mama was interested in the Silk Route long before it became a fashionable subject of interest. She had a book chronicling the travels of a Victorian lady on the Silk Route.
There were six Malay kamus, or dictionaries. There was a book on Chinese customs and symbols. And of course, there were many books of poetry, including a collection of Rudyard Kipling's poems.
There were also books relating to the early days of Singapore, including The Battle For Merger, a collection of radio talks my father delivered in 1961, detailing the early history of the People's Action Party's struggles with the communists. It is now out of print.
There were many books, too, written by others about my father, including Lee Kuan Yew In His Own Words, excerpts of his speeches from 1959 to 1970, edited by S.J. Rodringuez.
Mama also had the kinds of books one would expect to find on the bookshelves of someone so cultured: among other things, The Tale Of Genji, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum And The Sword, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's The Daughter Of A Samurai, the novels of Jane Austen, and a book I enjoyed tremendously as a child, Anne Of Green Gables.
Mama didn't just collect these books, she read them.
It is now 5.30am. I popped into her room again a while ago and she was still sleeping. I comforted myself that at least when she was sleeping, she was unaware of her unfortunate situation.
Now I am trying to go back to sleep myself, but I cannot do so - not because of the dream but because of Mama's unhappy predicament. It is acutely felt by her three children, my two sisters-in-law, and my cousin Kwa Kim Li, who is my mother's favourite niece. But the one who has been hurting the most, and is yet carrying on stoically, is my father.
It is easy when thinking in the abstract, to conclude that being born, growing old, falling sick and eventually dying is what happens to all of us. I accept these facts with no resentment that life is unkind. I have had more than my fair share of bad luck, but I never resented it, for I think suffering built up my resilience.
But I find it difficult to accept my mother's suffering. The Buddhist principle of feeling compassion but with detachment is wise, but it is not an attitude that I find humanly possible to adopt when it comes to Mama. I cannot see her suffering with detachment.
But there is nothing I can do to get her back to where she was before she suffered a massive stroke on May 12, 2008. She has been suffering since then, and so has my father. But that is life, and we all plod on, fulfilling our duties as best we can. Indeed by focusing my mind on my duties, I manage to temporarily block Mama's suffering from my consciousness.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
Difficult to accept a loved one's suffering
Feeling compassion with a detachment is wise, but tough when it comes to Mama
By Lee Wei Ling
The writer, then 19, with her mother and father in Rajasthan, India. Those were happier times before her mother suffered a stroke in May 2008 and became bedbound. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF LEE WEI LING
I awoke with a start, a while ago, from a dream. I looked at my watch. It was 4am.
It was a dream worth remembering, so I decided to write it down immediately. If I had not done so, I would not have been able to remember it later.
In my dream, I seemed to be simultaneously at home and outdoors at some unfamiliar place. Suddenly, a monster appeared and attacked me. I struggled with the monster but it matched me strength for strength. I did not utter a sound, nor was I frightened. Instead, I wrestled silently with it.
Suddenly my mother appeared. She walked towards us, but did not say anything either. Instead, she made a dismissive gesture and the monster turned tail and ran away.
That would be Mama's way of tackling problems, I thought: no need for unnecessary words or actions; just do things quietly and effectively.
At that point, I woke up. I got up from the floor where I was sleeping and went into my mother's room to see how she was doing. She was sleeping peacefully. I am now back in my room recording what I can still remember of my dream - for a 'dream' indeed it was, as it cannot be classified as a nightmare.
For two years and three months already, my mother has been too weak to get out of bed. But in that brief moment in my dream, I saw her again as she had been - physically normal.
I wished I could have dreamt on, and after some time, together with Mama, vanquished the monster in the dream and then walked off together.
In dreams, everything seems possible. That my mother appeared magically in my dream did not surprise me - either while I was dreaming or when I awoke. This is because between Mama and me, there was always some form of telepathy.
Once, when I was staying with my brother Hsien Loong, my toothbrush was worn out and needed to be replaced. I hardly ever shop, so I did what I had always done before: I told Mama I needed a new toothbrush.
Since we were in different houses and I did not want to wake her if she was sleeping by calling her on the telephone, I e-mailed her: 'Ma, I need a toothbrush.'
She e-mailed back: 'I am telepathic. I just got a toothbrush for you. But one day, the commissariat will not be around. If you don't know the word 'commissariat' go look it up in the dictionary.'
She was correct: I did not know what the word meant. And since I did not know where the dictionary was kept in my brother's house, that evening at dinner, I asked him what the word meant.
He knew, of course. 'Commissariat', he explained, is a department in the army charged with providing provisions to soldiers.
Now Mama is no longer in a position to be my commissariat. Worse yet, she is bedbound and no longer able to read - a favourite activity of hers.
Mama had wide interests. She knew things that even many highly educated people would not know or be interested in, as would be obvious if one rummaged through her bookshelves, as I did recently.
There were several books on the flora and fauna of Singapore. There was a hardcover book of children's nursery rhymes, which she had used to read to her grandchildren. Of all her grandchildren, my albino nephew enjoyed reading the nursery rhymes with her the most.
There were several books on Buddhism and Hinduism. There was a King James version of the Bible printed in a large font so that she could read it even without her reading glasses. There were many books on the Indian caste system, and a book describing the ancient city of Harappa in the Indus valley. The city dates back about 4,600 years ago, and was an important trade centre in the ancient world.
Mama was interested in the Silk Route long before it became a fashionable subject of interest. She had a book chronicling the travels of a Victorian lady on the Silk Route.
There were six Malay kamus, or dictionaries. There was a book on Chinese customs and symbols. And of course, there were many books of poetry, including a collection of Rudyard Kipling's poems.
There were also books relating to the early days of Singapore, including The Battle For Merger, a collection of radio talks my father delivered in 1961, detailing the early history of the People's Action Party's struggles with the communists. It is now out of print.
There were many books, too, written by others about my father, including Lee Kuan Yew In His Own Words, excerpts of his speeches from 1959 to 1970, edited by S.J. Rodringuez.
Mama also had the kinds of books one would expect to find on the bookshelves of someone so cultured: among other things, The Tale Of Genji, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum And The Sword, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's The Daughter Of A Samurai, the novels of Jane Austen, and a book I enjoyed tremendously as a child, Anne Of Green Gables.
Mama didn't just collect these books, she read them.
It is now 5.30am. I popped into her room again a while ago and she was still sleeping. I comforted myself that at least when she was sleeping, she was unaware of her unfortunate situation.
Now I am trying to go back to sleep myself, but I cannot do so - not because of the dream but because of Mama's unhappy predicament. It is acutely felt by her three children, my two sisters-in-law, and my cousin Kwa Kim Li, who is my mother's favourite niece. But the one who has been hurting the most, and is yet carrying on stoically, is my father.
It is easy when thinking in the abstract, to conclude that being born, growing old, falling sick and eventually dying is what happens to all of us. I accept these facts with no resentment that life is unkind. I have had more than my fair share of bad luck, but I never resented it, for I think suffering built up my resilience.
But I find it difficult to accept my mother's suffering. The Buddhist principle of feeling compassion but with detachment is wise, but it is not an attitude that I find humanly possible to adopt when it comes to Mama. I cannot see her suffering with detachment.
But there is nothing I can do to get her back to where she was before she suffered a massive stroke on May 12, 2008. She has been suffering since then, and so has my father. But that is life, and we all plod on, fulfilling our duties as best we can. Indeed by focusing my mind on my duties, I manage to temporarily block Mama's suffering from my consciousness.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
Devoted Mother
Oct 3, 2010
Devoted mother
Mrs Lee raised her children to be well-mannered and disciplined, and took pride in their achievements
To the country, she was Mrs lee. To her husband, she was Choo
To her three children, she was Mama - who corrected their English, took time off from work to lunch with them every day, occasionally wielded a cane, and continued to look out for them when they were adults, down to replacing her daughter's toothbrush when it was worn out.
She took Hsien Yang, now 53 and chairman of Fraser & Neave, out to the beach, watching over him like a hawk as he built sandcastles.
She bought clothes for Wei Ling, now 55 and director of the National Neuroscience Institute, as the latter was a 'reluctant dresser'.
And when her eldest son, Hsien Loong, now 58 and the Prime Minister of Singapore, was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1992, she agonised as only a mother could.
With a mother's telepathy, she knew instinctively when her children were in trouble.
Dr Lee Wei Ling, in a column for The Sunday Times, wrote of how in 1995 she had called home after a brush with death on a hiking holiday in New Zealand, but without intending to tell her parents what had happened.
Her mother nevertheless sensed instinctively that something had happened - 'but I'd rather not know what', she told a relative.
Wrote Dr Lee: 'My mother knew me better than I knew myself.'
By accounts, Mrs Lee practised tough love when the children were growing up, making sure that they never threw their weight around although they were the offspring of the prime minister.
When the need called for it, she did not spare the rod 'when the children were particularly naughty or disobedient', recounted Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in his memoirs.
'She brought them up well-mannered and self-disciplined,' he wrote.
As the family's main breadwinner during the early days of MM Lee's foray into politics, she worked long hours at the law firm she had co-founded with MM Lee and his brother, but would forego business lunches so as to be with the children.
In the evenings, she would take them to 'run around the Istana grounds while Kuan Yew played golf or practised on the practice tee and the putting green', she recalled in an interview with The Straits Times. 'And I remember taking them along to PAP picnics, and to Pulau Ubin to visit the Outward Bound School.'
For holidays, the family would visit the Cameron Highlands or Fraser's Hill in Malaysia at least once or twice a year - up to 1965. After that, they would vacation in Changi.
She took quiet pride in the children's achievements.
For instance, when Dr Lee had essays published in the Chinese newspapers, she would cut them out and paste them neatly in an exercise book.
Educated in Chinese-medium schools, their command of English is her achievement. A voracious reader with a passion for literature, she corrected their grammatical errors.
But the couple left it to the children to decide their careers, although she did dissuade Dr Lee, who was fond of dogs, against a career as a vet.
After the trio grew up, Mrs Lee's role evolved from a disciplinarian to that of confidante and companion.
In cahoots with her daughter, she persuaded Mr Lee on his 75th birthday to donate the proceeds from his book sales to polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education students instead of academically gifted students.
Her advice was often laced with her trademark humour.
Dr Lee recounted how as a by-product of being MM Lee's daughter, various people would ask to meet her though they had nothing specific to say to her.
'My mother used to say wryly of such people: 'If they cannot see the panda, the panda's daughter may be an acceptable substitute.'
She was a brilliant student and a sharp conveyancing lawyer. But it was clear that being a wife and mother were the most important roles to Mrs Lee.
In 2003, when the family auctioned for charity various personal possessions, she kept one thing: a pair of small ivory seals which she and Mr Lee had used to stamp the report cards of their three children. Another of her prized possessions was a gold pendant that Mr Lee had commissioned for her, with the engraved Chinese characters 'xian qi liang mu' (virtuous wife and caring mother) and 'nei xian wai de' (wise in looking after the family, virtuous in behaviour towards the outside world).
Dr Lee has written of how she had once e-mailed her mother when her toothbrush needed replacing. Mrs Lee e-mailed back:
'I am telepathic. I just got a toothbrush for you.
'But one day, the commissariat will not be around.'
Devoted mother
Mrs Lee raised her children to be well-mannered and disciplined, and took pride in their achievements
To the country, she was Mrs lee. To her husband, she was Choo
To her three children, she was Mama - who corrected their English, took time off from work to lunch with them every day, occasionally wielded a cane, and continued to look out for them when they were adults, down to replacing her daughter's toothbrush when it was worn out.
She took Hsien Yang, now 53 and chairman of Fraser & Neave, out to the beach, watching over him like a hawk as he built sandcastles.
She bought clothes for Wei Ling, now 55 and director of the National Neuroscience Institute, as the latter was a 'reluctant dresser'.
And when her eldest son, Hsien Loong, now 58 and the Prime Minister of Singapore, was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1992, she agonised as only a mother could.
With a mother's telepathy, she knew instinctively when her children were in trouble.
Dr Lee Wei Ling, in a column for The Sunday Times, wrote of how in 1995 she had called home after a brush with death on a hiking holiday in New Zealand, but without intending to tell her parents what had happened.
Her mother nevertheless sensed instinctively that something had happened - 'but I'd rather not know what', she told a relative.
Wrote Dr Lee: 'My mother knew me better than I knew myself.'
By accounts, Mrs Lee practised tough love when the children were growing up, making sure that they never threw their weight around although they were the offspring of the prime minister.
When the need called for it, she did not spare the rod 'when the children were particularly naughty or disobedient', recounted Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in his memoirs.
'She brought them up well-mannered and self-disciplined,' he wrote.
As the family's main breadwinner during the early days of MM Lee's foray into politics, she worked long hours at the law firm she had co-founded with MM Lee and his brother, but would forego business lunches so as to be with the children.
In the evenings, she would take them to 'run around the Istana grounds while Kuan Yew played golf or practised on the practice tee and the putting green', she recalled in an interview with The Straits Times. 'And I remember taking them along to PAP picnics, and to Pulau Ubin to visit the Outward Bound School.'
For holidays, the family would visit the Cameron Highlands or Fraser's Hill in Malaysia at least once or twice a year - up to 1965. After that, they would vacation in Changi.
She took quiet pride in the children's achievements.
For instance, when Dr Lee had essays published in the Chinese newspapers, she would cut them out and paste them neatly in an exercise book.
Educated in Chinese-medium schools, their command of English is her achievement. A voracious reader with a passion for literature, she corrected their grammatical errors.
But the couple left it to the children to decide their careers, although she did dissuade Dr Lee, who was fond of dogs, against a career as a vet.
After the trio grew up, Mrs Lee's role evolved from a disciplinarian to that of confidante and companion.
In cahoots with her daughter, she persuaded Mr Lee on his 75th birthday to donate the proceeds from his book sales to polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education students instead of academically gifted students.
Her advice was often laced with her trademark humour.
Dr Lee recounted how as a by-product of being MM Lee's daughter, various people would ask to meet her though they had nothing specific to say to her.
'My mother used to say wryly of such people: 'If they cannot see the panda, the panda's daughter may be an acceptable substitute.'
She was a brilliant student and a sharp conveyancing lawyer. But it was clear that being a wife and mother were the most important roles to Mrs Lee.
In 2003, when the family auctioned for charity various personal possessions, she kept one thing: a pair of small ivory seals which she and Mr Lee had used to stamp the report cards of their three children. Another of her prized possessions was a gold pendant that Mr Lee had commissioned for her, with the engraved Chinese characters 'xian qi liang mu' (virtuous wife and caring mother) and 'nei xian wai de' (wise in looking after the family, virtuous in behaviour towards the outside world).
Dr Lee has written of how she had once e-mailed her mother when her toothbrush needed replacing. Mrs Lee e-mailed back:
'I am telepathic. I just got a toothbrush for you.
'But one day, the commissariat will not be around.'
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Commonwealth Essay Competition: THE DAY I SAW MY PO-PO
Aug 24, 2010 , STRAITS TIMES
THE DAY I SAW MY PO-PO
Singaporean Tee Zhuo, 17, from Hwa Chong Institution, won a Gold Award (Special Award) at the 2010 Commonwealth Essay Competition organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society. The theme was 'Science, technology and society'. He wrote on inter-generational relationships.
