李老爷真可爱哟！

This 李老爷 is none other than our founding father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who was the distinguished speaker for our Ministerial Forum this year. The intellectual cell in me was raging and dying to hear him speak in person! (My very cute fren actually said, must see him in real person before he dies, -_-")

I must say, seeing him in real flesh is a thousand, or maybe million times impressive than seeing him in TV. Seeing him right in front of me (OK, not so in front, I was on the tower block) was like a 3D animation history avatar walking and talking to us. I mean, standing right in front of us, is someone we study in history textbook! How many times have we actually linked some history people to their graveyards? Countless, yet this is one real guy, still alive and kicking us mentally.


We weren't allowed to take photos, but we Singaporeans just love breaking rules right?

Disclaimer: I'm taking picture of the screen, I'm not taking picture of MM Lee

No matter how much we think the government sucks, you will be immediately brain-washed after listening to him. Even if we pray to him still doesn't justify the respect and awe we could give him. He really ROCKS!

Although 80% of the time I wasn't quite sure what he was mumbling in his accent(The PA system wasn't very good) and dozing off in the last 10 minutes (at least give me some credit for staying awake for the first 30 minutes lah, I had a long day in school leh), still I managed to catch quite a bit of what he said and writing down in the not-so-exquisite notepad.

The interesting part would be the Q&A section. For those who had read the Straits Times today, would know that he would not leave (the time was up) and had actually requested to answer one more Singaporean's questions (Our generation was mostly taught to listen and not question, agree with me one hands up). MM Lee was saying, "I want to answer question by the Singaporean"

So this gungho guy stood up, after a brief introduction, and said "Er... You want to question me?"

Laughter filled the room. Oh man! What was he thinking?

Anyway, MM Lee asked for his background, his proficiency of languages, especially Chinese. The guy honestly answered that his Mandarin sucks big time lah. Wah, I wanted so much to go and tell MM Lee, "I'm bilingual and my command of Mandarin is better!" Ha ha ha, yaya papaya again. =P

Anyway, this joker couldn't beat the last question, posted by a female art student Miss Chiang. Too lazy to explain coz I totally cannot understand what she was trying to mean, so did MM Lee who asked her to repeat. It's in the ST.

I wanted to ask question too, but 有谋无胆。My concern was the Chinese syllabus is getting easier and children are speaking more English than Chinese. Somehow it would clash with his beliefs coz he did mention that the success of Singapore, especially trade, mainly was because we could speak English, that the govt had foresight that in order to attract investors, English is very important.

Listening to him is one estactic experience which I will never forget.