Celebrating 55!

Part of the 2,000 or so retiring CPF members who attended the seminar. Their ages added up to more than 100,000 years!

In a few months' time, I will be 55. In the blink of an eye, I have worked more than 30 years with my current employer. I have collected Long Service Awards (LSA) countless times. (I am lucky to have a benevolent employer who gives out LSA every 5 years from the 15th year of employment onwards.) It seems like only yesterday that I wrote this post when I turned 50.

Most working Singaporeans know that turning 55 is a watershed in their lives. You will be considered a senior citizen if there is a GST offset package again and you will be given a Senior Citizen's Bonus. You also qualify for Senior Citizen Admission Rates when you visit most of National Heritage Board's museums. However, you age slower when you travel on our public transport system - you don't qualify for its Senior Citizen Concession Card until you turn 60. (Could it be that driving on Singapore roads is so stressful that it makes you age faster? Must be due to the frequent traffic jams and the exorbitant COE and ERP charges that you have to pay when you drive. So if you take public transport, you are not considered a senior citizen until you are 60.)

In preparation for the big day, I attended Central Provident Fund (CPF)'s "Celebrating 55! Seminar" on 27 June 2010 (Sunday). According to CPF's website, at the seminar, members "will find out what happens to their CPF savings when they reach 55, and learn about the new CPF LIFE scheme. A guest speaker from MoneySENSE will share useful financial planning tips on how to invest in one’s golden years".

It's a bittersweet feeling. I'm happy that I'll be collecting the fruits of my labour (never mind if for me, it's only 30%) after more than 3 decades of hard work. At the same time, I'm sad that I'll soon be considered neither productive nor reproductive. My total CPF contribution rate was slashed from 35% to 29% barely 5 years ago and it would be further cut down by another 8.5% when I reach 55. (Refer to table here.) Tell me if that is not a way of saying that I am not so productive.

However, I am grateful that I can still collect 30% of my total CPF balance. Tough luck for those who turn 55 after 2013 - they get nothing unless they could set aside the required minimum sums in their Medisave and Retirement Accounts.

The CPF Board presented everyone who attended the seminar a "Celebrating 55 Years" umbrella. If I walk the streets of Chinatown or Geylang with this umbrella, I am likely to attract female streetwalkers who are more interested in turning my 公积金 (CPF) into 供妓金 (fund for prostitutes). So I must be very careful where I use my CPF umbrella.


The CPF is really thoughtful. In addition to the handy erectile extendible umbrella, I am also given 2 golden eggs. They are not made of gold, of course, but only painted gold.


Most of us know that the golden egg signifies our valuable CPF nest egg or retirement savings. But suddenly, I realise that CPF might be sending me another message. Putting the 2 eggs together with the umbrella, I get this:


Hmm... maybe they are telling me that I will still be reproductive after 55? In that case, I really ought to be very careful where I use my CPF.

My Second Book

This post is about a month late but still, it's better late than never. The book I co-wrote with Wee Kiat (main author) and Noel has finally rolled off the press.

I blogged about the book before here and if you are interested, you can read the e-copy of the whole book starting from this page.


The cover of the book is in purple. I think it's more refreshing than the maroon colour of the previous book, don't you think?

Oh yes, you can also read the e-copy of the previous book starting from this page.

An End That Leads To A New Beginning

Some of you may know that I am the co-author of a stamp-based book. You can read more about it here, there and everywhere.

Well, I have good news for you - my second book is out, if only in cyberspace. (The hardcopy is not off the press yet but who cares about the hardcopy nowadays in this Internet age?)

My introduction to this book (reproduced wholesale from Wee Kiat's blog) is as follows:

We have eventually come to the end of the transport book. But wait… the journey has not ended. As they say, "every road leads somewhere" and "when a door closes, another opens". Or rather, in our case it should be "when a book closes, another opens". ;)

Tomorrow, we will start page-by-page blogging of our brand new book, Singapore Stamps: Remembering VIPs. This book is another joint effort by the same 3 co-authors who brought you the transport book, i.e. Dr Tan Wee Kiat, Noel Hidalgo Tan and yours truly.

Undoubtedly, most of the hard work involved in writing this book was done by Dr Tan and Noel; I only played a minor supporting role, i.e. proofreading and on-line publishing aka blogging.

This book is special in that it is the first time that we are putting it on-line even before it goes to the printers. Yes, that might affect profits somewhat should the book ever go on sale later. However, as Dr Tan would say, the purpose of our books has always been to share knowledge. And when knowledge is shared, everyone profits.

We hope that you will find this book an interesting read.

My First Book (2)

Wee Kiat had earlier given me a copy of each the following children's books which he co-authored:

Hence I had a fairly good idea of the writing style required for our book. However this book would be slightly different from the earlier books because it would be the first to have photos as illustrations besides stamps. I browsed through the photos which I took during my family's trip to Shanghai, Jiangnan, Wuxi and Suzhou in Nov 2004. A few of the photos were suitable for our book. I also knew what stamps were available for our story. With that knowledge, I proceeded to write the first draft of the book.

I wrote down whatever ideas that came into my mind and tried to weave them into a story. I even made a joke of some prominent person's name. (For obvious reason, I am not repeating the joke here.) Working at a leisurely pace, I put in a few hours a day for several days. At last, the first draft was finished. The first page of the draft is shown below.

As you can see, the original intended title of the book, "Of Men, Horses And A Lot Of Bull - A Moving Philatelic Ramble" is no less a tongue-twister than the current title is very different from the title which we finally adopted. Actually the whole book looks very different from the first draft. You cannot find any trace of the above page in the book, except the photo. (I have Wee Kiat to thank for making the book so different so vastly improved over my first draft.)

