Apr 27, 2015

How I Got Hired by Facebook and Found My Dream Job! (POSSIBLE SCAM ALERT!)

I was doing my usual news surfing in the evening and I came across this very interesting sponsored post on Yahoo Finance "Facebook Started Hiring in Singapore!"


Wow! I have heard about the legendary work play balance at Facebook and it has been constantly voted as the best company to work for globally. There has been news that Facebook has been expanding their operations in Singapore and their beautiful office has been featured in multiple technology portals in Singapore, no doubt to entice would be bankers to work in Facebook instead.

Apr 6, 2015

Lee Kuan Yew and the Lye Family - History, Eulogy and Inspiration

There has been much buzz about the family life, lineage and early life of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore when he died on 23th March 2015. There is an interesting piece of news whereby Mr Lee's ancestral home at Southern China, Guangzhou, Dabu is going to be turned into a tourist attraction

My ancestral home is just one village away from Mr Lee's village and in the vast land called China, a village away is equivalent of living in an opposite  HDB block. The last time I visited my ancestral home in the 1990s to pay my respect to my Grandfather who died in China, the village is still largely a farming community with small acres of farmland all around the village. Looking at my grandma who also the same age as Mr Lee, I couldn't help to think how the fate of the two families are intertwined with each other.

Grandpa and Grandma are both Hakka and they were married just at the outbreak of World War II. My Dad was born as a war time baby and my uncle 2 years later. After the war, Grandpa went back to China to visit his ailing mother and he never came back. He died of an illness and left behind 1 widow and 2 young children to fend for themselves in Singapore. Life was exceptionally hard as a widow during those times and all the extended family help out with my family however and whenever they could. Work was scarce for a single mother during those days as woman was not expected to work. However, my grandma was determined to make it work. She took up sewing assignments and sew day and night, while keeping an eye on two playful boys. Life was extremely hard than and she was scraping by day by day. Politics was the last thing on her mind at that point of time when everyday was a struggle.

If Lee Kuan Yew is the founding father of Singapore, than Grandma is the founding mother of the Lye Family. A lesser woman would have broken down given the situation she was in at that point of time. But she didn't. With the famous Hakka traits of determination and refusal to quit, she managed to put both my Dad and uncle through school, allowing them to have very decent jobs when they graduated.  
  
Celebrating the 91th Birthday of the Heroine of the Lye Family

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