Likes To Live The Simple Life

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 5

Likes To Live The Simple Life

IBy JILLIAN ROBERTSON in the "Sydney Morning Herald."] r pHE most important person in Singapore is the Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, aged 43. In spite of his position his father works as a salesman in a jewellery shop, his mother gives cooking lessons, and his wife helps carry on his solicitor’s practice, Lee & Lee, with his brother Denis.

The Lee family have not moved into the official Prime Minister’s residence. Lee Kuan Yew has said that if he improves his standard of living, then his Ministers would also be entitled to. The result would be a drain on the budget. So the Prime Minister, with his wife and children, lives with his father, Lee Chin Koon, aged 63, in the same simple bungalow that Father Lee bought in 1946 at 38 Oxley road, Singapore.

Here Lee Chin Koon carries on his role of patriarch. His position and style of life is unique:

Singapore. Noon. Heat. Nearly two million people begin to eat lunch. A salesman walks out of a jewellery shop in the High street. He is old. He is Chinese. He is the father of Lee Kuan Yew. I know who he is, but hesitate to approach this humble little salesman. I have been told he hates publicity and assured he will not consent to be interviewed. Unrecognised No-one looks at him. No-one recognises him as the Prime Minister’s father. He is just another face in the noisy street crowded with white men in white shirts and white trousers, Chinese girls in short thrift-shop dresses and slitskirted cheongsams, Indian girls in sarongs and saris, men in dhotis. The old man walks on past the street-side stalls.

He disappears into the headquarters of Shell Oil where he worked for 30 years. He joins a queue in the selfservice canteen and chooses oxtail soup. Lunch finished, he walks back to the shop at 19 High street, 8.8. de Silva, where he works for eight hours a day.

The streets are packed now with honking cars bumper to bumper, taxis and tri-shaws. Tongues babbling Mandarin. Hokkien, Cantonese, Tamil and English are bargaining at the stores full of higgedlypiggedly jumble for the poor.

“Ordinary Man”

Back in the jewellery shop the Prime Minister’s father awaits a customer.

I go to the counter: “Mr Lee Chin Koon?” “Yes, what do you want?” I explain I am a journalist A blank expression then his lively honest eyes look at me. “I cannot talk about my son.” I try: “But I only want to talk about you.” He hesitates. The eyes of Mr Lee’s fellow salesmen stare at me. There is silence except for the buzz of the air-condition-ers. Even the customers look. I assure Mr Lee that

people are interested in him. He relents but refuses to be photographed. “I’m just a simple man,” he insists, “I work as an ordinary salesman. Why shouldn’t I work like this because my son is the P.M.?” Work For Health I offer Mr Lee a cigarette. He does not smoke. But he rushes over to a brown squashed briefcase on another counter and brings out a chrome lighter. “The boss gave me this especially to light customers’ cigarettes,” he explains. He continues talking: “1 don’t like sitting at home. I like to work. It passes the time. Time flies if you keep busy. If you don’t work, you feel lazy, sleepy in the after-

noon and you have to have naps.

“All I want is always to have my good health, my good health to be able to work and earn a modest living, just like an ordinary man. I ride in a bus, walk on the road and always try to avoid publicity.” He pauses. “Excuse me there is a customer who wants to buy something.”

He walks across to a counter and brings out a

black velvet tray of Swiss watches to show the customer.

Mr<-Lee returns. “You meet all sorts of people being a salesman,” he says. “Some are very interesting, some ere so arrogant, some are very rude.”

Mr Lee has been working at de Silva’s for six years ever since he was retired by Shell as a pensioner. His sou has also been Prime Minister of Singapore since June 3, 1959. “I came here and asked for a job and the boss employed me on a month to month basis.”

Mr Lee expands his theory on the importance of each man working hard and tells how his father, an ' -phan, eventually became the attorney of a sugar king millionaire.

His father was very rich and had many wives. Mr Lee becomes circumspect when I ask how many. He stops talking. There is an awkward silence.

I remark that he looks younger than 63. He smiles: “I don’t eat very much. My wife she gives cooking lessons—she’s not as energetic as myself. She’s a bit on the fat side. I only weight 150 pounds. The secret? Plenty of exercise. Every morning I get up at 6.30 and do special exercises for half an hour Look.”

Keen On Swimming

Once again Mr Lee opens his brown briefcase. With pride he pulls out a white envelope of photographs. Photographs of his body beautiful taken by his grandchildren. Photographs of rigidly flexed muscles; photographs of him in extreme yoga positions—head between toes with torso on his knees; a photograph of him taken in black janzten swimming trunks when he was 19.

His son, the Prime Minister, | has a more sophisticated wav of exercising—on the golf course. He has a single-figure handicap. By now Mr Lee is enjoying talking about himself. “I used j to be secretary of the Chinese swimming club when I was younger,” he says. “I still swim every evening after work.” He leans closer and adds confidentially: “I believe that the mind only functions well if you have a healthy body. I can sometimes foresee into the future. I can tell if someone is honest or if someone is bluffing.” His discourse is interrupted by the arrival of another customer. Mr Lee excuses himself. It is time for me to go. He asks me to send a copy of the article. For the Primo Minister’s father has never had one written about him before.

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