GRAMMAR
IT WAS a swelteringly hot Saturday morning. Then again, which day isn't hot in this country? I couldn't help but wish I 1. ________(opt) to stay at home. Mum 2. _________(narrow) her eyes at me and I'd be in for a round of painful nagging later - but anything, anything just to stay at home. Away from this burning heat. Trudge, trudge, trudge. Away from what was sure to be an hour of 3. _______(listen) to dear old Po-po (Grandma) muttering under her breath about her husband. Who wasn't even alive. Trudge, trudge. Away from 4. ________(carry) enough groceries to last her last years. Trudge.
'Choy! Watch your tongue!' I immediately 5. _______(hear) Mum's voice sound inside my head, the forceful reproach followed immediately by the image of her 6. ________(flap) her hands, as though to frantically wave away my inauspicious mental comment. The real woman 7. ______(be) in front of me, handbag hanging from one hand, keys in the other, clacking-clapping against the jade bangle she wore. Po-po couldn't tell the front door from the TV, so Mum had to unlock the door herself.
'Hurry up. You waiting for Chinese New Year?' she 8. ______(snap) impatiently without looking back.
Glaring at her back, I 9. ______(trudge) on, feeling the poorly designed supermarket plastic bags cut into my palms. Up four flights of stairs, because this particular neighbourhood of Housing Board flats 10. _______(be+been+overlook) for refurbishment.
Refurbishment, which might 11. ________(include) a new lift. The old one served only odd-numbered floors and, well, Po-po just 12. _______(be) to live on the fourth floor, didn't she? In any case, the lift was faulty. Not that I 13. ______(will+be+enjoy) travelling in that metal box reeking of aged incontinence.
Finally. Knock, knock. Mum always knocked, even though she knew no one would answer. Then, sighing, she would fit the key into the padlock that sealed shut Po-po's kingdom. And with that horrible squeaking noise, the gate would open, and the door next. Today was the same. Knock, knock. Sigh. Click. Squeeeak.
'Ma, I'm here,' Mum said. As she did, every time. Then, depending on how my mother 14. ______(look) that day, one of the following replies would come from Po-po:
(A) 'Ah-Jing, come here, come here! So long since we've met!'
(B) 'Ah-Xiu, good to see you. 15. ________(be + you+eat) ?'
(C) 'Who are you? What are you doing in my house?'
(D) Bahasa Indonesia words that I can't comprehend. When we brought her along one day, our Indonesian maid giggled and said they meant: 'Stupid people, stop begging for money.'
Ah-Jing was the name Po-po gave my mother. But that wasn't her real name. Ah-Jing was given as a nickname because jing meant 'gold', 'shiny' or 'smart' in Chinese; (B) happened whenever my mother wore too much red and had her sunglasses on. Ah-Xiu was Po-po's favourite cousin. She was incredibly rich, but had died some years ago of pneumonia; (C) could happen any time at all, and happened the most often; (D) was when Mum brought me along. Somehow I reminded Po-po of beggars.
VOCABULARY
Sure enough, the moment we stepped in, an 1. __________ string of Bahasa Indonesia was feebly directed at us from what looked, at first 2. __________, to be an oddly shaped and purple-coloured batik bag on the sofa. Looking closer, you could see stick-thin limbs poking out of the bag, and the likeness of a face somewhere at the top of the bag. Po-po was a pitifully aged and tiny creature, having been 3. _________ ripped from her mother's womb, a story she was fond of 4. __________. A web of mustiness hung over her, an immovable, 5. __________ fortress. Even while standing just a few feet from her, I felt like she was miles away, locked away in some distant 6. ________ perhaps. Much like those cracked pieces of pottery you see at the museum.
The window in the flat was always shut tight, for the simple reason that Po-po would probably shatter in the wind if the window were left open. Therefore the air was still and 7. ________, like it was reluctant to part for anyone. Stepping into it gave no relief at all to the heat outside. It was like stepping into a 8. ________. Even the walls looked liked they were burnt, with black imprints where old bookshelves or a table had been.
My mother repeated: 'Ma, I'm here already. Ma?' As Mum shook her gently, it seemed as if Po-po was roused from some pleasant dream, her glazed-over eyes immediately 9. _______ back to the dark, angry black of reality.
'Ah-Xiu?' she croaked, a slight smile 10. _______ up her face.
'No, Ma, I'm Ah-Jing', said my mother resignedly. 'Zhuo, take the groceries to the kitchen and then come back and sit with Po-po.'
All hope was lost. Faintly, I heard the promise of a beautiful and relaxing Saturday float away like the dust in this flat. Half-formed ideas of swimming and ice cream 11. ________away.
Sigh. 'Po-po,' I mouthed almost noiselessly, hoping that she wouldn't catch it.
For someone so old, her hearing was 12. _________ keen. Beckoning to me, she patted the 13. _______ moth-eaten sofa beside her. Glancing at my watch, I made a mental note to time how long she would take today to tell the same old story.
'Good, Zhuo, be a filial grandson and keep her company,' my mother smiled encouragingly from behind the mountain of groceries.
I rolled my eyes at her, and then 14. _______ myself, as a soldier readies himself against the onslaught of the inevitable.
'When I was just a young girl in Jakarta...' That was odd. Po-po had never related the story of her 15. __________ in Indonesia. It was either 'My husband, that accursed mongrel, that infidel, that...' or just Bahasa Indonesia stream-of-consciousness complaints about everything in Singapore, from the heat to the food. It was with interest that I continued listening to this old woman in a purple batik dress that hung off her like an elephant's skin.
A small, pretty girl, probably not older than seven, stood in the middle of an equally beautiful garden. Orchids, ixora and spider lilies dotted the cool green grass of the garden like brilliant splashes of paint on an emerald canvas. The evening sunlight softly beamed on the little blur of purple, as the girl twirled around the garden.
'Pulang (come back), Wan Li. Dinner's almost ready,' called a voice from within the grand manor that towered behind the garden.
Happily, the little girl skipped back to the house, sure that her favourite beef rendang was waiting for her. And she wasn't disappointed. The smell reached her quite before the sight, the rich aroma of spices and coconut milk leading her towards the large rosewood table, where among a dozen other mouth-watering dishes stood a pot of piping hot rendang.
As though already predicting what would happen, her mother called out from within the kitchen: 'Don't touch the rendang, Wan Li.'
'Yes, Ibu (Mother)', but in the next second, she immediately scooped up a spoonful of the stew. Ah... Heavenly. The tender meat melted in her mouth, followed by the heart-warming sensation that comes only from homemade food.
After dinner, the little girl played Bengawan Solo on her grand piano, her small hands dancing carefully over the keys. She looked around, and saw her mother smiling indulgently while singing softly and clapping to the beat. Then, a long bath, a cup of hot wedang serbat (spiced drink), and the little girl was tucked into bed by her parents, sleeping with a smile on her face, knowing tomorrow would be yet another happy day, without worries - wonderful, perfect.
'Selamat tidur, sayang (good night, dear),' they would say.
'Selamat tidur, ibu. Selamat tidur, pak,' she would reply.
* * *
I HAD never seen Zhuo so attentive before. I unpacked the groceries, went to see if the laundry was done, swept the kitchen floor and came back. He was still sitting there.
No drooping head, or mechanical nodding. Unable to help myself, I smiled. Every day, I nagged at him: 'Can you be more caring towards Po-po? Talk more to Po-po! Go sit beside Po-po.' I knew he thought it was pointless to talk to an old woman, stricken with dementia, barely knowing to whom she was talking. How do you pull your child away from his teenage paradise of Wii, PS3 and iWhatever?
When Pa was still alive, he and Ma would take Zhuo to the kindergarten. They were so happy then, Pa driving the old Suzuki lorry and Ma beside him balancing Zhuo on her lap, laughing all the way to school. All differences between the two set aside, just for their grandson. But that was before Pa passed away. Then Ma grieved for so long, I was worried every day. She wouldn't eat. She grew depressed, angry at the world, angry at everything. Angry that she had come to Singapore. Angry with Pa, whom she cursed for tricking her. Tricking her into leaving family and home in Jakarta, only to come to this stifling 'neraka' (hell), as she called it. Her mind broke. I have never seen her smile since.
And yet today, she is smiling. Zhuo is smiling. My son is not looking at his watch impatiently, he is not sighing or making faces. Today, I see what my heart has wished for so long.
* * *
LAST week, I would have sat up, stretched, given a great sigh of relief and then bid farewell cheerfully. Today, however, I saw Po-po in a different light. I saw past the sagging skin, the old, mouldy dress. I saw deep into the eyes, found in them a little girl in a purple dress smiling back at me, and I felt an unfamiliar feeling. I think it was guilt. I had been so convinced that my ideal world was all just about me, and nobody else. Now, I could feel, almost see, the boundaries of that world stretching, making space for Po-po and Mum.
'Po-po, I didn't know you had such a happy childhood.' Po-po's laugh carried into the kitchen. My mother poked her surprised face out, and laughed too.
AT THE unfamiliar sound of the family laughing, the little girl in the purple dress nudges Po-po through that web of musty memories, and for the first time, Po-po turns her back on her to embrace Zhuo and his mother.
ANSWERS
Grammar 1. had opted 2. would have narrowed 3. listening 4. carrying
5. heard 6. flapping 7. was 8. snapped 9.trudged 10. had been overlooked
11. have included 12. had 13. would have enjoyed 14. looked 15. have you eaten
Vocabulary 1. unintelligible 2. sight 3. prematurely 4. recounting
5. impenetrable 6. memory 7. dead 8. furnance 9. snapping 10. lighting
11. melted 12. remarkably 13. mouldy 14. readied 15. childhood
THE DAY I SAW MY PO-PO
Singaporean Tee Zhuo, 17, from Hwa Chong Institution, won a Gold Award (Special Award) at the 2010 Commonwealth Essay Competition organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society. The theme was 'Science, technology and society'. He wrote on inter-generational relationships.
GRAMMAR
IT WAS a swelteringly hot Saturday morning. Then again, which day isn't hot in this country? I couldn't help but wish I 1. ________(opt) to stay at home. Mum 2. _________(narrow) her eyes at me and I'd be in for a round of painful nagging later - but anything, anything just to stay at home. Away from this burning heat. Trudge, trudge, trudge. Away from what was sure to be an hour of 3. _______(listen) to dear old Po-po (Grandma) muttering under her breath about her husband. Who wasn't even alive. Trudge, trudge. Away from 4. ________(carry) enough groceries to last her last years. Trudge.
'Choy! Watch your tongue!' I immediately 5. _______(hear) Mum's voice sound inside my head, the forceful reproach followed immediately by the image of her 6. ________(flap) her hands, as though to frantically wave away my inauspicious mental comment. The real woman 7. ______(be) in front of me, handbag hanging from one hand, keys in the other, clacking-clapping against the jade bangle she wore. Po-po couldn't tell the front door from the TV, so Mum had to unlock the door herself.
'Hurry up. You waiting for Chinese New Year?' she 8. ______(snap) impatiently without looking back.
Glaring at her back, I 9. ______(trudge) on, feeling the poorly designed supermarket plastic bags cut into my palms. Up four flights of stairs, because this particular neighbourhood of Housing Board flats 10. _______(be+been+overlook) for refurbishment.
Refurbishment, which might 11. ________(include) a new lift. The old one served only odd-numbered floors and, well, Po-po just 12. _______(be) to live on the fourth floor, didn't she? In any case, the lift was faulty. Not that I 13. ______(will+be+enjoy) travelling in that metal box reeking of aged incontinence.
Finally. Knock, knock. Mum always knocked, even though she knew no one would answer. Then, sighing, she would fit the key into the padlock that sealed shut Po-po's kingdom. And with that horrible squeaking noise, the gate would open, and the door next. Today was the same. Knock, knock. Sigh. Click. Squeeeak.
'Ma, I'm here,' Mum said. As she did, every time. Then, depending on how my mother 14. ______(look) that day, one of the following replies would come from Po-po:
(A) 'Ah-Jing, come here, come here! So long since we've met!'
(B) 'Ah-Xiu, good to see you. 15. ________(be + you+eat) ?'
(C) 'Who are you? What are you doing in my house?'
(D) Bahasa Indonesia words that I can't comprehend. When we brought her along one day, our Indonesian maid giggled and said they meant: 'Stupid people, stop begging for money.'
Ah-Jing was the name Po-po gave my mother. But that wasn't her real name. Ah-Jing was given as a nickname because jing meant 'gold', 'shiny' or 'smart' in Chinese; (B) happened whenever my mother wore too much red and had her sunglasses on. Ah-Xiu was Po-po's favourite cousin. She was incredibly rich, but had died some years ago of pneumonia; (C) could happen any time at all, and happened the most often; (D) was when Mum brought me along. Somehow I reminded Po-po of beggars.
VOCABULARY
Sure enough, the moment we stepped in, an 1. __________ string of Bahasa Indonesia was feebly directed at us from what looked, at first 2. __________, to be an oddly shaped and purple-coloured batik bag on the sofa. Looking closer, you could see stick-thin limbs poking out of the bag, and the likeness of a face somewhere at the top of the bag. Po-po was a pitifully aged and tiny creature, having been 3. _________ ripped from her mother's womb, a story she was fond of 4. __________. A web of mustiness hung over her, an immovable, 5. __________ fortress. Even while standing just a few feet from her, I felt like she was miles away, locked away in some distant 6. ________ perhaps. Much like those cracked pieces of pottery you see at the museum.
The window in the flat was always shut tight, for the simple reason that Po-po would probably shatter in the wind if the window were left open. Therefore the air was still and 7. ________, like it was reluctant to part for anyone. Stepping into it gave no relief at all to the heat outside. It was like stepping into a 8. ________. Even the walls looked liked they were burnt, with black imprints where old bookshelves or a table had been.
My mother repeated: 'Ma, I'm here already. Ma?' As Mum shook her gently, it seemed as if Po-po was roused from some pleasant dream, her glazed-over eyes immediately 9. _______ back to the dark, angry black of reality.
'Ah-Xiu?' she croaked, a slight smile 10. _______ up her face.
'No, Ma, I'm Ah-Jing', said my mother resignedly. 'Zhuo, take the groceries to the kitchen and then come back and sit with Po-po.'
All hope was lost. Faintly, I heard the promise of a beautiful and relaxing Saturday float away like the dust in this flat. Half-formed ideas of swimming and ice cream 11. ________away.
Sigh. 'Po-po,' I mouthed almost noiselessly, hoping that she wouldn't catch it.
For someone so old, her hearing was 12. _________ keen. Beckoning to me, she patted the 13. _______ moth-eaten sofa beside her. Glancing at my watch, I made a mental note to time how long she would take today to tell the same old story.
'Good, Zhuo, be a filial grandson and keep her company,' my mother smiled encouragingly from behind the mountain of groceries.
I rolled my eyes at her, and then 14. _______ myself, as a soldier readies himself against the onslaught of the inevitable.
'When I was just a young girl in Jakarta...' That was odd. Po-po had never related the story of her 15. __________ in Indonesia. It was either 'My husband, that accursed mongrel, that infidel, that...' or just Bahasa Indonesia stream-of-consciousness complaints about everything in Singapore, from the heat to the food. It was with interest that I continued listening to this old woman in a purple batik dress that hung off her like an elephant's skin.
