Singapore dreamers

Tan Yong Soon compiled his cohort's real-life stories about rising from humble beginnings, persevering and then living the dream



THIS is Friends, the Singapore version, with all the ingredients of an inspiring reality TV series.

It is the engaging life stories of a cohort of 24 schoolmates (from Raffles Institution and National Junior College) and national service friends, most from humble backgrounds, and how they went through thick and thin for almost 40 years to pursue the Singapore Dream.

Among them is the girl who grew up in a two-room flat whose parents were gamblers. Life was so miserable that she and her siblings had to 'borrow' food from neighbours. They also had to bathe in their neighbour's flat because power and water supplies were frequently cut off due to unpaid utilities bills.

Through sheer determination and hard work, that girl broke out of the bleak cycle of poverty and despair. Today, Engelin Teh is a Senior Counsel, an honour bestowed on Singapore lawyers who excel in their area of practice. She runs her own law firm.

Then, there is the Siglap boy who became a doctor. A two-week study trip to Minamata in Japan - where an entire fishing community was horribly stricken by mercury poisoning - shaped his decision to specialise in neurology and dedicate his life and career to serving the community, first in the medical field and now in politics.

Today, Dr Balaji Sadasivan is the Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Information, Communication and the Arts.

There is also the Raffles Institution (RI) boy who ventured out of the comfort zone to join the global oilfield services company, Schlumberger. For 26 years, he worked in rough and tough conditions in oilfields in strange countries.

During the 1998 riots in Jakarta, he supervised the evacuation of 40 women and children to Singapore by charter plane.

Lim Chin Leong is today his company's chairman for the Asia region, based in Beijing. Despite having lived outside Singapore for his entire working life, he remains proud to be Singaporean. His son recently completed full-time national service.

The common link among them is that they are friends of Tan Yong Soon, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

He has recounted and compiled their life experiences in a book, Living The Singapore Dream, which will be launched on Monday.

The anecdote-rich book, which is published under the auspices of the Harvard Singapore Foundation and sponsored by Keppel Corporation, contains what Lord Ronald Oxburgh, deputy chairman of the Science and Engineering Research Council Board at A*Star, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, describes as 'modern day parables'.

The author hopes these 'parables' would be useful to his target audience - upper secondary, junior college and university students and those newly embarked on their careers. That is why he has an arrangement with the book's sponsor to give 10 copies to every secondary school, JC, polytechnic and university.

Tan, who turned 50 when he started on the book, told Life!: 'I would be very happy if enough people read these real-life stories of Singaporeans, actually ordinary people, who have achieved some degree of success.'

As he puts it in his book: 'The ordinariness of our achievements makes our experiences perhaps more useful to the majority of readers, who are likely to live lives that will not be exalted.'

Role models of hope

THE book has one important ingredient: Hope. The success of Tan's generation gives hope to the present one. The friends whose tales he tells candidly are, in effect, role models of hope.

'One point I made in my book is that hope and memory are where the home is,' he said.

'The experiences of my friends show that you may fail, or you may not do well in certain things, you can pick yourself up, try again. To succeed, you need not be a scholar, or have first class honours or be born rich.'

Today, those in his cohort are well- known public figures in their fields - from lawyer, politician, military leader and businessman to investment banker, entrepreneur, consultant, scientist and others.

Their lives parallel Singapore's development. As Tan said: 'We were struggling in the 1960s and 1970s, plunging headlong into the 1980s, consolidating in the 1990s and now maturing and reassessing ourselves at the turn of the century.'

Despite his job as permanent secretary, he managed to finish the book in two years, from 2005 to last year.

When he started work on the book in 2005, there was an outbreak of dengue haemorrhagic fever which saw the number of cases soaring to 14,000. He chaired a committee of permanent secretaries and chief executive officers that supported a ministerial steering panel on dengue. Last year, the number of cases dropped to 3,000, or 50 cases a week by the end of the year.

In 2005-2006, he was also involved in a review of the Water Masterplan, which put in place programmes and strategies to ensure that Singapore can be self sufficient in water, if need be. With the completion of the construction of the Ulu Pandan Newater Plant last month, Newater now meets 15 per cent of Singapore's water demand. This is ahead of the original target of 2010.

