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who come adrian tan look older than LKY

madmansg

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Mr Adrian Tan is a director at law firm Drew and Napier. One of his most recent cases involved representing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in a hearing to assess damages, after winning a defamation suit against the Singapore Democratic Party and its leaders. Mr Tan, 42, is also the author of coming-of-age humour novels The Teenage Textbook (1988) and The Teenage Workbook (1989).

SINGAPORE became a sovereign state exactly 43 years ago. It wasn't through a war of independence, or a campaign of widespread civil disobedience. Singapore was discarded. Singapore is an accidental country.

Singaporeans, on the other hand, are no accident. We are a direct product of the Singapore system.

For one thing, Singapore made us gregarious.

I was born just a few months after Singapore. I was delivered by the very competent staff of KK Hospital. That year, KK Hospital won a place in the Guinness Book Of Records for having the most births in a single maternity facility - a record it held for 10 years. I can't claim full credit for that record. There were 39,835 of us delivered that year in KKH. It was very cosy.

Singapore also made us obsessed with size.

I was raised in a newfangled home called an HDB three-room flat in Commonwealth Close. Confusingly, a 'three-room' flat is a Singaporean way of describing a flat with two bedrooms. I never found the third room. I don't think it was an accident.

Later, when we moved to a five-room flat in Telok Blangah Crescent, I couldn't locate the fourth and fifth bedrooms. At last count, the HDB still owes me a total of three bedrooms.

As my homes became bigger, so did Singapore. My country's land area increased from 580 sq km when I was born to 700 sq km today. Again, that was a feat of Singaporean organisation.

Singapore made us tongue-tied.

I was lucky enough to be educated at the Anglo-Chinese School. ACS is more Anglo than Chinese. I did very badly in Chinese as a Second Language subject, scoring the worst possible grade in my preliminary O-level examination.

The Government then changed the term 'Second Language' to 'Mother Tongue'. I realised I ought to speak Mandarin well, because it was apparently my mother's tongue. My mother, however, had the impression that her tongue was Hokkien, since she, her mother and all their mothers before them had spoken that tongue. I had to correct her erroneous belief. My Mandarin improved, and I was admitted to Hwa Chong Junior College. I spent time conversing in that tongue for two years. Hence, I was full of confidence when I enlisted for national service. Sadly, my fellow soldiers spoke mostly Hokkien, with some Malay. They didn't realise what their mother tongue was. This time, I didn't correct them. Unlike my mother, they were armed.

Because I was taught my mother tongue, I couldn't speak to my grandmothers. They and me would stare awkwardly at each other during Chinese New Year, related by blood but separated by language. Singapore made us look out for ourselves.

NS enriched me in many ways, except financially. As an 'other rank', I was paid an allowance which didn't allow me to do anything. I realised I had to forgo luxuries such as food unless I found some other income. So I taught music, gave English tuition and wrote magazine articles under a pseudonym.

Singapore made us lawyers.

After 30 months, I traded my green uniform for a different uniform: that of the undergrad. I enrolled in the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore. In between video games, playing football and movie watching, I occasionally attended lectures and tutorials in order to get to grips with this concept of 'the law'.

My teachers were very good, and I soon realised one thing. All Singaporeans are born lawyers. We understand rules. We respect order. We value precedent. We acknowledge authority. And, like true lawyers, we complain about each and every aspect of the law all the time.

We do it with vigour and meticulousness. It is obvious in everyday life. We take the trouble to learn regulations so that we can circumvent them. We are unhappy at queue-jumping and other forms of disorder and unfairness. And when we are unhappy, we do not take matters into our own hands. Instead, we appeal to authority. We complain, and we demand change - but in an orderly, non-disruptive fashion. We are a republic of lawyers.

Singapore made us writers.

I had to support my university education. So, I carried on writing. I was fortunate that another Singaporean, my publisher, suggested that I write a novel. I agreed, because I wanted to record my Singapore experience. And I wanted Singaporeans to read Singapore authors writing about Singaporeans.

As a Singaporean, I am naturally subversive. I wrote about young people, and framed well-meaning advice as a textbook. But the real message was that the answers given by textbooks are often completely unreliable and sometimes downright harmful. The book proved surprisingly popular. I wrote another. The royalties enabled me to pay my fees for four years.

During that time, a whole host of other Singaporeans published novels, articles and poems recording the Singapore experience. Today, that great tradition is continued by our bloggers who document the great issues of the day. Because we are so tongue-tied, we find solace in the written word. We abhor public speaking, but adore public writing.

Singapore made us owners.

Despite my extra-curricular activities, I scraped through the exams and found a job in an established law firm. I married my first love, bought a weekend car and saved up some money for a matrimonial home in Jurong East. For the first time in my life, I made commitments. I owned things.

Many others of my generation did the same. We are all owners. We are slowly realising that with ownership comes responsibility. We hire people to run this country of ours (we call them the civil servants and the public servants), but we are beginning to see that we have a duty to ourselves, as owners, to ensure that things are run the way we want it to be. I'm a Singaporean. This country made me. But I own it now. What fun.


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