A small, pretty girl, probably not older than seven, stood in the middle of an equally beautiful garden. Orchids, ixora and spider lilies dotted the cool green grass of the garden like brilliant splashes of paint on an emerald canvas. The evening sunlight softly beamed on the little blur of purple, as the girl twirled around the garden.
'Pulang (come back), Wan Li. Dinner's almost ready,' called a voice from within the grand manor that towered behind the garden.
Happily, the little girl skipped back to the house, sure that her favourite beef rendang was waiting for her. And she wasn't disappointed. The smell reached her quite before the sight, the rich aroma of spices and coconut milk leading her towards the large rosewood table, where among a dozen other mouth-watering dishes stood a pot of piping hot rendang.
As though already predicting what would happen, her mother called out from within the kitchen: 'Don't touch the rendang, Wan Li.'
'Yes, Ibu (Mother)', but in the next second, she immediately scooped up a spoonful of the stew. Ah... Heavenly. The tender meat melted in her mouth, followed by the heart-warming sensation that comes only from homemade food.
After dinner, the little girl played Bengawan Solo on her grand piano, her small hands dancing carefully over the keys. She looked around, and saw her mother smiling indulgently while singing softly and clapping to the beat. Then, a long bath, a cup of hot wedang serbat (spiced drink), and the little girl was tucked into bed by her parents, sleeping with a smile on her face, knowing tomorrow would be yet another happy day, without worries - wonderful, perfect.
'Selamat tidur, sayang (good night, dear),' they would say.
'Selamat tidur, ibu. Selamat tidur, pak,' she would reply.
* * *
I HAD never seen Zhuo so attentive before. I unpacked the groceries, went to see if the laundry was done, swept the kitchen floor and came back. He was still sitting there.
No drooping head, or mechanical nodding. Unable to help myself, I smiled. Every day, I nagged at him: 'Can you be more caring towards Po-po? Talk more to Po-po! Go sit beside Po-po.' I knew he thought it was pointless to talk to an old woman, stricken with dementia, barely knowing to whom she was talking. How do you pull your child away from his teenage paradise of Wii, PS3 and iWhatever?
When Pa was still alive, he and Ma would take Zhuo to the kindergarten. They were so happy then, Pa driving the old Suzuki lorry and Ma beside him balancing Zhuo on her lap, laughing all the way to school. All differences between the two set aside, just for their grandson. But that was before Pa passed away. Then Ma grieved for so long, I was worried every day. She wouldn't eat. She grew depressed, angry at the world, angry at everything. Angry that she had come to Singapore. Angry with Pa, whom she cursed for tricking her. Tricking her into leaving family and home in Jakarta, only to come to this stifling 'neraka' (hell), as she called it. Her mind broke. I have never seen her smile since.
And yet today, she is smiling. Zhuo is smiling. My son is not looking at his watch impatiently, he is not sighing or making faces. Today, I see what my heart has wished for so long.
* * *
LAST week, I would have sat up, stretched, given a great sigh of relief and then bid farewell cheerfully. Today, however, I saw Po-po in a different light. I saw past the sagging skin, the old, mouldy dress. I saw deep into the eyes, found in them a little girl in a purple dress smiling back at me, and I felt an unfamiliar feeling. I think it was guilt. I had been so convinced that my ideal world was all just about me, and nobody else. Now, I could feel, almost see, the boundaries of that world stretching, making space for Po-po and Mum.
'Po-po, I didn't know you had such a happy childhood.' Po-po's laugh carried into the kitchen. My mother poked her surprised face out, and laughed too.
AT THE unfamiliar sound of the family laughing, the little girl in the purple dress nudges Po-po through that web of musty memories, and for the first time, Po-po turns her back on her to embrace Zhuo and his mother.
ANSWERS
Grammar 1. had opted 2. would have narrowed 3. listening 4. carrying
5. heard 6. flapping 7. was 8. snapped 9.trudged 10. had been overlooked
11. have included 12. had 13. would have enjoyed 14. looked 15. have you eaten
Vocabulary 1. unintelligible 2. sight 3. prematurely 4. recounting
5. impenetrable 6. memory 7. dead 8. furnance 9. snapping 10. lighting
11. melted 12. remarkably 13. mouldy 14. readied 15. childhood
Describing Places: THE HILLS ARE ALIVE- Guilin, China.
Sep 14, 2010, STRAITS TIMES . Describing Places.
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE
...with the sound of music as Zhang Yimou's Liu Sanjie is staged near Guilin
VOCABULARY
Mention the city of Guilin and two images come to mind. One, a postcard-pretty portrait of limestone mountains beside meandering emerald rivers, shrouded in a veil of mist, forming a truly breathtaking tableau of natural beauty.
The other, a classic 1960 Chinese movie, Liu Sanjie or Third Sister Liu, about the love story between a folk singer from the Zhuang minority in Guangxi Autonomous Region where Guilin is located and Ah Niu, a young fisherman. Not unlike a Western musical, the movie is well known 1. ________ for the many folk songs of the Zhuang minority.
Which was why I was skeptical - and 2. _________ - when I heard that the highlight of a recent four-day trip to Guilin was to watch an ongoing stage production of the movie, never mind the producer is acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, who also produced the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The sense of 3. _________ only grew when I turned up at the ticketing counter at the city of Yangshuo, about 60km from the city centre of Guilin, and realised the tickets did not come cheap at all.
They cost no less than 198 yuan (S$40) and go up to a princely 680 yuan for a VIP ticket. That kind of money could buy me a good seat for a Tony-award-winning musical on Broadway.
But the prices did not appear to deter hundreds of chain-smoking Chinese domestic tourists, milling around outside the counter, waiting for their tour guides to usher them into the show.
What would I, a third-generation Singaporean bred on Hollywood movies, possibly enjoy in a musical about a rather predictable romance between two young lovers in a minority tribe in China, and featuring 'shan ge', or mountain song, a genre of Chinese folk song commonly sung in rural provinces?
About an hour later, I was singing a different tune. True, I understood not a single word of the folk songs. True, too, I had only a vague idea of the plot or the key characters among the 600-strong cast comprising villagers and minority tribes living along the more than 100km Li River.
But Impressions: Liu Sanjie was well and truly a spectacle. The 70-minute performance took place on a Li River lake, no smaller than two football fields, encircled by limestone hills and with the violet-hued night sky as the 4. ________. It could be one of the world's largest 5. _______ theatre spaces.
The enveloping mist, moonlight, hills and their inverted reflections in the river formed a constantly changing background, made all the more 6. _______ with strategically hidden floodlights 7. _________ the facade of the mountains.
As the lights fell on the faces of the hills, numerous torches 8. _________ from the far side of the lake as scores of fishermen on bamboo rafts snaked their way across the lake, creating a depth and perspective probably impossible to achieve on a 9. ________ stage.
As the fishermen unfurled large bales of red silk across the lake, now lit up by floodlights, they looked as if they were walking on water.
The finale was no less stunning: Hundreds of performers, each wearing a series of tiny light bulbs, formed a long column across the bridge over the Li River and appeared like an army of 10. ________ pixies.
The performance, which took five years to 11. ________ from page to stage, is no doubt one of the reasons for a growing number of tourists to Guilin.
In 2002, there were close to 11 million tourists, of which about one million were foreigners. The most recent figures in 2008 revealed about 16.3 million tourists, 1.3 million of whom came from outside China.
The city, long 12. ________ for its natural beauty, is one in transition. While villagers continue to hawk their produce - watermelons, cucumbers, tomatoes and cabbages - from the back of their lorries and tricycles, evidence of change is unmistakeable.
Every turn you take, roads are paved and 13. ______. Scaffoldings wrap old buildings to indicate a new facade is on the way. Elsewhere, new developments - commercial buildings and 14. ______ apartments - dot the city landscape.
In March this year, luxury hotel operator Shangri-La opened a seven-storey, 449-room property, located just a 35-minute drive from the Guilin Liangjiang International Airport and 10 minutes from the heart of the city.
The first new five-star hotel in 20 years in Guilin, it has a 9,999-yuan package which includes a two-night stay in an Executive Suite and a chartered 15. _______ down the Li River, Guilin's main attraction.
The cruise down the 16. ________ stretch of the river lasts 90 minutes in an air-conditioned barge, with a hotel chef on hand to prepare the meals.
A village where time stands still
The 10km stretch from Long Chuan Ping Jetty to Die Cai Mountain passes through 10 of Guilin's most famous mountains - the ones which have been the subject of many 17. _________ and postcards depicting the beauty of the area.
Along the way, you will pass the must-see sight of the Elephant Trunk Hill, a karst formation which resembles an elephant drinking from the Li River, as well as Laoren Hill, or Old Man Hill, which bears an 18. ________ likeness to a hunched old man with a protruding forehead, looming over the mountains.
My favourite moment on the cruise was the stretch from Yangshuo to Yuchun, a village by the Li River which was established in the Ming dynasty. Former United States president Bill Clinton visited it when he was on a nine-day visit to China in 1998.
On my visit, save the makeshift stalls that lined the flight of stone steps leading to the entrance, time seemed to have stood still in the brick-and-mortar village.
Water buffaloes grazed on the banks as women did their laundry by the river. Kids dived into the river from small rocky 19. _______ as the older folk hawked deep-fried crabs, shrimps and fishes caught from the river.
Fishermen on bamboo rafts drifted leisurely down the river with their cormorants, which did the work for them snagging fish from the resource-rich river.
In the village, winding 20. _______ streets appeared to lead nowhere and every turn was an 21. ______ in itself. Up on the roofs of the houses (pay 10 yuan to the owner for access), I saw a village of stone houses built along a 22. _______of streets, a village of order in 23. _____. This, just 24. ______ four hours away from Singapore by 25. ______.
ANSWERS- Vocabulary- 1. worldwide 2. apprehensive 3. trepidation
4. backdrop 5. natural 6. magical 7. illuminating 8. flickered
9. conventional 10. shimmering 11. conceptualise 12. famous
13. repaved 14. residential 15. cruise 16. fabled 17. paintings
18. uncanny 19. outcrops 20. cobbled 21. adventure
22. maze 23. chaos 24. under 25. plane
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE
...with the sound of music as Zhang Yimou's Liu Sanjie is staged near Guilin
VOCABULARY
Mention the city of Guilin and two images come to mind. One, a postcard-pretty portrait of limestone mountains beside meandering emerald rivers, shrouded in a veil of mist, forming a truly breathtaking tableau of natural beauty.
The other, a classic 1960 Chinese movie, Liu Sanjie or Third Sister Liu, about the love story between a folk singer from the Zhuang minority in Guangxi Autonomous Region where Guilin is located and Ah Niu, a young fisherman. Not unlike a Western musical, the movie is well known 1. ________ for the many folk songs of the Zhuang minority.
Which was why I was skeptical - and 2. _________ - when I heard that the highlight of a recent four-day trip to Guilin was to watch an ongoing stage production of the movie, never mind the producer is acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, who also produced the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The sense of 3. _________ only grew when I turned up at the ticketing counter at the city of Yangshuo, about 60km from the city centre of Guilin, and realised the tickets did not come cheap at all.
They cost no less than 198 yuan (S$40) and go up to a princely 680 yuan for a VIP ticket. That kind of money could buy me a good seat for a Tony-award-winning musical on Broadway.
But the prices did not appear to deter hundreds of chain-smoking Chinese domestic tourists, milling around outside the counter, waiting for their tour guides to usher them into the show.
What would I, a third-generation Singaporean bred on Hollywood movies, possibly enjoy in a musical about a rather predictable romance between two young lovers in a minority tribe in China, and featuring 'shan ge', or mountain song, a genre of Chinese folk song commonly sung in rural provinces?
About an hour later, I was singing a different tune. True, I understood not a single word of the folk songs. True, too, I had only a vague idea of the plot or the key characters among the 600-strong cast comprising villagers and minority tribes living along the more than 100km Li River.
But Impressions: Liu Sanjie was well and truly a spectacle. The 70-minute performance took place on a Li River lake, no smaller than two football fields, encircled by limestone hills and with the violet-hued night sky as the 4. ________. It could be one of the world's largest 5. _______ theatre spaces.
The enveloping mist, moonlight, hills and their inverted reflections in the river formed a constantly changing background, made all the more 6. _______ with strategically hidden floodlights 7. _________ the facade of the mountains.
As the lights fell on the faces of the hills, numerous torches 8. _________ from the far side of the lake as scores of fishermen on bamboo rafts snaked their way across the lake, creating a depth and perspective probably impossible to achieve on a 9. ________ stage.
As the fishermen unfurled large bales of red silk across the lake, now lit up by floodlights, they looked as if they were walking on water.
The finale was no less stunning: Hundreds of performers, each wearing a series of tiny light bulbs, formed a long column across the bridge over the Li River and appeared like an army of 10. ________ pixies.
The performance, which took five years to 11. ________ from page to stage, is no doubt one of the reasons for a growing number of tourists to Guilin.
In 2002, there were close to 11 million tourists, of which about one million were foreigners. The most recent figures in 2008 revealed about 16.3 million tourists, 1.3 million of whom came from outside China.
The city, long 12. ________ for its natural beauty, is one in transition. While villagers continue to hawk their produce - watermelons, cucumbers, tomatoes and cabbages - from the back of their lorries and tricycles, evidence of change is unmistakeable.
Every turn you take, roads are paved and 13. ______. Scaffoldings wrap old buildings to indicate a new facade is on the way. Elsewhere, new developments - commercial buildings and 14. ______ apartments - dot the city landscape.
In March this year, luxury hotel operator Shangri-La opened a seven-storey, 449-room property, located just a 35-minute drive from the Guilin Liangjiang International Airport and 10 minutes from the heart of the city.
The first new five-star hotel in 20 years in Guilin, it has a 9,999-yuan package which includes a two-night stay in an Executive Suite and a chartered 15. _______ down the Li River, Guilin's main attraction.
The cruise down the 16. ________ stretch of the river lasts 90 minutes in an air-conditioned barge, with a hotel chef on hand to prepare the meals.
A village where time stands still
The 10km stretch from Long Chuan Ping Jetty to Die Cai Mountain passes through 10 of Guilin's most famous mountains - the ones which have been the subject of many 17. _________ and postcards depicting the beauty of the area.
Along the way, you will pass the must-see sight of the Elephant Trunk Hill, a karst formation which resembles an elephant drinking from the Li River, as well as Laoren Hill, or Old Man Hill, which bears an 18. ________ likeness to a hunched old man with a protruding forehead, looming over the mountains.
My favourite moment on the cruise was the stretch from Yangshuo to Yuchun, a village by the Li River which was established in the Ming dynasty. Former United States president Bill Clinton visited it when he was on a nine-day visit to China in 1998.
On my visit, save the makeshift stalls that lined the flight of stone steps leading to the entrance, time seemed to have stood still in the brick-and-mortar village.
Water buffaloes grazed on the banks as women did their laundry by the river. Kids dived into the river from small rocky 19. _______ as the older folk hawked deep-fried crabs, shrimps and fishes caught from the river.
Fishermen on bamboo rafts drifted leisurely down the river with their cormorants, which did the work for them snagging fish from the resource-rich river.
In the village, winding 20. _______ streets appeared to lead nowhere and every turn was an 21. ______ in itself. Up on the roofs of the houses (pay 10 yuan to the owner for access), I saw a village of stone houses built along a 22. _______of streets, a village of order in 23. _____. This, just 24. ______ four hours away from Singapore by 25. ______.
