"Living a life with no regrets – by Lee Wei Ling

About 20 years ago, when I was still of marriageable age, my fahter Lee Kuan Yew had a serious conversation with me one day. He told me that he and my mother would benefit if I remained single and took care of them in their old age. But I would be lonely if I remained unmarried.

I replied : “ Better lonely than be trapped in a loveless marriage.”

I have never regretted my decision.

Twenty years later, I am still single. I still live with my father in my family home. But my priorites in life have changed somewhat.

Instead of frequent trips over-seas by myself, to attend medical conferences or to go on hikes, I only travel with my father nowadays.

Like my mother did when she was alive, I accompany him so that I can keep an eye on him and also keep him company. After my mother became too ill to travel, he missed having a family member with whom he could speak frankly after a long tiring day of meetings.

At the age of 88, and recently widowed, he is less vigorous now than he was before May 2008 when my mother suffered a stroke. Since then I have watched him getting more frail as he watched my mother suffer. After my mother passed away, his health deteriorated further before recovering about three months ago.

He is aware that he can no longer function at the pace he could just four years ago. But he still insists on travelling to all corners of the Earth if he thinks his trips might benefit Singapore.

We are at present on a 16-day trip around the world. The first stop was Istanbul for the JPMorgan International Advisory Council meeting. We then spent two days in the countryside near Paris to relax. Then it was on to Washington DC, where, in additon to meetings at the White House, he received the Ford’s Theatre Lincoln Medal.

As I am writing this on Thursday, we are in New York City where he has a dinner and a dialogue session with the Capital Group tonight, and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation meetings tomorrow. After that, we will spend the weekend at former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s country home in Connecticut. Influential Americans will be driving or flying in to meet my father over dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.

Even for a healthy and fit man of 88, the above would be a formidable programme. For a recently widowed man who is still adjusting to the loss of his wife, and whose level of energy has been lowered, it is even more challenging.

But my father believes that we must carry on with life despite whatever personal setbacks we might suffer. If he can do something that migh benefit Singapore, he will do so no matter what his age or the state of his health. For my part, I keep him company when he is not preoccupied with work, and I make sure he has enough rest.

Though I encourage him to exercise, I also dissuade him from over exerting himself. I remind him how he felt in May last year when, after returning from Tokyo, he delivered the eulogy at Dr Goh Keng Swee’s funeral the next day.

He had exercised too much in the two days preceding the funeral, against my advice. So naturally, he felt tired, and certainly looked tired on stage, as he delivered his tribute to an old and treasured comrade-in-arms. A few of my friends were worried by how he looked and messaged me to ask if my father was OK. Now when I advise him not to push too hard, he listens.

The irony is I did not take my own advice at one time and it was he who stopped me from over-exercising. Once, in 2001, while I was recovering from a fracture of my femur, he limited my swimming. He went as far as to ask a security officer to time how long I swam. If I exceeded the time my physician had precribed, even if it was just by a minute, he would give me a ticking off that evening.

Now the situation is reversed. But rather than finding it humorous, I feel sad about it.

Whether or not I am in the pink of health is of no consequence. I have no dependants, and Singapore will not suffer if am gone. Perhaps my patients may miss me, but my fellow doctors at the National Neuroscience Institiute can take over their care. But no one can fill my father’role for Singapore.

We have an extremely competent Cabinet headed by an exceptionally intelligent and able prime minister who also happens to be my brother. But the life experience that my father has accumulated enabled him to analyse and offer solution to Singapore’ problem that no one else can.

But I am getting maudlin. Both my father and I have had our fair share of luck, and fate has not been unfair to us. My fahter found a life long partner who was his best friend and wife. Together with a small group of like-minded comrades, he created a Singapore that by any standards would be considered a miracle., He has led a rich, meaningul and purposeufl life.

Growing old and dying occurs to all mortals, even those who once seemed like titanium. When all is said and done, my father – and I too, despite my bouts of ill health- have lived lives that we can look back on with no regrets. As he faces whatever remains of his life, my father’s attitiude can be summed up by these lines in Robbert Frost’s poem Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening :

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep."

