The Darkest Week

23rd March to 29th March was the worst week Singaporeans have ever gone through as we mourned the passing of our founding father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. He passed away on 23rd March 2015 at 3.18am. He was 91 years old.

After the news has been reported, it's like the Earth suddenly stopped turning, the environment around me became silent and I could see Singapore turning into a black and white country. News has been mainly focusing on his updates and we were almost being separated from the world about what happened in other countries.


Throughout the 7 days of nation's mourning, I wore black-colored shirt in respect of the founding father until 28th March and followed by red-colored shirt with black on both sleeves and a sticker of the black ribbon with Mr Lee Kuan Yew's face on it during his state funeral. I went to the Community Tribute Site a day after his passing to pay my respects and wrote a few sentences on the condolence book. I initially wanted to visit the Parliament House since his lying-in-state last Wednesday but as the queue got longer, I gave up. At least, I have paid my respect at the Community Tribute Site.

On my Facebook page, I have written a note hoping that people would not criticize him and the Prime Minister during the sensitive period but that was just hope. I have realized writing that would not help in controlling in what people were commenting or doing. Here are some of the issues and my personal views

Last Wednesday, a bakery got condemned by the public after using business tactic by selling "Lee Kuan Yew commemorative bun" at S$2 each. The content of the bread itself was gula melaka-flavored and coconut.

Bakery's business tactic used during sensitive period (Sources: Channel NewsAsia, Bilahari Khpsk's Facebook)

From my personal view, I feel that if a company really want to salute a great man like him, why not giving donations? Why not giving out free breads and cakes to the people waiting outside the Parliament House to pay their respects? That was an awful business gimmick done during that sensitive period. Although the bakery said all sale proceeds would be donated to the Community Chest, they apologized and removed from the shelves. However, many people were still not happy, commenting that they will stop patronizing them. Well, similar to them, I will stop visiting them not because of the business tactic and the insensitivity, they also ruined my coconut bun, which is one of my favorite!

Other than that, a 16/17 year old teenager also made the news for posting a video about criticizing Mr Lee Kuan Yew and insulting Christianity. The video was soon removed after many criticisms. However, the video could still be found on other websites. I managed to watch a few minutes of the video after it was removed from YouTube and was back again uploaded by another creator. In my opinion, his accent made me goosebumps and did not want to continue the video as he spoke about Christianity. I am not a Christian but INSULTING OTHER RELIGIONS IS TOTALLY INCORRECT! He was arrested by the police and the biggest crime he made was not defaming Mr Lee Kuan Yew (It is a crime for defaming other people) but insulting Christianity. According to the newspapers in print and online, that teenager was famous in creating videos on YouTube (Especially the Chinese New Year video made few years ago) and has won awards in a ceremony (??). He also appeared in "We Not Naughty" (Although I watched it, I have no impression of him). From that, we have to be very careful of what we are doing or saying on the internet and social media.

Some others also happened during the mourning period also include rude Hong Kong driver scolding the traffic police after she was not allowed to drive on the road where the gun carriage was heading towards University Cultural Center and horned at the gun carriage as it went past and Malaysian viewers criticizing the pay TV owner for airing the state funeral live in their country and also featured complaints such as what contributions he has made to the country. To conclude, we hoped to have a peaceful and quiet week but it's still beyond our control as there were insults and criticisms.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew was our first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. He has made many contributions to Singapore such as making a clean and green Singapore, clean potable water, corruption-free government and much more. He made Singapore from a dirty and unpopular island in many people's eye to a metropolis. What he promised to the citizens, he made it. Although people may not like some of his policies, people must always remember his contributions done over the past 60 years. Without him, we could never imagine what Singapore would look like today. Singapore would not widely recognized by the world.

He once said from his book Hard Truths, "I have no regrets. I have spent my life, so much of it, building up this country. There's nothing more that I need to do. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life."

Thank you for your contributions towards Singapore. It was sad to see that you could not celebrate 50 years of independence with us but I hope you can see us celebrating while you're up there. We will always remember you.