ANSWERS- Vocabulary- 1. worldwide 2. apprehensive 3. trepidation
4. backdrop 5. natural 6. magical 7. illuminating 8. flickered
9. conventional 10. shimmering 11. conceptualise 12. famous
13. repaved 14. residential 15. cruise 16. fabled 17. paintings
18. uncanny 19. outcrops 20. cobbled 21. adventure
22. maze 23. chaos 24. under 25. plane
MINE DISASTER- CHILE: TRAPPED MINERS
Aug 24, 2010, STRAITS TIMES
Trapped miners alive after two weeks
But it could be months before the 33 Chilean miners are rescued
President Pinera holding up a plastic bag containing a message from the trapped miners on Sunday in Copiapo. It reads in Spanish: 'We are okay in the refuge, the 33 miners.' The men were found about 7km inside the winding mine after a drill broke through 688m of solid rock.
VOCABULARY CLOZE
SANTIAGO: Chileans were 1. _____________ after receiving word that 33 miners trapped deep below ground for more than two weeks were alive and apparently in good 2. _____________, though experts warned that it could still be three to four months before they are rescued.
The first black and white images of some of the 33 men were shown late on Sunday after rescuers made their first 3 . _________ with them since a tunnel collapse on Aug 5 at the San Jose copper and gold mine.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, who was at the 4. ________ of the disaster, read out one of the two notes sent up by the 5. _______ miners that said: 'We are okay in the refuge, the 33 miners,' as people around him rejoiced.
'The whole of Chile is crying with joy and 6. _______,' he remarked.
The trapped men were found about 7km inside the 7. ________ mine after a narrow drill broke through 688m of solid rock to reach an emergency refuge where they had gathered.
The notes were found tied to the 8. ________.
A remotely operated camera lowered down the 9. ________ hole later showed the miners sweaty and shirtless in the hot shelter, but in apparently good condition and high 10. _______.
'Many of them approached the camera and put their faces right 11. ______against it, like children, and we could see happiness and hope in their eyes,' said Mr Pinera as he vowed a major overhaul of the mining regulator.
Officials said the miners are located in a space about the size of a small apartment and had 12. _______ amounts of food but more would be passed to them 13. _______ the drill hole.
Tanks of water and 14. _______ shafts are helping them survive, they said, adding that the miners used the batteries of a truck down in the mine to charge their helmet lamps. The miners may have lost about 8kg to 9kg each, they said.
National Emergency Office regional director Carlos Garcia said relatives would soon be allowed to speak with them through a cable dropped down the drill bore.
Chief engineer Andres Sougarret, who is in charge of the rescue operation, said it would take at least 120 days or until around Christmas to drill a shaft large enough to bring out the trapped miners.
Rescuers said the miners would have to assist in their own release by clearing 15. _________ away from the hole beneath ground as drillers worked from above.
'They'll come out thin and dirty, but whole and strong, because the miners have shown they have courage and 16. _______, which is what has kept them together,' Mr Pinera said, choking with emotion.
'God is great,' 63-year-old Mario Gomez, the oldest of the trapped miners, wrote in the second note found attached to the drill.
'I hope to get out soon. Have 17. _______ and faith,' he said in the note addressed to his wife.
The men already have been trapped underground longer than all but a few miners rescued in recent history.
ANSWERS: VOCABULARY- 1.euphoric 2. condition 3. contact 4. site 5. trapped
6. emotion 7. winding 8. drill 9. bore 10. spirits 11. up 12. limited
13. through 14. ventilation 15. debris 16. mettle 17. patience
Trapped miners alive after two weeks
But it could be months before the 33 Chilean miners are rescued
President Pinera holding up a plastic bag containing a message from the trapped miners on Sunday in Copiapo. It reads in Spanish: 'We are okay in the refuge, the 33 miners.' The men were found about 7km inside the winding mine after a drill broke through 688m of solid rock.
VOCABULARY CLOZE
SANTIAGO: Chileans were 1. _____________ after receiving word that 33 miners trapped deep below ground for more than two weeks were alive and apparently in good 2. _____________, though experts warned that it could still be three to four months before they are rescued.
The first black and white images of some of the 33 men were shown late on Sunday after rescuers made their first 3 . _________ with them since a tunnel collapse on Aug 5 at the San Jose copper and gold mine.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, who was at the 4. ________ of the disaster, read out one of the two notes sent up by the 5. _______ miners that said: 'We are okay in the refuge, the 33 miners,' as people around him rejoiced.
'The whole of Chile is crying with joy and 6. _______,' he remarked.
The trapped men were found about 7km inside the 7. ________ mine after a narrow drill broke through 688m of solid rock to reach an emergency refuge where they had gathered.
The notes were found tied to the 8. ________.
A remotely operated camera lowered down the 9. ________ hole later showed the miners sweaty and shirtless in the hot shelter, but in apparently good condition and high 10. _______.
'Many of them approached the camera and put their faces right 11. ______against it, like children, and we could see happiness and hope in their eyes,' said Mr Pinera as he vowed a major overhaul of the mining regulator.
Officials said the miners are located in a space about the size of a small apartment and had 12. _______ amounts of food but more would be passed to them 13. _______ the drill hole.
Tanks of water and 14. _______ shafts are helping them survive, they said, adding that the miners used the batteries of a truck down in the mine to charge their helmet lamps. The miners may have lost about 8kg to 9kg each, they said.
National Emergency Office regional director Carlos Garcia said relatives would soon be allowed to speak with them through a cable dropped down the drill bore.
Chief engineer Andres Sougarret, who is in charge of the rescue operation, said it would take at least 120 days or until around Christmas to drill a shaft large enough to bring out the trapped miners.
Rescuers said the miners would have to assist in their own release by clearing 15. _________ away from the hole beneath ground as drillers worked from above.
'They'll come out thin and dirty, but whole and strong, because the miners have shown they have courage and 16. _______, which is what has kept them together,' Mr Pinera said, choking with emotion.
'God is great,' 63-year-old Mario Gomez, the oldest of the trapped miners, wrote in the second note found attached to the drill.
'I hope to get out soon. Have 17. _______ and faith,' he said in the note addressed to his wife.
The men already have been trapped underground longer than all but a few miners rescued in recent history.
ANSWERS: VOCABULARY- 1.euphoric 2. condition 3. contact 4. site 5. trapped
6. emotion 7. winding 8. drill 9. bore 10. spirits 11. up 12. limited
13. through 14. ventilation 15. debris 16. mettle 17. patience
OLD WAYS OF LIFE SWEPT AWAY BY FLOODS
Aug 28, 2010, STRAITS TIMES
Old ways of life swept away by floods
Pakistani survivors return home to ruins
Mr Anar Gul and his son collecting belongings on Thursday from the rubble of their house, which was demolished by heavy floods in Azakhel, Nowshera, in north-west Pakistan. It is the same scene for many other survivors. -- PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
GRAMMAR
AZAKHEL (PAKISTAN): This is what Mr Anar Gul found when he came home: Eight mattresses 1. _______(cover) with polyester swirls, a dozen blankets, a broken tape player and a large metal box buried deep in the mud.
After more than 30 years of 2. _______(carve) out the semblance of a working-class life, this junk spread out to dry on the wreckage of his house 3. ______(be) now all Mr Gul had.
'This is everything,' he said, waving his hands at the muck and the garbage. The former woodcutter 4. ________(build) a mud-walled house with three bedrooms, a guest room and a bathroom.
Nearly a month after floods first 5. _______(begin) battering Pakistan, and as waters still sweep through the south, the first victims are returning home. Millions of people may soon find that, like Mr Gul, their old lives have disappeared.
'We understand the devastation is so intense that even the government cannot help everyone,' said Mr Gul, who 6. ________(add) that he was about 70 years old. 'But the government 7. _______(need) to help us.'
The floods began here, in north-western Pakistan, late last month when the annual monsoon rains began falling. Azakhel, a small town outside the city of Nowshera, saw thousands of homes 8. _______(submerge). Most people 9. _______(flee) by the end of last month and came back only in the last week or so.
Rivers 10. ______(swell) by rain that fell in the mountainous north 11. ______(flow) southward, ravaging a massive swathe of the agricultural heartland. Only in the coming days are floodwaters expected to fully drain into the Arabian Sea.
More than 1,500 people 12. ________(die), most of whom perished in flash floods in the initial days. The death toll does not reflect the scale of the crisis, with millions of hectares under water and the agricultural economy 13. ________(devastate).
More than eight million people need emergency assistance, and the international community 14. _________(pledge) hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
Mr Rahimullah Yousafzai, a prominent Pakistani writer, said the promises of international aid could backfire.
It is not yet clear what help people will get.
The Pakistani government 15. _______(promise) 20,000 rupees (S$320) to families affected by the floods, with a presidential spokesman calling the payment 'initial assistance'.
Most Pakistanis are, however, distrustful of their government.
Mr Yousafzai said 16. _______(squabble) over aid 17. ________(be+lead) to ethnic and regional tensions and possibly anti- government unrest.
Government officials, for the most part, are nowhere to be 18. ________(see).
'The government hasn't even bothered to ask if we are living or dying,' said Mr Karim Baksh, a retired bureaucrat with the state electricity company. His home in Nowshera was all but 19. ______(level) by floodwaters.
His neighbour, 23-year-old business student Yasir Naseer, 20. _______(urge) international aid groups to distribute help on their own.
'Don't give any cash or anything to our government officials. They cannot be trusted.'
EDITING: The following words are wrongly spelt. Write the correct answer on the lines.
1. rabble ___________
2. devastetain ____________
3. domelished ____________
4. reveging __________
5. missive sweatha ___________ __________
6. amergancy essistence _________ __________
ANSWERS
Grammar – 1. covered 2. covering 3. was 4. had built
5. began 6. added 7. needs 8. submerged 9. had fled
10. swollen 11. had flowed 12. have died 13. devastated
14. has pledged 15. has promised 16. squabbling
17. could had 18. seen 19. leveled 20. urged
Old ways of life swept away by floods
Pakistani survivors return home to ruins
Mr Anar Gul and his son collecting belongings on Thursday from the rubble of their house, which was demolished by heavy floods in Azakhel, Nowshera, in north-west Pakistan. It is the same scene for many other survivors. -- PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
GRAMMAR
AZAKHEL (PAKISTAN): This is what Mr Anar Gul found when he came home: Eight mattresses 1. _______(cover) with polyester swirls, a dozen blankets, a broken tape player and a large metal box buried deep in the mud.
After more than 30 years of 2. _______(carve) out the semblance of a working-class life, this junk spread out to dry on the wreckage of his house 3. ______(be) now all Mr Gul had.
'This is everything,' he said, waving his hands at the muck and the garbage. The former woodcutter 4. ________(build) a mud-walled house with three bedrooms, a guest room and a bathroom.
Nearly a month after floods first 5. _______(begin) battering Pakistan, and as waters still sweep through the south, the first victims are returning home. Millions of people may soon find that, like Mr Gul, their old lives have disappeared.
'We understand the devastation is so intense that even the government cannot help everyone,' said Mr Gul, who 6. ________(add) that he was about 70 years old. 'But the government 7. _______(need) to help us.'
The floods began here, in north-western Pakistan, late last month when the annual monsoon rains began falling. Azakhel, a small town outside the city of Nowshera, saw thousands of homes 8. _______(submerge). Most people 9. _______(flee) by the end of last month and came back only in the last week or so.
Rivers 10. ______(swell) by rain that fell in the mountainous north 11. ______(flow) southward, ravaging a massive swathe of the agricultural heartland. Only in the coming days are floodwaters expected to fully drain into the Arabian Sea.
More than 1,500 people 12. ________(die), most of whom perished in flash floods in the initial days. The death toll does not reflect the scale of the crisis, with millions of hectares under water and the agricultural economy 13. ________(devastate).
More than eight million people need emergency assistance, and the international community 14. _________(pledge) hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
Mr Rahimullah Yousafzai, a prominent Pakistani writer, said the promises of international aid could backfire.
It is not yet clear what help people will get.
The Pakistani government 15. _______(promise) 20,000 rupees (S$320) to families affected by the floods, with a presidential spokesman calling the payment 'initial assistance'.
Most Pakistanis are, however, distrustful of their government.
Mr Yousafzai said 16. _______(squabble) over aid 17. ________(be+lead) to ethnic and regional tensions and possibly anti- government unrest.
Government officials, for the most part, are nowhere to be 18. ________(see).
'The government hasn't even bothered to ask if we are living or dying,' said Mr Karim Baksh, a retired bureaucrat with the state electricity company. His home in Nowshera was all but 19. ______(level) by floodwaters.
His neighbour, 23-year-old business student Yasir Naseer, 20. _______(urge) international aid groups to distribute help on their own.
'Don't give any cash or anything to our government officials. They cannot be trusted.'
EDITING: The following words are wrongly spelt. Write the correct answer on the lines.
1. rabble ___________
2. devastetain ____________
3. domelished ____________
4. reveging __________
5. missive sweatha ___________ __________
6. amergancy essistence _________ __________
ANSWERS
Grammar – 1. covered 2. covering 3. was 4. had built
5. began 6. added 7. needs 8. submerged 9. had fled
10. swollen 11. had flowed 12. have died 13. devastated
14. has pledged 15. has promised 16. squabbling
17. could had 18. seen 19. leveled 20. urged
DIFFICULT TO ACCEPT A LOVED ONE'S SUFFERING- by Lee Wei Ling
Aug 29, 2010 , STRAITS TIMES
Difficult to accept a loved one's suffering
Feeling compassion with a detachment is wise, but tough when it comes to Mama
By Lee Wei Ling
The writer, then 19, with her mother and father in Rajasthan, India. Those were happier times before her mother suffered a stroke in May 2008 and became bedbound. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF LEE WEI LING
GRAMMAR- Tenses, Prepositions, Conjunctions , Adjectives and Adverbs.
Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the word given in brackets.
Fill in the blanks with the correct preposition or conjunction in the blanks.
I awoke with a start, a while ago, from a dream. I 1. ________(look) at my watch. It was 4am.
It was a dream worth remembering, so I 2. _______(decide) to write it down immediately. If I 3. ________(be+not+do) so, I 4. _______(be) not have been able to remember it later.
In my dream, I seemed to be simultaneously at home and outdoors at some unfamiliar place. Suddenly, a monster 5. ______(appear) and 6. _____(attack) me. I 7. ______(struggle) with the monster but it 7. ______(match) me strength 8. _______ strength. I did not utter a sound, nor was I frightened. Instead, I wrestled silently with it.
Suddenly my mother appeared. She walked 9. _______ us, but did not say anything either. Instead, she made a 10. _______(dismiss) gesture and the monster turned tail and ran away.
That 11. _______(be) be Mama's way of tackling problems, I thought: no need for unnecessary words 12. _______ actions; just do things 13. ______(quiet) and effectively.
At that point, I woke up. I got up from the floor where I 14. _______(sleep) and went into my mother's room to see how she 15. _______(do). She was sleeping peacefully. I 16. ______(be) now back in my room recording what I can still remember of my dream - for a 'dream' indeed it was, as it cannot be classified as a nightmare.
For two years and three months already, my mother 17. _______(be) too weak to get out of bed. But in that brief moment in my dream, I saw her again as she 18. ______(be) - physically normal.
I wished I 19. ________(can+be+dream) on, and after some time, together with Mama, vanquished the monster in the dream and then walked 20. ________ together.