November 12, 2011 at 03:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 30, 2011

FT: Matt Groening

Doh! The answers to life’s problems really are on TV

By Matthew Garrahan

As a child growing up in Oregon, Matt Groening spent so much time watching television – generic, widely lampooned sitcoms such as Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best – that his teachers told him he was wasting his life.

There was something about those TV impressions of buttoned-down, postwar Americans that fascinated the young Groening, who longed for a darker, more unpredictable portrait of family life. Yet while they were bland, the programmes and their one-dimensional characters ultimately provided some of the inspiration for The Simpsons, the anarchic, animated comedy show he created and which this week was saved from cancellation at the 11th hour.

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Fox, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, had threatened to pull the plug on The Simpsons after an acrimonious pay dispute with the actors who provide the voices for Homer, Bart and other characters. But the network unexpectedly ordered two new series, so extending the hold Groening’s creations have had over US cultural and comic life for more than two decades.

The Simpsons has passed Gunsmoke as the longest-running scripted show on US TV and will reach the landmark of 500 episodes next February. Over the years the antics of the Simpson family, particularly Homer’s struggles with marriage, fatherhood and a dead-end job at a nuclear power station, have shaped how Americans see themselves – and how the rest of the world views them.

The programme has generated billions of dollars in advertising and merchandising sales, and spawned a Hollywood film, a theme park ride and a video game. It has attracted plaudits and criticism in equal measure: Time magazine hailed it as the best TV programme of the 20th century, while in 1992 George H.W. Bush said he wanted “to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons”. In an episode that aired shortly after the then president’s comments, Homer Simpson said: “Hey, we’re just like the Waltons. We’re praying for an end to the Depression, too.”

For Groening, the show is a celebration “of the idea of the American family”. As he once explained to the BBC, family, in this sense, means “people who love each other and drive each other crazy”.

Born in Portland in 1954 – he took names for some of his characters from the city’s street names – Groening’s own childhood was a model for The Simpsons, albeit in less exaggerated terms. Homer was named after his father, a filmmaker and cartoonist who made surfing movies and would take the Groenings to Hawaii. His mother, Margaret, was a housewife although it is unclear whether she had Marge Simpson’s trademark blue beehive.

Like Bart Simpson, Groening has a younger sister called Maggie and an older sister named Lisa. He decided not to use his name in his fictional family and chose Bart because it was an anagram of brat. When it came to naming his own son, Groening chose Homer (though his son these days prefers to be known as Will).

He loved cartoons, particularly the work of Charles Schultz and his Peanuts strip – a depiction of childhood riven with loneliness and insecurity that Groening has called “one of the great works of the 20th century”. Another influence was Ronald Searle, an English artist best known for his St Trinian’s school strips. “It’s very dark and disturbing ... but as a kid I loved it,” he told the BBC.

After leaving school in Oregon, where he had begun to fine-tune his skills as a cartoon artist, Groening attended The Evergreen State College in Washington state. “Every creative weirdo in the Pacific north-west gravitated to this school and hung out there,” he once said. He met other cartoonists and edited the college newspaper. On graduating, he moved to Los Angeles, in part to be close to the heart of the film and TV industry.

While living hand to mouth in a cheap apartment – and miserable at his lack of progress – Groening began to develop characters for his Life in Hell comic strip, which he sent to friends and family in Oregon as a way of depicting his frustration at life in Los Angeles. He landed a deal with the now defunct Los Angeles Reader newspaper, where he was an editor and occasional delivery man. Life in Hell was eventually syndicated to more than 200 newspapers across the US and, crucially, caught the eye of Hollywood producer James Brooks.

When the two first met, Groening panicked, fearful of giving away the rights to Life in Hell and instead sketched The Simpsons while he was waiting to meet Brooks. After a short Simpsons skit had appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show, Brooks and Groening never looked back.

With his floppy hair, goatee beard and owlish glasses, Groening bears no physical resemblance to any of The Simpsons characters. Over time, the focus of the show has shifted from the spiky-haired young Bart Simpson, to Homer, a wisdom-defying, beer-bellied everyman who spouts philosophical pearls of wisdom like: “Trying is the first step towards failure” and “When will I learn? The answer to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle. They’re on TV.”

