Wan of a Kind V2.0

I am known for not having a sense of direction, and have been found lost even in my own office and on the plane! Signs play a very important role in my life. Having travelled quite extensively, especially in my lawyering days, I am fascinated by the different signs in different countries messaging the need to be gracious. In Taiwan for instance, there are signs for keeping to the right (we keep to the left) for people using escalators. There are also signs for “Reserved Seats” in the public transport system and for queuing. Clearly they work, for to the best of my observations at several Taipei Metro stations and trains, commuters clearly practice the norms.  But the Taiwanese go further than us in that they have signs for “Female Waiting Zones” and for “Breast-feeding Stations”. There are signs for customer service for the handicapped and “free Wifi” and “Mobile Phone Charging Counters”. They encourage the use of stairs in public places “to burn calories”. ...

This year is a bumper Lo Hei year for me. I must have been to at least a dozen Lo Heis since the beginning of the lunar year, that is, just about one per day. Lo Hei is a wonderful local tradition that stems from the Cantonese dialect, meaning  ‘tossing up good fortune’. It is the tossing of a salad with Yu Sheng or raw fish as the key ingredient. The pronunciation Yu Sheng sounds like 'overflowing abundance' and therefore symbolises ‘an abundance of wealth and long life’. The word hei in Lo Hei means ‘rise’. It refers to a thriving business, hence it is understandably a very popular ritual with  businessmen during the New Year. From the kindness perspective, the ritual of Lo Hei is a very gracious act – an act where everyone wishes each other the best in every aspect of life.  There are many Chinese four-character phrases to express their kind greetings. The ritual begins by wishing everyone  prosperity (gong xi fa cai) and moves on to identify ...

Last night my wife and I drove through Eu Tong Sen Street to take in the Chinese New Year decorations. Chinatown was literally painted red. During this celebrative season, red is not the colour of desire. It is the colour of prosperity and happiness. Photo from TheStar Prosperity is a successful, flourishing, or thriving condition, especially in financial respects; prosperity is about good fortune. Happiness is a subjective state of well-being related to good fortune, pleasure, contentment and joy. Reflecting on prosperity and happiness, I am struck by the idea that it is possible to be unhappy not because we are not prosperous (relatively speaking even as prosperity is always a relative thing), but because we are not aware of our own prosperity and therefore not content with what we have. It occurs to me that happiness does have a lot to do with contentment, which is essentially a state of satisfaction. It also occurs to me that the key to contentment is gratitude. It...

Two simple words but for many Christians around the world, they speak volumes. For them it is a very significant time in their religious calendar as they celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ whom they worship as the Son of God, the Messiah and the Saviour of the World. Two minutes ago, I received this email from a Hindu friend: “Regardless of one's religion, Christmas is a time for counting our blessings and offering thanks! I am blessed to have known you. I wish you and your family Merry Christmas, Happy 2013 and HAPPINESS always!” I am glad that in our multi-racial and multi-religious nation, we are able to join our Christian friends in their celebration regardless of our own faith traditions. As Singaporeans we celebrate each other’s special holy days including Deepavali (Hindu), Vesak Day (Buddhist), and Hari Raya Puasa (Muslims). These holy days are gazetted public holidays for all Singaporeans. About this time last year, I read a piece by the Sultanah of Johor, Raj...

On the basis of some recent studies, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom concludes that humans are born with a hard-wired morality. He thinks that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bones. Experiments with babies and toddlers found that they are able to judge goodness and badness in the behaviour of others. Researchers also found them desiring to reward the good and punish the bad. They even act to help those in distress and they feel guilt, pride and righteous anger. These tentative findings are encouraging for those of us who believe that given the right role models and education, children will become kind and gracious adults. They show that babies and toddlers are sensitive to third party interactions of a positive and negative nature, and according to Bloom, this influences how they behave toward others and later on, how they talk about them. They are useful moral foundations, to say the least. For a year now we have published a newsletter for the primary school chi...

My friend Liak Teng Lit is right to say that we are a cleaned city and not a clean city. In fact we are not even a thoroughly cleaned city. A few weeks ago, I joined a number of community leaders and concerned citizens on a Saturday morning to do some litter-picking. There were 82 of us. Armed with a garbage bag and a picker each, we fanned out into the vicinity of several blocks of HDB flats. Within less than 2 hours, we returned with bags full of garbage. With community leaders and concerned citizens We found them under bushes, beside parked cars, at the children’s playground, on and around benches. There were rusted cigarette lighters, small bottles filled with stagnant water, broken glasses, styrofoam and plastic cups, drinking straws, paper bags, plastic bags, tissue paper, etc etc. Picking up litter What is most troubling is that in some cases, the garbage bin is only a few steps away. Last night my wife and I ate at a hawker center. There is in fact a tray re...

I am writing this from London where I am chairing the 7th General Assembly of the World Kindness Movement. 12 members from 9 countries are represented here. Some folks at home think that only Singapore has a kindness movement. Let me assure you that the 12 movements represented at this Assembly is only a fraction of the numerous kindness movements in the world. At this Assembly, we hope to come up with a strategy to onboard more members from around the world. When we are able to join the dots represented by the movements with the common goal of spreading kindness, we can make a difference in inspiring a more peaceful world. My first visit to London was in 1973 and I remember how impressed I was with the London Tube when Singapore was still decades away from having our own MRT. 2 days ago, I took the Tube downtown. It was not crowded as it wasn’t during the peak hours. I noticed that there were signs identifying priority seats, almost exactly like what we have in Singapore exc...