In dreams, everything seems possible. That my mother appeared 21. ______(magic) in my dream did not surprise me - either while I was dreaming or when I 22. ______(awake). This is because between Mama and me, there was always some form of telepathy.
Once, when I was staying with my brother Hsien Loong, my toothbrush 23. ______(wear) out and needed to be replaced. I hardly ever shop, so I did what I had always done before: I told Mama I needed a new toothbrush.
Since we were in different houses and I did not want to wake her if she was sleeping by calling her on the telephone, I e-mailed her: 'Ma, I need a toothbrush.'
She e-mailed back: 'I am telepathic. I just got a toothbrush for you. But one day, the commissariat will not be around. If you don't know the word 'commissariat' go look it 24. ______ in the dictionary.'
She was correct: I did not know what the word meant. And since I did not know where the dictionary 25. _________(keep) in my brother's house, that evening at dinner, I asked him what the word meant.
He knew, of course. 'Commissariat', he explained, is a department in the army charged with providing provisions to soldiers.
Now Mama is no longer in a position to be my commissariat. Worse yet, she is bedbound and no longer able to read - a favourite activity of hers.
Mama had wide interests. She 26. _______(know) things that even many highly educated people would not know or be interested in, as would be obvious if one rummaged 27. ________ her bookshelves, as I did recently.
There were several books on the flora and fauna of Singapore. There was a hardcover book of children's nursery rhymes, which she 28. _______(use) to read to her grandchildren. Of all her grandchildren, my albino nephew 29. ______(enjoy) reading the nursery rhymes 30. ______ her the most.
VOCABULARY : Fill in the blanks using the given helping words
fashionable collect suffering detachment excerpts collection early delivered predicament struggles cultured chronicling stoically caste ancient resilience duties
There were several books on Buddhism and Hinduism. There was a King James version of the Bible printed in a large 1. _______ so that she could read it even without her reading glasses. There were many books on the Indian 2. _______ system, and a book describing the ancient city of Harappa in the Indus valley. The city dates back about 4,600 years ago, and was an important trade centre in the 3. _______ world.
Mama was interested in the Silk Route long before it became a 4. ________ subject of interest. She had a book 5. ________ the travels of a Victorian lady on the Silk Route.
There were six Malay kamus, or dictionaries. There was a book on Chinese customs and symbols. And of course, there were many books of poetry, including a 6. ________ of Rudyard Kipling's poems.
There were also books relating to the 7. _______ days of Singapore, including The Battle For Merger, a collection of radio talks my father 8. _______ in 1961, detailing the early history of the People's Action Party's 9. ________ with the communists. It is now out of print.
There were many books, too, written by others about my father, including Lee Kuan Yew In His Own Words, 10. _______ of his speeches from 1959 to 1970, edited by S.J. Rodringuez.
Mama also had the kinds of books one would expect to find on the bookshelves of someone so 11. ________: among other things, The Tale Of Genji, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum And The Sword, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's The Daughter Of A Samurai, the novels of Jane Austen, and a book I enjoyed tremendously as a child, Anne Of Green Gables.
Mama didn't just 12. _______ these books, she read them.
It is now 5.30am. I popped into her room again a while ago and she was still sleeping. I comforted myself that at least when she was sleeping, she was unaware of her unfortunate situation.
Now I am trying to go back to sleep myself, but I cannot do so - not because of the dream but because of Mama's unhappy 13. _______. It is acutely felt by her three children, my two sisters-in-law, and my cousin Kwa Kim Li, who is my mother's favourite niece. But the one who has been hurting the most, and is yet carrying on 14. _______, is my father.
It is easy when thinking in the abstract, to conclude that being born, growing old, falling sick and eventually dying is what happens to all of us. I accept these facts with no resentment that life is unkind. I have had more than my fair share of bad luck, but I never resented it, for I think suffering built up my 15. _________.
But I find it difficult to accept my mother's 16. _______. The Buddhist principle of feeling compassion but with detachment is wise, but it is not an attitude that I find humanly possible to adopt when it comes to Mama. I cannot see her suffering with 17. _________.
But there is nothing I can do to get her back to where she was before she suffered a massive stroke on May 12, 2008. She has been suffering since then, and so has my father. But that is life, and we all plod on, fulfilling our duties as best we can. Indeed by focusing my mind on my 18. _______, I manage to temporarily block Mama's suffering from my consciousness.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
ANSWERS
Grammar - 1. looked 2. decided 3. had not done 4. would 5. appeared 6. attacked
7. matched 8. for 9. towards 10. dismissive 11. would 12. or 13. quietly
14. was sleeping 15. was doing 16. am 17. has been 18. had been 19. could have dreamt 20. off 21. magically 22. awoke 23. was worn 24. up 25. was kept
26. knew 27. through 28. had used 29. enjoyed 30. with
Vocabulary – 1. font 2. caste 3. ancient 4. fashionable 5. chronicling 6. collection 7. early 8. delivered 9. struggles 10. excerpts 11. cultured 12. collect 13. predicament 14. stoically 15. resilience 16. suffering 17. detachment 18. duties
Difficult to accept a loved one's suffering
Feeling compassion with a detachment is wise, but tough when it comes to Mama
By Lee Wei Ling
The writer, then 19, with her mother and father in Rajasthan, India. Those were happier times before her mother suffered a stroke in May 2008 and became bedbound. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF LEE WEI LING
GRAMMAR- Tenses, Prepositions, Conjunctions , Adjectives and Adverbs.
Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the word given in brackets.
Fill in the blanks with the correct preposition or conjunction in the blanks.
I awoke with a start, a while ago, from a dream. I 1. ________(look) at my watch. It was 4am.
It was a dream worth remembering, so I 2. _______(decide) to write it down immediately. If I 3. ________(be+not+do) so, I 4. _______(be) not have been able to remember it later.
In my dream, I seemed to be simultaneously at home and outdoors at some unfamiliar place. Suddenly, a monster 5. ______(appear) and 6. _____(attack) me. I 7. ______(struggle) with the monster but it 7. ______(match) me strength 8. _______ strength. I did not utter a sound, nor was I frightened. Instead, I wrestled silently with it.
Suddenly my mother appeared. She walked 9. _______ us, but did not say anything either. Instead, she made a 10. _______(dismiss) gesture and the monster turned tail and ran away.
That 11. _______(be) be Mama's way of tackling problems, I thought: no need for unnecessary words 12. _______ actions; just do things 13. ______(quiet) and effectively.
At that point, I woke up. I got up from the floor where I 14. _______(sleep) and went into my mother's room to see how she 15. _______(do). She was sleeping peacefully. I 16. ______(be) now back in my room recording what I can still remember of my dream - for a 'dream' indeed it was, as it cannot be classified as a nightmare.
For two years and three months already, my mother 17. _______(be) too weak to get out of bed. But in that brief moment in my dream, I saw her again as she 18. ______(be) - physically normal.
I wished I 19. ________(can+be+dream) on, and after some time, together with Mama, vanquished the monster in the dream and then walked 20. ________ together.
In dreams, everything seems possible. That my mother appeared 21. ______(magic) in my dream did not surprise me - either while I was dreaming or when I 22. ______(awake). This is because between Mama and me, there was always some form of telepathy.
Once, when I was staying with my brother Hsien Loong, my toothbrush 23. ______(wear) out and needed to be replaced. I hardly ever shop, so I did what I had always done before: I told Mama I needed a new toothbrush.
Since we were in different houses and I did not want to wake her if she was sleeping by calling her on the telephone, I e-mailed her: 'Ma, I need a toothbrush.'
She e-mailed back: 'I am telepathic. I just got a toothbrush for you. But one day, the commissariat will not be around. If you don't know the word 'commissariat' go look it 24. ______ in the dictionary.'
She was correct: I did not know what the word meant. And since I did not know where the dictionary 25. _________(keep) in my brother's house, that evening at dinner, I asked him what the word meant.
He knew, of course. 'Commissariat', he explained, is a department in the army charged with providing provisions to soldiers.
Now Mama is no longer in a position to be my commissariat. Worse yet, she is bedbound and no longer able to read - a favourite activity of hers.
Mama had wide interests. She 26. _______(know) things that even many highly educated people would not know or be interested in, as would be obvious if one rummaged 27. ________ her bookshelves, as I did recently.
There were several books on the flora and fauna of Singapore. There was a hardcover book of children's nursery rhymes, which she 28. _______(use) to read to her grandchildren. Of all her grandchildren, my albino nephew 29. ______(enjoy) reading the nursery rhymes 30. ______ her the most.
VOCABULARY : Fill in the blanks using the given helping words
fashionable collect suffering detachment excerpts collection early delivered predicament struggles cultured chronicling stoically caste ancient resilience duties
There were several books on Buddhism and Hinduism. There was a King James version of the Bible printed in a large 1. _______ so that she could read it even without her reading glasses. There were many books on the Indian 2. _______ system, and a book describing the ancient city of Harappa in the Indus valley. The city dates back about 4,600 years ago, and was an important trade centre in the 3. _______ world.
Mama was interested in the Silk Route long before it became a 4. ________ subject of interest. She had a book 5. ________ the travels of a Victorian lady on the Silk Route.
There were six Malay kamus, or dictionaries. There was a book on Chinese customs and symbols. And of course, there were many books of poetry, including a 6. ________ of Rudyard Kipling's poems.
There were also books relating to the 7. _______ days of Singapore, including The Battle For Merger, a collection of radio talks my father 8. _______ in 1961, detailing the early history of the People's Action Party's 9. ________ with the communists. It is now out of print.
There were many books, too, written by others about my father, including Lee Kuan Yew In His Own Words, 10. _______ of his speeches from 1959 to 1970, edited by S.J. Rodringuez.
Mama also had the kinds of books one would expect to find on the bookshelves of someone so 11. ________: among other things, The Tale Of Genji, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum And The Sword, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's The Daughter Of A Samurai, the novels of Jane Austen, and a book I enjoyed tremendously as a child, Anne Of Green Gables.
Mama didn't just 12. _______ these books, she read them.
It is now 5.30am. I popped into her room again a while ago and she was still sleeping. I comforted myself that at least when she was sleeping, she was unaware of her unfortunate situation.
Now I am trying to go back to sleep myself, but I cannot do so - not because of the dream but because of Mama's unhappy 13. _______. It is acutely felt by her three children, my two sisters-in-law, and my cousin Kwa Kim Li, who is my mother's favourite niece. But the one who has been hurting the most, and is yet carrying on 14. _______, is my father.
It is easy when thinking in the abstract, to conclude that being born, growing old, falling sick and eventually dying is what happens to all of us. I accept these facts with no resentment that life is unkind. I have had more than my fair share of bad luck, but I never resented it, for I think suffering built up my 15. _________.
But I find it difficult to accept my mother's 16. _______. The Buddhist principle of feeling compassion but with detachment is wise, but it is not an attitude that I find humanly possible to adopt when it comes to Mama. I cannot see her suffering with 17. _________.
But there is nothing I can do to get her back to where she was before she suffered a massive stroke on May 12, 2008. She has been suffering since then, and so has my father. But that is life, and we all plod on, fulfilling our duties as best we can. Indeed by focusing my mind on my 18. _______, I manage to temporarily block Mama's suffering from my consciousness.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
ANSWERS
Grammar - 1. looked 2. decided 3. had not done 4. would 5. appeared 6. attacked
7. matched 8. for 9. towards 10. dismissive 11. would 12. or 13. quietly
14. was sleeping 15. was doing 16. am 17. has been 18. had been 19. could have dreamt 20. off 21. magically 22. awoke 23. was worn 24. up 25. was kept
26. knew 27. through 28. had used 29. enjoyed 30. with
Vocabulary – 1. font 2. caste 3. ancient 4. fashionable 5. chronicling 6. collection 7. early 8. delivered 9. struggles 10. excerpts 11. cultured 12. collect 13. predicament 14. stoically 15. resilience 16. suffering 17. detachment 18. duties
DESALINATION: GET THE SALT OUT
THE BIG IDEA
Theme: WATER
National Geographic, March, 2010.
Get the Salt Out
Fill in the blanks using the helping words given below.
scarcer out condense reverse salty off boom expand
only boiling woes membrane per salinity cheap
There's no shortage of water on the blue planet—just a shortage of fresh water. New technologies may offer better ways to get the salt 1. ______.
Three hundred million people now get their water from the sea or from brackish groundwater that is too 2. ______ to drink. That’s double the number a decade ago. Desalination took 3. _____ in the 1970s in the Middle East and has since spread to 150 countries. Within the next six years new desalination plants may add as much as 13 billion gallons a day to the global water supply, the equivalent of another Colorado River. The reason for the 4. ______ is simple: As populations grow and agriculture and industry 5. _______, fresh water—especially clean fresh water—is getting 6. _______. “The thing about water is, you gotta have it,” says Tom Pankratz, editor of the Water Desalination Report, a trade publication. “Desalination is not a cheap way to get water, but sometimes it’s the 7. _______ way there is.”
And it’s much cheaper than it was two decades ago. The first desalination method—and still the most common, especially in oil-rich countries along the Persian Gulf—was brute-force distillation: Heat seawater until it turns to steam, leaving its salt behind, then 8. ______ it. The current state of the art, used, for example, at plants that opened recently in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Perth, Australia, is 9. ______ osmosis, in which water is forced through a 10. ______ that catches the salt. Pumping seawater to pressures of more than a thousand pounds 11. _____ square inch takes less energy than 12. ______ it—but it is still expensive.
Researchers are now working on at least three new technologies that could cut the energy required even further. The closest to commercialization, called forward osmosis, draws water through the porous membrane into a solution that contains even more salt than seawater, but a kind of salt that is easily evaporated. The other two approaches redesign the membrane itself— one by using carbon nanotubes as the pores, the other by using the same proteins that usher water molecules through the membranes of living cells.
None of the three will be a solution for all the world’s water 13. _____. Desalination inevitably leaves behind a concentrated brine, which can harm the environment and even the water supply itself. Brine discharges are especially tricky to dispose of at inland desalination plants, and they’re also raising the 14. _______ in parts of the shallow Persian Gulf. The saltier the water gets, the more expensive it becomes to desalinate.
What’s more, none of the new technologies seem simple and 15. _______ enough to offer much hope to the world’s poor, says geologist Farouk El-Baz of Boston University. He recently attended a desalination-industry conference looking for ways to bring fresh water to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur. “I asked the engineers, ‘What if you are in a tiny village of 3,000, and the water is a hundred feet underground and laden with salt, and there is no electricity?’ ” El-Baz says. “Their mouths just dropped.” —Karen E. Lange
ANSWERS- Vocabulary- 1. out 2. salty 3. off 4. boom 5. expand
6. scarcer 7. only 8. condense 9. reverse 10. membrane 11. per
12. boiling 13. woes 14. salinity 15. cheap
Theme: WATER
National Geographic, March, 2010.
Get the Salt Out
Fill in the blanks using the helping words given below.
scarcer out condense reverse salty off boom expand
only boiling woes membrane per salinity cheap
There's no shortage of water on the blue planet—just a shortage of fresh water. New technologies may offer better ways to get the salt 1. ______.