For Groening, cartoons are the perfect tool to capture the inherent comic conflict in family life. “Cartooning is for people who can’t quite draw and can’t quite write,” he once told an interviewer. “You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.” He has also shown that, when done correctly, it can be very lucrative: The Simpsons has made Groening one of the wealthiest individuals in media with a fortune estimated at more than $600m, thanks to an ongoing share in the profits generated by the show and its spin-off activities. And yet he has described its blockbuster success as a happy mistake, a by-product of the great loves in his life. “I would be doing the same thing whether or not [The Simpsons] was successful,” he once said. “I just love cartoons and I love writing.”

The writer is the FT’s Los Angeles correspondent

October 30, 2011 at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 26, 2011

FT: Netflix

Last updated: October 10, 2011 5:49 pm

Netflix drops plans to split DVD and online

By David Gelles in New York

Reed Hastings, Netflix chief executive, made an about-turn following pressure from investors and customers

Netflix has buckled under pressure from investors and customers to make one of the most high profile US corporate strategic u-turns in recent years, backing off from a controversial plan to split its mail-order DVD and its online streaming media businesses.

The move is the latest twist in four months of dramatic announcements and corporate restructuring from the company, during which customers and commentators have pilloried Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings over the changes.

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Richard Greenfield, analyst at BTIG, called the move a “necessary reversal of a bad decision”.

Shares in Netflix had fallen 60 per cent since July, as investors and analysts reassessed the company’s long-term prospects. Netflix traded up modestly in midday trading, but the finished the day down 4.8 per cent to $111.62.

“They’ve completely alienated their customers at a time when there are strong new threats,” said Shahid Khan, a consultant with MediaMorph. “I don’t think their stock is ever going to recover.”

Mr Hastings last month said he would separate the mail-order business, which is declining, into a new company, called Qwikster, and keep the growing online streaming business as Netflix.com. But on Monday Mr Hastings completed an about-face.

“There is a difference between moving quickly – which Netflix has done very well for years – and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case,” he said.

The plan to split the company followed a price increase in July that caused Netflix to lose at least 1m subscribers. Mr Hastings on Monday said there would be no more price increases.

Analysts said the introduction of Qwikster and its quick demise ranks among the more spectacular debacles in recent business history.

“This doesn’t quite rise to the same level of self-destruction as New Coke [when Coca-Cola briefly tried a new formula in 1985],” said Adam Hanft, a brand strategist who works with media and technology companies. “But it’s pretty close.”

Mr Hanft drew a comparison between former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, who died last week, and Mr Hastings: “It points to how sure-footed Apple is in understanding consumer behaviour, and how Netflix has lost its way.”

As Netflix works to attract new customers and retain existing ones, it is having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new content deals with television and film studios such as Fox, AMC and DreamWorks. Those costs continue to rise, and negotiations between Netflix and Starz, the premium cable network that owns rights to films by Walt Disney and Sony Pictures, recently broke down.

Netflix is also facing fresh competition from the likes of Amazon, which will include a free trial of its Amazon Prime streaming media service with each new Kindle Fire tablet it sells, starting next month. Hulu, the streaming service, is up for sale and has attracted bids from Google and Dish Network.

The turmoil has prompted a fresh analysis of the company’s value. “In the long run if they go all digital, the economics may not work,” Mr Khan said. “The whole love affair with Netflix is, if not over, at least tainted.”

October 26, 2011 at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 21, 2011

ST: Steve Jobs

Jobs 'lived his life on his own terms'

Intensely private, he spent final weeks mostly with wife and kids

Published on Oct 8, 2011

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Flowers, candles and apples adorning the sidewalk outside Mr Jobs' home in Palo Alto, California, on Thursday. -- PHOTOS: REUTERS

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NEW YORK: Over the past few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, California, called an old friend's home number and asked if he was well enough to see them, perhaps for the last time.

In February, Mr Steve Jobs had learnt that, after years of fighting cancer, his time was becoming shorter. He quietly told a few acquaintances, and they, in turn, whispered to others. And so a pilgrimage began.