While writing the book, we realised that we needed some more photos. Armed with my camera and looking very much like an excited tourist, I visited a popular food centre to take a photo of the rickshaw noodles stall there.

I also took some photos of the sculptures near the Singapore River.


I snapped at interesting bicycles, tricycles and trishaws which came within the range of my camera lens.

However, the most interesting photo trips were made together with Wee Kiat. In January this year, we visited Little India during the Pongal Festival to capture images of a cow all decked out for the celebration.

On another occasion, we visited Kreta Ayer and the Jinriksha Station.

The three co-authors had several meetings, mostly on Saturday afternoons at Wee Kiat's condo in the east. At the meetings, we did alot of eating, drinking, chatting and serious discussion. Several emails were also exchanged. Each new draft looked better than the previous one. Some 9 drafts and 6 months later, our book was finally ready for printing and it was time to look for a sponsor and a printer. Noel and I practically left this task entirely to Wee Kiat as it involved quite a lot of running around and he needed the exercise. As we expected, Wee Kiat eventually managed find a sponsor and a printer for our book. And as they say, the rest is history.

And yes as I discovered, writing the book is a lot of work, but it is also a lot of fun.

More about the book:

The book uses stamps and photos to describe the early modes of transport in Singapore. It narrates how goods were transported in the olden days and tells the story of the rickshaw, the bullock cart, the horse-drawn carriage, the bicycle and the trishaw. Although the book is intended for young readers, adults can read it too. (However, adults can probably finish reading the book at "one toilet sitting".) The co-authors are not expecting the same level of public euphoria for the launch of our book as that experienced for Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows which was launched today. After all, only 2,000 copies of our book were printed. If you would like to grab a copy, the book is available at the Singapore Philatelic Museum (SPM) at Coleman Street. As we have left the pricing of the book to the SPM, we apologise that as of now, we do not know how much the book cost.

Update on 23 Jul 2007:

Shilpa has demanded requested that I show her the rickshaw noodle instead of just the stall that sells it (see 3rd comment to this post). The challenge is taken. Here is a photo of the rickshaw noodle from that stall:


And the ingredients that go into the dish? Those that I know of are bo cai (波菜) or spinach, dried shrimps, shallots, corn flour and of course, yellow noodles. Now I am throwing her a counter-challenge - create the dish and let me taste its authenticity. :)

My First Book

My first book was an ABC book of English with phrases like "A is for Apple"; "B is for Boy"; and "C is for Cat".

But here I am not talking about the first book I read. Some of you may know that I have been writing a children's book. Its title is quite a mouthful - "Horse-powered & Man-powered Transport: a philatelic excursion." (More about the contents of the book in a later post.) It is my maiden book and it has just been published. I am now officially an author. Yeah!



Actually, I really should not be claiming all the credit because the book has 2 other very distinguished co-authors - Dr Tan Wee Kiat and Noel. Dr Tan (not to be mistaken with his namesake who is the CEO of National Parks Board) is a stamp enthusiast, a veteran author and a retired NIE lecturer, all rolled into one. Of course, he is a very good husband, father, grandfather and babysitter to his grandchildren as well. He has written several children's books based on stamps. As for Noel, I think I better let him introduce himself since I do not know enough of him to do him justice.

I have never imagined in my life that I would write a book, least of all when I am over 50 years' old. So how did it all start and what motivated me to do it?

It started on 25 Nov 2006, the day when Chun See gave a talk on blogging for seniors. When the talk ended, Wee Kiat, who also attended the talk, approached me and broached the subject of co-authoring a children's book with him. Frankly, I felt both honoured as well as apprehensive at the same time.

I asked Wee Kiat, "I feel very honoured but I have never written a book before. Do you think that I am up to the mark?"

The grandfatherly Wee Kiat was very reassuring, "I've read your blog before and you write quite well. Moreover, I heard you mentioning that you wanted to blog about the trolley bus of yesteryear. So why not write a book instead? I can search for all the relevant stamps to be used as illustrations. I would like my books to have a new perspective. A blogger's perspective would be nice. Then the books will not always have my same old style and angle which can become kind of stale after a while. Besides stamps, we can include photos as illustrations as well."

Wee Kiat further explained that when writing a children's book, we should keep our language simple. We should also include lots of colourful illustrations to keep the book interesting. Children have short attention spans and if the first few pages of the book cannot hold their attention, they would not read on.

Writing a children's book is just like writing a blog post. Some of Wee Kiat's previous books have only about 20 odd pages with each page containing only 2 or 3 sentences. A few of my longer blog posts could possibly have more words than some of his books.

Yet, I was still not very sure so I asked, "Is it a lot of work?"

Wee Kiat replied, "Sure it is a lot of work. But then, it is also a lot of fun."

Wee Kiat's motive in writing children's books is to share knowledge and not to make money. In fact, he told me that he had to "come out money from his own pocket" for most of his previous books. Not because there were no sponsors for his books, but it was mainly because he gave a lot of complimentary copies to his friends, relatives, ex-colleagues, libraries and other organisations. Shucks, and I thought I could become rich and famous. Now, I can only hope to be famous.

Wee Kiat taught education psychology when he was in NIE. No wonder he is so good at convincing people. He finally talked me into living up to the title of my blog, i.e. Taking Up The Challenge. So it was not so much "what" motivated me to write the book but rather, "who" - Wee Kiat, of course. I cautioned him that I have a lot to learn and he would need to be very patient with me.

(As the famous Cantonese storyteller, the late Lei Dai Soh would say, "So what happened then? Tune in at the same time, on the same day, on the same station blogsite." Heh.)