Three hundred million people now get their water from the sea or from brackish groundwater that is too 2. ______ to drink. That’s double the number a decade ago. Desalination took 3. _____ in the 1970s in the Middle East and has since spread to 150 countries. Within the next six years new desalination plants may add as much as 13 billion gallons a day to the global water supply, the equivalent of another Colorado River. The reason for the 4. ______ is simple: As populations grow and agriculture and industry 5. _______, fresh water—especially clean fresh water—is getting 6. _______. “The thing about water is, you gotta have it,” says Tom Pankratz, editor of the Water Desalination Report, a trade publication. “Desalination is not a cheap way to get water, but sometimes it’s the 7. _______ way there is.”
And it’s much cheaper than it was two decades ago. The first desalination method—and still the most common, especially in oil-rich countries along the Persian Gulf—was brute-force distillation: Heat seawater until it turns to steam, leaving its salt behind, then 8. ______ it. The current state of the art, used, for example, at plants that opened recently in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Perth, Australia, is 9. ______ osmosis, in which water is forced through a 10. ______ that catches the salt. Pumping seawater to pressures of more than a thousand pounds 11. _____ square inch takes less energy than 12. ______ it—but it is still expensive.
Researchers are now working on at least three new technologies that could cut the energy required even further. The closest to commercialization, called forward osmosis, draws water through the porous membrane into a solution that contains even more salt than seawater, but a kind of salt that is easily evaporated. The other two approaches redesign the membrane itself— one by using carbon nanotubes as the pores, the other by using the same proteins that usher water molecules through the membranes of living cells.
None of the three will be a solution for all the world’s water 13. _____. Desalination inevitably leaves behind a concentrated brine, which can harm the environment and even the water supply itself. Brine discharges are especially tricky to dispose of at inland desalination plants, and they’re also raising the 14. _______ in parts of the shallow Persian Gulf. The saltier the water gets, the more expensive it becomes to desalinate.
What’s more, none of the new technologies seem simple and 15. _______ enough to offer much hope to the world’s poor, says geologist Farouk El-Baz of Boston University. He recently attended a desalination-industry conference looking for ways to bring fresh water to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur. “I asked the engineers, ‘What if you are in a tiny village of 3,000, and the water is a hundred feet underground and laden with salt, and there is no electricity?’ ” El-Baz says. “Their mouths just dropped.” —Karen E. Lange
ANSWERS- Vocabulary- 1. out 2. salty 3. off 4. boom 5. expand
6. scarcer 7. only 8. condense 9. reverse 10. membrane 11. per
12. boiling 13. woes 14. salinity 15. cheap
THE BURDEN OF THIRST
THE BURDEN OF THIRST
If the millions of women who haul water long distances had a faucet by their door, whole societies could be transformed.
By Tina Rosenberg, National Geographic, April 2010.
drinking puddles excrement struggles hard perch squishing admonishes straps slippery steepest grimaces brew every soap
In much of the developing world, lack of water is at the center of a vicious circle of inequality. Some women in Foro come down to the river five times a day—with one or two of the trips devoted to getting water to make a beer-style home 1. _____ for their husbands. When I first came to Foro, some 60 men were sitting in the shade of a metal-roofed building, 2. _______ and talking. It was midmorning. Women, says Binayo, "never get five seconds to sit down and rest."
On a hot late afternoon I go with her to the river, carrying an empty jerry can. The trail is steep and in places 3. _______. We scramble down large rocks alongside cacti and thornbushes. After 50 minutes we reach the river—or what is a river at certain times of the year. Now it is a series of black, muddy pools, some barely 4. ________. The banks and rocks are littered with the 5. ________ of donkeys and cows. There are about 40 people at the river, enough so that Binayo decides that the wait might be shorter upstream. The wait is especially long early in the morning, so Binayo usually makes her first trip before it is light, leaving her son Kumacho, a serious-faced little man who looks even younger than his four years, in charge of his younger brothers.
We walk another ten minutes upstream, and Binayo claims a 6. _______ next to a good pool, one fed not only by a dirty puddle just above but also a cleaner stream to the side. Children are jumping on the banks, 7. _______ mud through their feet and stirring up the water. "Please don't jump," Binayo 8. _______ them. "It makes the water dirtier." A donkey steps in to drink from the puddle feeding Binayo's pool. When the donkey leaves, the women at the puddle scoop out some water to clear it, sending the dirty water down to Binayo, who scolds them.
After half an hour it is her turn. She takes her first jerry can and her yellow plastic scoop. Just as she puts her scoop in the water, she looks up to see another donkey plunk its hoof into the pool feeding hers. She 9. _______. But she cannot wait any longer. She does not have the luxury of time.
An hour after we arrive at the river, she has filled two jerry cans—one for her to carry back up, one for me to carry for her. She ties a leather strap around my can and puts it on my back. I am grateful for the smooth leather—Binayo herself uses a coarse rope. Still, the 10. _______ cut into my shoulders. The plastic can is full to the top, and the 50-pound load bounces off my spine as I walk. With difficulty, I make it halfway up. But where the trail turns 11. ______ I can go no farther. Sheepishly, I trade cans with a girl who looks to be about eight, carrying a jerry can half the size of mine. She 12. _____ with the heavier can, and about ten minutes from the top it is too much for her. Binayo takes the heavy jerry can from the girl and puts it on her own back, on top of the one she is carrying. She shoots us both a look of disgust and continues up the mountain, now with nearly 12 gallons of water—a hundred pounds—on her back.
"When we are born, we know that we will have a 13. ______ life," Binayo says, sitting outside a hut in her compound, in front of the cassava she is drying on a goatskin, holding Kumacho, who wears no pants. "It is the culture of Konso from a long time before us." She has never questioned this life, never expected anything different. But soon, for the first time, things are going to change.
When you spend hours hauling water long distances, you measure 14. _____ drop. The average American uses a hundred gallons of water just at home every day; Aylito Binayo makes do with two and a half gallons. Persuading people to use their water for washing is far more difficult when that water is carried up a mountain. And yet sanitation and hygiene matter—proper hand washing alone can cut diarrheal diseases by some 45 percent. Binayo washes her hands with water "maybe once a day," she says. She washes clothes once a year. "We don't even have enough water for drinking—how can we wash our clothes?" she says. She washes her own body only occasionally. A 2007 survey found that not a single Konso household had water with soap or ash (a decent cleanser) near their latrines to wash their hands. Binayo's family recently dug a latrine but cannot afford to buy 15. ______.
ANSWERS- Vocabulary – 1. brew 2. drinking 3. slippery 4. puddles 5. excrement 6. perch 7. squishing 8. admonishes 9. grimaces 10. straps 11. steepest 12. struggles 13. hard 14. every 15. soap
If the millions of women who haul water long distances had a faucet by their door, whole societies could be transformed.
By Tina Rosenberg, National Geographic, April 2010.
drinking puddles excrement struggles hard perch squishing admonishes straps slippery steepest grimaces brew every soap
In much of the developing world, lack of water is at the center of a vicious circle of inequality. Some women in Foro come down to the river five times a day—with one or two of the trips devoted to getting water to make a beer-style home 1. _____ for their husbands. When I first came to Foro, some 60 men were sitting in the shade of a metal-roofed building, 2. _______ and talking. It was midmorning. Women, says Binayo, "never get five seconds to sit down and rest."
On a hot late afternoon I go with her to the river, carrying an empty jerry can. The trail is steep and in places 3. _______. We scramble down large rocks alongside cacti and thornbushes. After 50 minutes we reach the river—or what is a river at certain times of the year. Now it is a series of black, muddy pools, some barely 4. ________. The banks and rocks are littered with the 5. ________ of donkeys and cows. There are about 40 people at the river, enough so that Binayo decides that the wait might be shorter upstream. The wait is especially long early in the morning, so Binayo usually makes her first trip before it is light, leaving her son Kumacho, a serious-faced little man who looks even younger than his four years, in charge of his younger brothers.
We walk another ten minutes upstream, and Binayo claims a 6. _______ next to a good pool, one fed not only by a dirty puddle just above but also a cleaner stream to the side. Children are jumping on the banks, 7. _______ mud through their feet and stirring up the water. "Please don't jump," Binayo 8. _______ them. "It makes the water dirtier." A donkey steps in to drink from the puddle feeding Binayo's pool. When the donkey leaves, the women at the puddle scoop out some water to clear it, sending the dirty water down to Binayo, who scolds them.
After half an hour it is her turn. She takes her first jerry can and her yellow plastic scoop. Just as she puts her scoop in the water, she looks up to see another donkey plunk its hoof into the pool feeding hers. She 9. _______. But she cannot wait any longer. She does not have the luxury of time.
An hour after we arrive at the river, she has filled two jerry cans—one for her to carry back up, one for me to carry for her. She ties a leather strap around my can and puts it on my back. I am grateful for the smooth leather—Binayo herself uses a coarse rope. Still, the 10. _______ cut into my shoulders. The plastic can is full to the top, and the 50-pound load bounces off my spine as I walk. With difficulty, I make it halfway up. But where the trail turns 11. ______ I can go no farther. Sheepishly, I trade cans with a girl who looks to be about eight, carrying a jerry can half the size of mine. She 12. _____ with the heavier can, and about ten minutes from the top it is too much for her. Binayo takes the heavy jerry can from the girl and puts it on her own back, on top of the one she is carrying. She shoots us both a look of disgust and continues up the mountain, now with nearly 12 gallons of water—a hundred pounds—on her back.
"When we are born, we know that we will have a 13. ______ life," Binayo says, sitting outside a hut in her compound, in front of the cassava she is drying on a goatskin, holding Kumacho, who wears no pants. "It is the culture of Konso from a long time before us." She has never questioned this life, never expected anything different. But soon, for the first time, things are going to change.
When you spend hours hauling water long distances, you measure 14. _____ drop. The average American uses a hundred gallons of water just at home every day; Aylito Binayo makes do with two and a half gallons. Persuading people to use their water for washing is far more difficult when that water is carried up a mountain. And yet sanitation and hygiene matter—proper hand washing alone can cut diarrheal diseases by some 45 percent. Binayo washes her hands with water "maybe once a day," she says. She washes clothes once a year. "We don't even have enough water for drinking—how can we wash our clothes?" she says. She washes her own body only occasionally. A 2007 survey found that not a single Konso household had water with soap or ash (a decent cleanser) near their latrines to wash their hands. Binayo's family recently dug a latrine but cannot afford to buy 15. ______.
ANSWERS- Vocabulary – 1. brew 2. drinking 3. slippery 4. puddles 5. excrement 6. perch 7. squishing 8. admonishes 9. grimaces 10. straps 11. steepest 12. struggles 13. hard 14. every 15. soap
SINGAPORE: Global Competitiveness Ranking- No 3.
Sep 10, 2010, STRAITS TIMES
GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS RANKING
Singapore retains No. 3 spot
VOCABULARY
Fill in the blanks using the given helping words.
highest challenges outlook remain place future efficiency anchored competitiveness technologies released crisis financial Nordic sustainable
SINGAPORE has held on to third place in a global competitiveness ranking to remain true to form as the fastest recovering economy post-recession.
It lost out only to Switzerland, which retained top spot, and Sweden, the new No. 2 in the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) annual Global Competitiveness Report, which was 1. _______ in Tianjin, China yesterday.
The United States, still suffering the fallout from the financial 2. _______, fell two places to fourth, having conceded the No.1 ranking to Switzerland last year.
The WEF said that aside from macroeconomic imbalances building up over time in the US, there has been a weakening of the superpower's public and private institutions, as well as 'lingering concerns about the state of its 3. ________ markets'.
4. ________ nations Sweden, Finland (seventh), Denmark (ninth) and Norway (14th) again dominated the top 15, but Asia was also strongly represented by Japan (sixth), Hong Kong (11th) and Taiwan (13th).
The report measures the productivity of an economy and its capacity for 5. ________ growth over the next five to 10 years.
The WEF based its study on publicly available data and a survey of business leaders. This year, more than 13,500 of them from 139 economies were polled.
At No. 3, Singapore remains the 6. _________ ranked Asian economy, and came in tops for both the lack of corruption in the country and government efficiency.
In other separate categories and sub-indices, Singapore also came in tops for the 7. _________ of its goods and labour markets, second for its financial market sophistication and fifth for infrastructure.
But while its competitiveness was 8. _________ by its strong focus on education and providing individuals with the necessary skills in a rapidly changing global economy, Singapore was still found wanting in a few areas.
They include innovation (ninth), business sophistication (15th) and market size, where it placed 41st.
'In order to strengthen its 9. _________ further, Singapore could encourage even stronger adoption of the latest 10. ________ as well as policies that enhance the sophistication of its companies,' added the WEF report.
Looking at the broader picture, Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia University and co-author of the report said that while concerns about the 11. ________ for the global economy remain, policymakers 'must not lose sight of long-term competitiveness fundamentals amid short-term 12. _______'.
'For economies to 13. _________ competitive, they must ensure that they have in 14. ______ those factors driving the productivity enhancements on which their present and 15. _______ prosperity is built.'
ANSWERS- Vocabulary- 1. released 2. crisis 3. financial 4. Nordic 5. sustainable
6. highest 7. efficiency 8. anchored 9. competitiveness 10. technologies
11. outlook 12. challenges 13. remain 14. place 15. future
GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS RANKING
Singapore retains No. 3 spot
VOCABULARY
Fill in the blanks using the given helping words.
highest challenges outlook remain place future efficiency anchored competitiveness technologies released crisis financial Nordic sustainable
SINGAPORE has held on to third place in a global competitiveness ranking to remain true to form as the fastest recovering economy post-recession.
It lost out only to Switzerland, which retained top spot, and Sweden, the new No. 2 in the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) annual Global Competitiveness Report, which was 1. _______ in Tianjin, China yesterday.
The United States, still suffering the fallout from the financial 2. _______, fell two places to fourth, having conceded the No.1 ranking to Switzerland last year.
The WEF said that aside from macroeconomic imbalances building up over time in the US, there has been a weakening of the superpower's public and private institutions, as well as 'lingering concerns about the state of its 3. ________ markets'.
4. ________ nations Sweden, Finland (seventh), Denmark (ninth) and Norway (14th) again dominated the top 15, but Asia was also strongly represented by Japan (sixth), Hong Kong (11th) and Taiwan (13th).
The report measures the productivity of an economy and its capacity for 5. ________ growth over the next five to 10 years.
The WEF based its study on publicly available data and a survey of business leaders. This year, more than 13,500 of them from 139 economies were polled.
At No. 3, Singapore remains the 6. _________ ranked Asian economy, and came in tops for both the lack of corruption in the country and government efficiency.
In other separate categories and sub-indices, Singapore also came in tops for the 7. _________ of its goods and labour markets, second for its financial market sophistication and fifth for infrastructure.
But while its competitiveness was 8. _________ by its strong focus on education and providing individuals with the necessary skills in a rapidly changing global economy, Singapore was still found wanting in a few areas.
They include innovation (ninth), business sophistication (15th) and market size, where it placed 41st.
'In order to strengthen its 9. _________ further, Singapore could encourage even stronger adoption of the latest 10. ________ as well as policies that enhance the sophistication of its companies,' added the WEF report.
Looking at the broader picture, Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia University and co-author of the report said that while concerns about the 11. ________ for the global economy remain, policymakers 'must not lose sight of long-term competitiveness fundamentals amid short-term 12. _______'.
'For economies to 13. _________ competitive, they must ensure that they have in 14. ______ those factors driving the productivity enhancements on which their present and 15. _______ prosperity is built.'