Son of a hawker

TAN himself exemplifies the successful attainment of the Singapore Dream. His father was a hawker in Chinatown's Sago Street and, as a child, he had to help out at the stall at night.

A Tiong Bahru Primary School pupil, he worked his way to RI and then to National Junior College. After his A levels, he served his national service, was commissioned as an officer and then went on a Public Service Commission scholarship to Cambridge University.

He graduated from Cambridge with a BA (Hons) and an MA. He also has an MBA from the National University of Singapore and an MPA from Harvard, where he also attended the Advanced Management Program.

He took up a career in the Singapore Armed Forces and rose to the rank of Brigadier General before joining the Administrative Service. He served as principal private secretary to then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, deputy secretary in the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Finance, and CEO of the Urban Redevelopment Authority before taking up his current appointment.

The germ of the book was seeded in October 2004 when he was invited by The Chinese High (now Hwa Chong Institution) to speak at his son's graduation. As he recalled in his book: 'I spoke to the students about the value of friendships forged in school and the need to treasure and nurture such friendships...

'I stressed that it was important for them to strive to be the best they could be, to remember to pursue their interests, passions and ideals, and to aspire to do great things and not be afraid of failure.

'I encouraged them to dream big and venture beyond, for if they could dream it, they may be able to achieve it... I added that it was important to 'remember the source of drinking water', to contribute to society and community and not to forget to do good deeds.'

After his speech, some parents told him that his message resonated with them. Thus was born the idea of spreading the message to help young adults achieve personal mastery and living life as well as possible.

He realised he had a rich resource from among his friends whom he had known for almost 40 years. Their experiences enabled him to take the long view.

'Life as a journey may be a cliche, but true; life is not a linear progression,' he said.

The other point he wanted to transmit was that he and his cohort have been very lucky to grow up under a good government which created the conditions for opportunities to grow.

He said: 'Under strong leadership, with good principles of governance and the right policies, Singapore progressed and prospered. As individuals, my friends and I benefited and were successful.'

In his foreword to the book, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, who is also patron of the Harvard Singapore Foundation, wrote: '(The stories) show how Yong Soon and his friends have absorbed the values of a system which accords equal opportunity to all and which maximises individual potential.'

Because he wanted to use real names and because he wanted the stories to be told with candour, he had to persuade his friends to agree to be featured.

He adopted the soft-sell approach. For most of those he wrote about, he first invited them, one at a time, to his office at lunchtime, to talk to six to 10 of his younger colleagues as a kind of sharing. They were like 'lunch seminars' on living the Singapore Dream. Those friends who felt uncomfortable about baring their lives publicly were left out.

He said: 'Most didn't object after I went through this process with them. Some said they were publicity shy, or felt their stories were not that interesting. Some said they were not ready yet. In the end I got their support.'

He showed them drafts of the chapters in which they were featured so that they could fill in the gaps and add details. He later showed them the complete draft.

Tan is donating the royalties from the sale of the book to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund, a community fund set up by The Straits Times to ensure that less well-off students will have pocket money for their meals in school. Tan and a number of his friends who are featured in the book will also donate a total of $40,000 to the fund.

He said: 'Since the book is meant to reach out to students and young adults, the fund is a good way to help students from poorer families to level up their chances of competing and doing well. Some in my cohort have also benefited from charities during their school days.'

He expressed confidence that the new generation will take Singapore further.

'We are at a different starting point from 40 years ago. That is why, in the epilogue to my book, I mentioned the change in Prime Ministers and the hopes and dreams for the future. I hope the lessons learnt and the values imparted in the book are evergreen,' he said.

Certainly, one major takeaway from the book for anyone who reads it is that the Singapore Dream is not just a dream. It can be a reality.

Living The Singapore Dream will be available for $17.50 (with GST) at major bookstores from Monday.

---

'The experiences of my friends show that you may fail, or you may not do well in certain things, you can pick yourself up, try again. To succeed, you need not be a scholar, or have first class honours or be born rich'