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Monthly Archives

March 2016

Leadership

Honour What You Have Been Given

In the recently released book,“Up Close with Lee Kuan Yew”, Mr S R Nathan, former President of Singapore, wrote a chapter that quoted Mr Lee Kuan Yew as saying: “I must honour what they have given me.” He elaborated on this in his section on “Mr Lee’s influence” that ran as follows: “I (Mr Nathan) saw his (Mr Lee’s) good moments, his angry moments but, above all, I saw the exceptional way he conducted himself in public, and I strived to emulate him during the 12 years I was President. “I noticed that on official trips overseas, Mr and Mrs…
Honour Singapore
March 23, 2016
Integrity

How Fast Can We Fall?

If we were to pose the question “How fast can we fall?” to students in high school, their instinctive answer may well be “g, the gravitational constant,” the gravitational attraction of the Earth. But if we were to ask that of Maria Sharapova, the world tennis champion who just admitted to failing a drug test, the speed of the fall was just a matter of hours. Sharapova had tested positive for meldonium, a drug used to treat chest pain and heart attacks, among other conditions.  It was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list of drugs on 1st January 2016.…
Honour Singapore
March 9, 2016
Community

Honour in Faxing and Udon Eating

I was recently in a rural part of Japan. Even though it was a rural area, they had all the trappings of modernity in automated house fixtures, Wi-Fi, fax machines, the latest Apple products, etc. I had to urgently fax some documents back to my Singapore office. The manager of the place where I was staying dutifully helped out. He asked why I would not scan the documents and send them back by email, rather than fax them as sometimes faxed documents do not come out clearly.  I said I needed to fax them. We ended up doing both the…
Honour Singapore
March 3, 2016
Nation

Want to be Free?

Lessons on what happens to societies and nations when individual citizens do not honour the part they need to play to keep the country whole and healthy are lessons best derived by carefully learning from history.   Fernando del Pino Calvo-Sotelo offers deep insights in his essay, “The Five Experiments: a short essay”. Del Pino is one of the sons of the late Rafael del Pino y Moreno, founder of the Spanish construction company Ferrovial.  He has been involved in managing the family fortune since 1998. “The Five Experiments” is based on a speech by Del Pino in June 2015…
Honour Singapore
March 1, 2016
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