5 remarkable facts about National Day Rally
2014
1. PM Lee Hsien Loong didn’t wear red or pink.
He wore blue, or rather, teal.
The shirt came from local shirtmaker CYC.
Some tweets to the hashtag #ndrsg remarked on the choice of
colour.
It was by no means the first time PM Lee wore blue, so those
wondering if there was a subliminal message to Workers’ Party fans
can scrub that thought out.
PM Lee chose blue, or shades of it, in 2005, 2007, 2008 and
2011.
2. Jurong is going to be the new Marina.
Exciting plans are in store for the Jurong Lake and Jurong Gateway
area.
A new lakeside garden will be developed, joining the existing
Japanese Garden, Chinese Garden and Jurong Lake Park.
There are plans for lakeside and parkside residential developments
fringing the new garden.
More commercial developments will come up.
A new Science Centre will pop up.
And most of all, the High Speed Rail from Kuala Lumpur may well
terminate in the Jurong Lake area.
PM Lee has told Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak he thinks the
high speed train can have its Singapore terminus in the Jurong Lake
area.
3. The Lease Buyback scheme will be extended to four-room
flats.
Now, it’s an option only for those who own three-room and smaller
flats.
The extension means over half of Housing Board (HDB) flat owners
stand to have this option when they retire.
They can sell back the last decades of their HDB flat leases to the
government, and get a lump sum, plus monthly cash payments.
A flat of $450,000, with 35 years of lease sold back to the
government, nets a family $27,500 in a lump sum, and $900 cash a
month.
4. PM Lee turned interviewer.
He was so taken with Keppel Offshore and Marine, he went down to do
a group interview with three of their employees.
All three are folk who started with ITE certificates or poly
diplomas who climbed the career ladder in Keppel.
He screened snippets of the video interviews in his National Day
Rally speech. His point was that you don’t need a degree to do well
at work in Singapore.
As a journalist who’s conducted many interviews (including with PM
himself), I can say he did a good job. He established rapport and
asked questions that elicited candid and open responses.
We know this PM can take selfies and he snaps good photos. He even
showed some of them off at the NDR.
Now, we know he can also do interviews.
5. PM Lee sang.
He sang one line from a Chinese xinyao song, on dreams.
Okay, it was just one line.
Okay, while he can make it as a new media journalist, he may not
make it as a singer.
But at least the man tried.
ST