ANSWERS- Vocabulary- 1. released 2. crisis 3. financial 4. Nordic 5. sustainable
6. highest 7. efficiency 8. anchored 9. competitiveness 10. technologies
11. outlook 12. challenges 13. remain 14. place 15. future
A GEISHA'S JOURNEY
A Geisha's Journey
Readers’ Digest, August 2010.
Young Komomo dreams of becoming a geisha. She sacrifices her youth to enter a refined but very demanding life. Welcome to her secret world
There was so much I had to learn as a maiko, and so many duties to perform. Every day I 1. ________(face) with things I didn’t understand; sometimes it seemed as if the streets of Miyagawa-cho 2. ______(pepper) with land mines just waiting to explode in my face. It was like being at school 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A maiko’s schedule is fixed. In the evening, I 3. _______(attend) ozashiki – a ceremony or party – from 4. _______ six until late. Ozashiki usually take place at one of the tea houses, although they are sometimes held in restaurants and hotels. Geiko 5. _______(hire) to entertain and perform for the guests, and we’re also expected to pour drinks and enter 6. ______ conversation.
A large part of my day 7. ______(spend) in practice. As a maiko, I was expected to learn to sing and play the shamisen, play 8. ________(rhythm) instruments, perform the tea ceremony, and, of course, dance. Dance practice was the one I had to concentrate on most. A maiko 9. ______(be+to) learn two different dances for every month of the year to perform 10. ______ the customers at ozashiki.
Learning just one dance took a long time. Each practice session was between 45 minutes and an hour, and I 11. _____(be) to go through three or four sessions to figure 12. ______ the basic steps of a single dance. Important dances like “The Ballad of Gion” or “Four Seasons in Kyoto” took me more than ten sessions to master.
As the youngest student, it was also my responsibility to look after the dance master. That meant I 13. ______(be+to+pour) her a new cup of tea when her cup was empty, and make sure she wasn’t too hot or too cold. To show my respect, I also 14. _______(be+ to +wait )until all of the older students, whom we call sempai, 15. ________(greet) her before I 16. ______(be) say hello.
When I first started out, I 17. ______(terrify) of my sempai; they were always getting mad at me and it seemed as if I couldn’t do anything right around them. Because of nerves, I 18. _______(be+sometime+ greet) them before the master, or the customers. The sempai 19. __________(be+get+angry) at me for not greeting the master or the customers first, 20. _____(make) me even more fearful of them.
Looking back, I would say that about 90 percent of my maiko education involved just trying to get through one difficult day after another. Every morning I would wake up around ten. After dressing in my less formal kimono, I had practice in the performing arts, and at lunchtime, I paid visits to each of the almost 40 tea houses in Miyagawa-cho, where many of the ozashiki are held.
At one of my first ozashiki, my sempai asked me in front of the customers what dance I would like to perform. When I cheerfully answered, she suddenly got mad. I realise now that her anger was part of my hanamachi education – in order to appear humble and modest, I should have declined to answer.
Strange though it may seem, becoming a full geiko had never crossed my mind. Over those years, I 21. ______(give) a lot of thought to what I wanted to do when my period of service was over. I already 22. _______(be)a lot of plans: study abroad, learn English, and perhaps research Japanese culture and folklore.
Then, two months before I 23. ______( suppose) to leave the hanamachi, I realised how much I loved this world with all its culture and tradition. I thought about all the things I still 24. ______(be+ to + learn)and felt ashamed that I had actually thought I would achieve everything I wanted in just six years. I made up my mind to become a geiko. I informed Koito-san and we decided I 25. _______(be+ become) a full geiko on December 8, 2005.
Before that, however, was the period of sakko, which in our geiko house lasts for 15 days. Sakko is the last hairstyle in the maiko stage. I would wear a black formal kimono for five days, then a coloured one for five days, and then the black one again.
Now that I have become a geiko, one of the observations I made was that ozashiki are completely different for geiko and maiko.
Maiko are often just seen as stereotypes; nobody bothers to look beyond the make-up to the real person beneath. A geiko, on the other hand, is seen as an individual with a name and a unique personality. For a maiko, the most important thing is to match the image that people have of us, but as a geiko, it’s OK for us to let our own character show.
After all my worry about becoming a geiko, I finally felt liberated.
ANSWERS – Grammar- 1. was faced 2. were peppered 3. would attend 4. around
5. are hired 6. into 7. was spent 8. rhythmical 9. has to 10. for 11. had 12. out
13. had to pout 14. had to wait 15. had to greet 16. could 17. was terrified
18. would sometimes greet 19. would get angry 20. making 21. had given
22. had 23. was supposed 24. had to learn 25. would become
Readers’ Digest, August 2010.
Young Komomo dreams of becoming a geisha. She sacrifices her youth to enter a refined but very demanding life. Welcome to her secret world
There was so much I had to learn as a maiko, and so many duties to perform. Every day I 1. ________(face) with things I didn’t understand; sometimes it seemed as if the streets of Miyagawa-cho 2. ______(pepper) with land mines just waiting to explode in my face. It was like being at school 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A maiko’s schedule is fixed. In the evening, I 3. _______(attend) ozashiki – a ceremony or party – from 4. _______ six until late. Ozashiki usually take place at one of the tea houses, although they are sometimes held in restaurants and hotels. Geiko 5. _______(hire) to entertain and perform for the guests, and we’re also expected to pour drinks and enter 6. ______ conversation.
A large part of my day 7. ______(spend) in practice. As a maiko, I was expected to learn to sing and play the shamisen, play 8. ________(rhythm) instruments, perform the tea ceremony, and, of course, dance. Dance practice was the one I had to concentrate on most. A maiko 9. ______(be+to) learn two different dances for every month of the year to perform 10. ______ the customers at ozashiki.
Learning just one dance took a long time. Each practice session was between 45 minutes and an hour, and I 11. _____(be) to go through three or four sessions to figure 12. ______ the basic steps of a single dance. Important dances like “The Ballad of Gion” or “Four Seasons in Kyoto” took me more than ten sessions to master.
As the youngest student, it was also my responsibility to look after the dance master. That meant I 13. ______(be+to+pour) her a new cup of tea when her cup was empty, and make sure she wasn’t too hot or too cold. To show my respect, I also 14. _______(be+ to +wait )until all of the older students, whom we call sempai, 15. ________(greet) her before I 16. ______(be) say hello.
When I first started out, I 17. ______(terrify) of my sempai; they were always getting mad at me and it seemed as if I couldn’t do anything right around them. Because of nerves, I 18. _______(be+sometime+ greet) them before the master, or the customers. The sempai 19. __________(be+get+angry) at me for not greeting the master or the customers first, 20. _____(make) me even more fearful of them.
Looking back, I would say that about 90 percent of my maiko education involved just trying to get through one difficult day after another. Every morning I would wake up around ten. After dressing in my less formal kimono, I had practice in the performing arts, and at lunchtime, I paid visits to each of the almost 40 tea houses in Miyagawa-cho, where many of the ozashiki are held.
At one of my first ozashiki, my sempai asked me in front of the customers what dance I would like to perform. When I cheerfully answered, she suddenly got mad. I realise now that her anger was part of my hanamachi education – in order to appear humble and modest, I should have declined to answer.
Strange though it may seem, becoming a full geiko had never crossed my mind. Over those years, I 21. ______(give) a lot of thought to what I wanted to do when my period of service was over. I already 22. _______(be)a lot of plans: study abroad, learn English, and perhaps research Japanese culture and folklore.
Then, two months before I 23. ______( suppose) to leave the hanamachi, I realised how much I loved this world with all its culture and tradition. I thought about all the things I still 24. ______(be+ to + learn)and felt ashamed that I had actually thought I would achieve everything I wanted in just six years. I made up my mind to become a geiko. I informed Koito-san and we decided I 25. _______(be+ become) a full geiko on December 8, 2005.
Before that, however, was the period of sakko, which in our geiko house lasts for 15 days. Sakko is the last hairstyle in the maiko stage. I would wear a black formal kimono for five days, then a coloured one for five days, and then the black one again.
Now that I have become a geiko, one of the observations I made was that ozashiki are completely different for geiko and maiko.
Maiko are often just seen as stereotypes; nobody bothers to look beyond the make-up to the real person beneath. A geiko, on the other hand, is seen as an individual with a name and a unique personality. For a maiko, the most important thing is to match the image that people have of us, but as a geiko, it’s OK for us to let our own character show.
After all my worry about becoming a geiko, I finally felt liberated.
ANSWERS – Grammar- 1. was faced 2. were peppered 3. would attend 4. around
5. are hired 6. into 7. was spent 8. rhythmical 9. has to 10. for 11. had 12. out
13. had to pout 14. had to wait 15. had to greet 16. could 17. was terrified
18. would sometimes greet 19. would get angry 20. making 21. had given
22. had 23. was supposed 24. had to learn 25. would become
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Aug 10, 2010, STRAITS TIMES
NDP 2010
White -hot PASSION
white : pervading and everlasting purity and virtue
Looking smart in their white ceremonial uniforms, the Republic of Singapore Navy's Guard of Honour contingent marching past the old Supreme Court.
GRAMMAR
STANDING ramrod straight, Lieutenant Li Yong Rui cut an imposing figure in his white No. 1 uniform - the ceremonial outfit he wears at official functions.
He 1. _______(bark) a command.
On cue, a powerful bellow 2. _______(come) from a 25-pounder cannon - one of six at the War Memorial Park along Beach Road near the Padang - as it belched a thick cloud of white smoke.
The cannons 3. ________(fire) off at 60-second intervals as President S R Nathan 4. _________(inspect) the front row of the marching contingents over at the Padang. It was a moment Lt Li, commander of the presidential gun salute, will not forget.
'Right before I give the command, I can't describe the feeling. I'm thinking, 'The President is actually here. The whole sequence of events 5. _______(go) to be started by me',' said Lt Li, 22.
'And when it actually fires, it's so powerful and loud, it feels so awesome.'
He is no novice at the National Day Parade, 6. _______(participate) on three previous occasions.
But as the commander of the gun salute, yesterday's was the best, he said. 'The salute is for both the country and the President. I 7. _______(shock) and honoured to be chosen,' he added.
Precision and order were on display throughout the parade, from the RSAF's crowd-pleasing aerial display to the marching of the 30 contingents.
Wild cheers 8. _______(greet) the mobile column, which made a return after five years.
As the 210 battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles trundled past City Hall, spectators 9. ______(whip) out their phones and cameras to record the impressive display of military might featuring vehicles like the Leopard 2A4 main battle tank.
'This is my first time 10. _______(celebrate) NDP at the Padang and my first time being so close to all these vehicles. It's very exciting,' said Mr Govindaswamy Lakshmanan, 43, an executive at a garment manufacturing company.
Just moments before the mobile column made its way 11. ______(pass) the parade ground, Captain Michael Luo, 25, marched along the same stretch as part of the Guard of Honour contingent from the Republic of Singapore Navy.
'Standing on the parade ground, representing not just the navy but also the Singapore Armed Forces, I'm at a place where many people would want to be, but not many get the chance to be there. I'm honoured to 12. _______(select),' he said.
Match the following meanings with the correct word form the passage.
1. Very rigid or straight and stiff. ___________
2. Impressive in size and bearing; dignity. _______________
3. To gush out _________
4. A representative group _____________
5. A loud shout ___________
6. Great wonder, marvel ____________
7. A connected series of events __________
8. Beginner _____________
9. Accurate _____________
10. Haul, wheel , roll, spin _____________
11. In the air ___________
12. Moveable ________________
13. A powerful army ___________
Comprehension
1. Give two words to show the appearance of the Lieutenant Li .
2. What happened when the 25 pounder cannon was fired?
3. Explain which moment will be etched in Lieutenant Li’ s memory for a long time?
4. What was the spectators’ reaction when the tanks and armoured vehicles trundled past City hall?
5. Why did captain Micheal Luo felt honoured?
ANSWERS
Grammar – 1. Barked 2. Came 3. Were found 4. Inspected 5. Is going 6. Having participated 7. Was shocked 8. Greeted 9. Whipped 10. Celebrating 11. Past 12. To have been selected
Vocabulary – 1. Ramrod straight 2. Imposing figure 3. Belched 4. Contingents 5. A powerful bellow 6. Awesome 7. Sequence of events 8. Novice 9. Precision 10. Trundled 11. Aerial 12. Mobile 13. Military might
NDP 2010
White -hot PASSION
white : pervading and everlasting purity and virtue
Looking smart in their white ceremonial uniforms, the Republic of Singapore Navy's Guard of Honour contingent marching past the old Supreme Court.
GRAMMAR
STANDING ramrod straight, Lieutenant Li Yong Rui cut an imposing figure in his white No. 1 uniform - the ceremonial outfit he wears at official functions.
He 1. _______(bark) a command.
On cue, a powerful bellow 2. _______(come) from a 25-pounder cannon - one of six at the War Memorial Park along Beach Road near the Padang - as it belched a thick cloud of white smoke.
The cannons 3. ________(fire) off at 60-second intervals as President S R Nathan 4. _________(inspect) the front row of the marching contingents over at the Padang. It was a moment Lt Li, commander of the presidential gun salute, will not forget.
'Right before I give the command, I can't describe the feeling. I'm thinking, 'The President is actually here. The whole sequence of events 5. _______(go) to be started by me',' said Lt Li, 22.
'And when it actually fires, it's so powerful and loud, it feels so awesome.'
He is no novice at the National Day Parade, 6. _______(participate) on three previous occasions.
But as the commander of the gun salute, yesterday's was the best, he said. 'The salute is for both the country and the President. I 7. _______(shock) and honoured to be chosen,' he added.
Precision and order were on display throughout the parade, from the RSAF's crowd-pleasing aerial display to the marching of the 30 contingents.
Wild cheers 8. _______(greet) the mobile column, which made a return after five years.
As the 210 battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles trundled past City Hall, spectators 9. ______(whip) out their phones and cameras to record the impressive display of military might featuring vehicles like the Leopard 2A4 main battle tank.
'This is my first time 10. _______(celebrate) NDP at the Padang and my first time being so close to all these vehicles. It's very exciting,' said Mr Govindaswamy Lakshmanan, 43, an executive at a garment manufacturing company.
Just moments before the mobile column made its way 11. ______(pass) the parade ground, Captain Michael Luo, 25, marched along the same stretch as part of the Guard of Honour contingent from the Republic of Singapore Navy.
'Standing on the parade ground, representing not just the navy but also the Singapore Armed Forces, I'm at a place where many people would want to be, but not many get the chance to be there. I'm honoured to 12. _______(select),' he said.
Match the following meanings with the correct word form the passage.
1. Very rigid or straight and stiff. ___________
2. Impressive in size and bearing; dignity. _______________
3. To gush out _________
4. A representative group _____________
5. A loud shout ___________
6. Great wonder, marvel ____________
7. A connected series of events __________
8. Beginner _____________
9. Accurate _____________
10. Haul, wheel , roll, spin _____________
11. In the air ___________
12. Moveable ________________
13. A powerful army ___________
Comprehension
1. Give two words to show the appearance of the Lieutenant Li .
2. What happened when the 25 pounder cannon was fired?
3. Explain which moment will be etched in Lieutenant Li’ s memory for a long time?
4. What was the spectators’ reaction when the tanks and armoured vehicles trundled past City hall?
5. Why did captain Micheal Luo felt honoured?
ANSWERS
Grammar – 1. Barked 2. Came 3. Were found 4. Inspected 5. Is going 6. Having participated 7. Was shocked 8. Greeted 9. Whipped 10. Celebrating 11. Past 12. To have been selected
Vocabulary – 1. Ramrod straight 2. Imposing figure 3. Belched 4. Contingents 5. A powerful bellow 6. Awesome 7. Sequence of events 8. Novice 9. Precision 10. Trundled 11. Aerial 12. Mobile 13. Military might
NATIONAL DAY PARADE 2010
Aug 10, 2010, STRAITS TIMES
THIS IS home TRULY
A magical night as NDP returns to the Padang, while those in heartland join in celebrations too
FOUR minutes and six seconds.
Time seemed to hold its breath while the nation sang Home together last night, as Singapore's 45th birthday celebrations drew to a resounding close.
'This is Home truly, where I know I must be,' Singaporeans 1. ________(sing) along with homegrown singer Kit Chan. 'Where my dreams wait for me, where that river always flows...'
Ms Chan, a slender presence on a crescent-shaped stage, set the scene for the One Voice moment at 2010 hours, or 8.10pm.
Following Home, the 26,500 people at the Padang, as well as thousands in the surrounding Marina Bay area and in the heartland, 2. ________(rise) to their feet.
In one voice, they 3. __________(recite) the National Pledge and sang the National Anthem.
The night ended with fireworks going off at the Padang and nine other locations in the city, as all-time favourite national songs like Count On Me, Singapore and We Are Singapore played.
Indeed, it was the music of Singapore that 4. _______(draw) the nation together at its 2010 birthday party, which returned to the Padang for a magical night after an absence of five years.
The celebrations come at a time when Singapore is riding high on confidence.
As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong 5. _________(note) in his National Day Message on Sunday, the economy has rebounded strongly from last year's recession, many jobs have been created, and unemployment is low.
The exceptional performance, Mr Lee said, is the fruit of Singaporeans' united response during the crisis, which enabled the country to take advantage of improved global conditions.
If music set the mood for yesterday's celebrations, what 6. _______(stand) out was how 7. _______(unite) was also a theme.
The parade 8. ________(celebrate) not only at the 9. ________(history) City Hall site in the city, but also at the doorsteps of people's homes in Eunos, Sengkang, Bishan, Choa Chu Kang and Woodlands.
The 21/2-hour parade featured live feeds to the simultaneous celebrations at the five heartland locations, where more than 80,000 people had gathered in open fields, allowing Singaporeans to be almost together in body as well as spirit.
'To sing along with everyone else in the Padang is great,' said jewellery designer Manoj Jaswani, 45, who was at Bishan with his family of three.
'We may not be where the parade is, but the party here is just as big and the atmosphere 10. _______(feel) the same.'
Spectators started gathering as early at 3.30pm at the Padang site, which 11. ______(festoon) with flags in line with this year's parade theme of Live Our Dreams, Fly Our Flag.
After weeks in which the weather 12. _______(swing) from dismal rain to scorching heat, it was a fine evening. It did not rain, and many were seen furiously fanning themselves to keep cool.
The parade kicked off with the daredevil Red Lions parachutists wowing the crowd. The marching contingents that followed also got people onto their feet.
Cheers 13. _______(greet) the arrival of Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, 14. ________(follow) by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong a little later.
A high point for the crowd was the four-minute aerial display 15. _________(feature) Singapore's latest F-15 fighter jets and the Gulfstream 550 airborne early warning aircraft.
Making a welcome comeback was the mobile column, an impressive, 210-strong convoy that trundled down St Andrew's Road and, in smaller groups, into the five HDB estates.
Military might made way for grace when the high-energy four-act show got under way. The 90-minute show directed by Dick Lee was divided into acts exploring the ideals symbolised by the red, white, crescent moon, and stars of the Singapore flag.
Los Angeles-based Singaporean singer-songwriter Corrinne May got the crowd onto their feet when she sang her tribute to the nation, Song For Singapore.
As dusk descended, the seating galleries turned into a sea of twinkling colours as spectators waved flag-shaped clappers cum torches, supplied in their fun totes. The bags this year came in designs by seven of the country's top designers.
A light display bathed the stately columns of City Hall in vibrant shades, while a stone's throw away, the waters of Marina Bay shimmered in the neon lights of the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort.
Retiree Chua Gek Soon, 63, was dazzled by the moon- and star-shaped fireworks. 'Marina Bay looks so beautiful now,' said the retiree, who was at the Padang with his wife. 'Singapore has achieved so much within such a short time.'
Singapore Airlines flight attendant Celine Poh, 31, rushed to the Padang after landing at Changi Airport from Ho Chi Minh City, just an hour before the parade.
'Rushing here is really nothing compared with being back here to celebrate the nation's birthday with my fellow Singaporeans,' she said.
She was, after all, Home.
5 magical moments AT THE NATIONAL DAY PARADE
1 ONE VOICE 2010
At exactly 8.10pm, 26,500 spectators at the Padang recited the Pledge and sang the Anthem. They joined voices with 80,000 residents taking part in heartland festivities, and with many more people across the island.
2 AERIAL DISPLAY
The newest additions to Singapore's air force took to the skies yesterday. Two sleek F-15 fighter jets streaked over Marina Bay Sands and executed a 'shackle' manoeuvre, showcasing the aircraft's ability to execute sharp turns.
3 COLOURFUL COSTUMES
Vibrant, cutting-edge, coordinated and 'wow'. The Padang exploded in a riot of colours right from the show's opening act, which featured the multifaceted costumes of Singapore's racial and cultural groups.
4 FIREWORKS OVER THE BAY
The skies above Marina Bay burst into myriad colours as fireworks were set off at an unprecedented nine locations, including the Esplanade and City Hall. Spectators were captivated by the spectacular pyrotechnics.
5 CITY HALL LIGHT SHOW
City Hall was turned into a huge canvas. More than 20 patterns like stars, flowers and futuristic circuit boards were projected on the building, which has witnessed momentous events since Singapore's independence in 1965.
Match the following meanings with the correct word given in the passage.
1. Slim, not fat. ______________
2. Originated from the country of birth or citizenship ___________
3. Having a sense of the supernatural ____________
4. A central region where most people live ___________
5. Enjoying great success ____________
6. A period of time where business is poor __________
7. Recovered very fast __________
8. A situation where there is profit or gain __________
9. Extraordinarily good achievement ___________
10. Celebrations that are going on at the same time ____________
11. Shown on mass media ___________
12. Real time data shown on mass media ___________
13. Very hot __________
14. Causing the audience to marvel _________
15. Depressing and dull rain _________
16. A group of soldiers escorting for protection _____________
17. To represent by a sign ____________
18. A payment as an acknowledgement ________________
19. A large area of bright flashing colours ___________
20. To impress deeply _____________
21. Celebrations ___________
22. A lot of colours _______________
23. Lively, full of energy _____________
24. Very modern, using the latest technology _______________
25. Smooth and shining ___________
26. To move swiftly ____________
27. To move around _____________
28. Carry out, perform , evasive movement ____________
29. Exhibiting to a crowd of people _________
30. Attire worn by performers that show many aspects of the races and cultures ______________________
ANSWERS
Grammar- 1. sang 2. rose 3. recited 4. drew 5. noted 6. stood 7. unity 8. was celebrated
9. historic 10. feels 11. was festooned 12. swung 13. greeted 14. followed 15. featuring
Vocabulary 1. slender 2. homegrown 3. a magical night 4. heartland 5.riding high 6. recession 7. rebound 8. take advantage 9. exceptional performance 10. simultaneous celebrations 11. featured 12. live feeds 13. scorching heat 14. wowing the crowds 15. dismal rain 16. convoy 17. symbolised 18. tribute to the nation 19. a sea of twinkling colours 20. dazzled 21. festivities 22. a riot of colours 23. vibrant 24. cutting-edge 25. sleek 26. streaked 27. manoeuvre 28. execute 29. showcasing 30. multi-faceted costumes
THIS IS home TRULY
A magical night as NDP returns to the Padang, while those in heartland join in celebrations too
FOUR minutes and six seconds.
Time seemed to hold its breath while the nation sang Home together last night, as Singapore's 45th birthday celebrations drew to a resounding close.
'This is Home truly, where I know I must be,' Singaporeans 1. ________(sing) along with homegrown singer Kit Chan. 'Where my dreams wait for me, where that river always flows...'
Ms Chan, a slender presence on a crescent-shaped stage, set the scene for the One Voice moment at 2010 hours, or 8.10pm.
Following Home, the 26,500 people at the Padang, as well as thousands in the surrounding Marina Bay area and in the heartland, 2. ________(rise) to their feet.
In one voice, they 3. __________(recite) the National Pledge and sang the National Anthem.
The night ended with fireworks going off at the Padang and nine other locations in the city, as all-time favourite national songs like Count On Me, Singapore and We Are Singapore played.
Indeed, it was the music of Singapore that 4. _______(draw) the nation together at its 2010 birthday party, which returned to the Padang for a magical night after an absence of five years.
The celebrations come at a time when Singapore is riding high on confidence.
As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong 5. _________(note) in his National Day Message on Sunday, the economy has rebounded strongly from last year's recession, many jobs have been created, and unemployment is low.
The exceptional performance, Mr Lee said, is the fruit of Singaporeans' united response during the crisis, which enabled the country to take advantage of improved global conditions.
If music set the mood for yesterday's celebrations, what 6. _______(stand) out was how 7. _______(unite) was also a theme.
The parade 8. ________(celebrate) not only at the 9. ________(history) City Hall site in the city, but also at the doorsteps of people's homes in Eunos, Sengkang, Bishan, Choa Chu Kang and Woodlands.
The 21/2-hour parade featured live feeds to the simultaneous celebrations at the five heartland locations, where more than 80,000 people had gathered in open fields, allowing Singaporeans to be almost together in body as well as spirit.
'To sing along with everyone else in the Padang is great,' said jewellery designer Manoj Jaswani, 45, who was at Bishan with his family of three.
'We may not be where the parade is, but the party here is just as big and the atmosphere 10. _______(feel) the same.'
Spectators started gathering as early at 3.30pm at the Padang site, which 11. ______(festoon) with flags in line with this year's parade theme of Live Our Dreams, Fly Our Flag.
After weeks in which the weather 12. _______(swing) from dismal rain to scorching heat, it was a fine evening. It did not rain, and many were seen furiously fanning themselves to keep cool.
The parade kicked off with the daredevil Red Lions parachutists wowing the crowd. The marching contingents that followed also got people onto their feet.
Cheers 13. _______(greet) the arrival of Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, 14. ________(follow) by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong a little later.
A high point for the crowd was the four-minute aerial display 15. _________(feature) Singapore's latest F-15 fighter jets and the Gulfstream 550 airborne early warning aircraft.
Making a welcome comeback was the mobile column, an impressive, 210-strong convoy that trundled down St Andrew's Road and, in smaller groups, into the five HDB estates.
Military might made way for grace when the high-energy four-act show got under way. The 90-minute show directed by Dick Lee was divided into acts exploring the ideals symbolised by the red, white, crescent moon, and stars of the Singapore flag.
Los Angeles-based Singaporean singer-songwriter Corrinne May got the crowd onto their feet when she sang her tribute to the nation, Song For Singapore.
As dusk descended, the seating galleries turned into a sea of twinkling colours as spectators waved flag-shaped clappers cum torches, supplied in their fun totes. The bags this year came in designs by seven of the country's top designers.
A light display bathed the stately columns of City Hall in vibrant shades, while a stone's throw away, the waters of Marina Bay shimmered in the neon lights of the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort.
Retiree Chua Gek Soon, 63, was dazzled by the moon- and star-shaped fireworks. 'Marina Bay looks so beautiful now,' said the retiree, who was at the Padang with his wife. 'Singapore has achieved so much within such a short time.'
Singapore Airlines flight attendant Celine Poh, 31, rushed to the Padang after landing at Changi Airport from Ho Chi Minh City, just an hour before the parade.
'Rushing here is really nothing compared with being back here to celebrate the nation's birthday with my fellow Singaporeans,' she said.
She was, after all, Home.
5 magical moments AT THE NATIONAL DAY PARADE
1 ONE VOICE 2010
At exactly 8.10pm, 26,500 spectators at the Padang recited the Pledge and sang the Anthem. They joined voices with 80,000 residents taking part in heartland festivities, and with many more people across the island.
2 AERIAL DISPLAY
The newest additions to Singapore's air force took to the skies yesterday. Two sleek F-15 fighter jets streaked over Marina Bay Sands and executed a 'shackle' manoeuvre, showcasing the aircraft's ability to execute sharp turns.
3 COLOURFUL COSTUMES
Vibrant, cutting-edge, coordinated and 'wow'. The Padang exploded in a riot of colours right from the show's opening act, which featured the multifaceted costumes of Singapore's racial and cultural groups.
4 FIREWORKS OVER THE BAY
The skies above Marina Bay burst into myriad colours as fireworks were set off at an unprecedented nine locations, including the Esplanade and City Hall. Spectators were captivated by the spectacular pyrotechnics.
5 CITY HALL LIGHT SHOW
City Hall was turned into a huge canvas. More than 20 patterns like stars, flowers and futuristic circuit boards were projected on the building, which has witnessed momentous events since Singapore's independence in 1965.
Match the following meanings with the correct word given in the passage.
1. Slim, not fat. ______________
2. Originated from the country of birth or citizenship ___________
3. Having a sense of the supernatural ____________
4. A central region where most people live ___________
5. Enjoying great success ____________
6. A period of time where business is poor __________
7. Recovered very fast __________
8. A situation where there is profit or gain __________
9. Extraordinarily good achievement ___________
10. Celebrations that are going on at the same time ____________
11. Shown on mass media ___________
12. Real time data shown on mass media ___________
13. Very hot __________
14. Causing the audience to marvel _________
15. Depressing and dull rain _________
16. A group of soldiers escorting for protection _____________
17. To represent by a sign ____________
18. A payment as an acknowledgement ________________
19. A large area of bright flashing colours ___________
20. To impress deeply _____________
21. Celebrations ___________
22. A lot of colours _______________
23. Lively, full of energy _____________
24. Very modern, using the latest technology _______________
25. Smooth and shining ___________
26. To move swiftly ____________
27. To move around _____________
28. Carry out, perform , evasive movement ____________
29. Exhibiting to a crowd of people _________
30. Attire worn by performers that show many aspects of the races and cultures ______________________
ANSWERS
Grammar- 1. sang 2. rose 3. recited 4. drew 5. noted 6. stood 7. unity 8. was celebrated
9. historic 10. feels 11. was festooned 12. swung 13. greeted 14. followed 15. featuring
Vocabulary 1. slender 2. homegrown 3. a magical night 4. heartland 5.riding high 6. recession 7. rebound 8. take advantage 9. exceptional performance 10. simultaneous celebrations 11. featured 12. live feeds 13. scorching heat 14. wowing the crowds 15. dismal rain 16. convoy 17. symbolised 18. tribute to the nation 19. a sea of twinkling colours 20. dazzled 21. festivities 22. a riot of colours 23. vibrant 24. cutting-edge 25. sleek 26. streaked 27. manoeuvre 28. execute 29. showcasing 30. multi-faceted costumes
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