The calls trickled in at first. Just a few, then dozens, and in recent weeks, a nearly endless stream of people who wanted a few moments to say goodbye, according to people close to Mr Jobs.

Most were intercepted by his wife Laurene, who would apologetically explain that he was too tired to receive many visitors. Some asked if they might try again the next day. Sorry, she replied. He had only so much energy for farewells.

The man who valued his privacy almost as much as his ability to leave his mark on the world had decided whom he most needed to see before he left.

Mr Jobs spent his final weeks - as he had spent most of his life - in tight control of his choices. He invited a close friend, the physician Dean Ornish, a preventive health advocate, to join him for sushi at one of his favourite restaurants, Jin Sho, in Palo Alto.

He said goodbye to long-time colleagues including venture capitalist John Doerr, Apple board member Bill Campbell and Disney's chief executive Robert Iger. He offered Apple's executives advice on unveiling the iPhone 4S, which took place on Tuesday. He spoke to his biographer Walter Isaacson. He also started a new drug regime.

But, mostly, he spent time with his wife and children - who will now oversee a fortune of at least US$6.5 billion (S$8.4 billion), and take on responsibility for tending to the Jobs legacy. The couple have two daughters, Eve and Erin, and a son, Reed. There is also Lisa, his daughter from a previous relationship.

'Steve made choices,' Dr Ornish said. 'I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, 'It's 10,000 times better than anything I've ever done'.

'But for Steve, it was all about living life on his own terms and not wasting a moment with things he didn't think were important.'

Mr Jobs' biographer, whose book will be published in two weeks, asked Mr Jobs why so private a man had consented to the questions of someone writing a book.

'I wanted my kids to know me,' Mr Jobs replied, Mr Isaacson wrote on Thursday in an essay on Time.com.

'I wasn't always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.'

Because of that privacy, little is known yet of what his heirs will do with his wealth. Unlike many prominent business people, Mr Jobs never disclosed plans to give large amounts to charity. His shares in Disney, which he acquired when the entertainment company bought his animated film company Pixar, are worth about US$4.4 billion. That is double the US$2.1 billion value of his shares in Apple, perhaps surprising given he is best known for the computer company he founded.

Mr Jobs' emphasis on secrecy, say acquaintances, led him to shy away from large public donations. At one point, he was asked by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to give a majority of his wealth to philanthropy alongside a number of prominent executives like Mr Gates and Mr Warren Buffett. But Mr Jobs declined, according to a person with direct knowledge of his decision.

Now that he is gone, many people expect that attention will focus on his wife, who has largely avoided the spotlight but is expected to oversee his fortune. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, she worked in investment banking before founding a natural foods company.

She then founded College Track, a programme that pairs disadvantaged students with mentors who help them earn college degrees. That has led to some speculation in the philanthropic community that any large charitable contributions might go to education, although no one outside Mr Jobs' inner circle is thought to know of the plans.

'Steve's concerns these last few weeks were for people who depended on him: the people who worked for him at Apple and his four children and his wife,' said his sister Mona. 'His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he would have to leave us.'

He turned down offers to attend farewell dinners and accept various awards. On the days he was well enough to go to Apple's offices, all he wanted afterwards was to return home and have dinner with his family.

'He was very human,' Dr Ornish said. 'He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That's what made him so great.'

NEW YORK TIMES

See Forum, World & Life!

Jobs' charity record queried

Low philanthropic profile of late Apple guru gives rise to speculation about his estate

Published on Oct 8, 2011

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WASHINGTON: For one of the nation's most famous billionaires, Mr Steve Jobs kept a low profile as a charitable donor.

Unlike fellow technology leaders Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, he did not sign the Giving Pledge, the effort under which the richest individuals in the United States commit to giving at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.

His name is absent from the list of gifts of US$1 million (S$1.3 million) or more maintained by Indiana University's Centre on Philanthropy.

And it was not until after an unflattering media report about Mr Jobs on the subject that Apple last month initiated a 'matching gifts' programme, under which donations to philanthropic organisations made by employees are matched by the company.

Now what will happen to Mr Jobs' fortune - estimated at US$8.3 billion by Forbes - is a matter of speculation that is provoking discussion about him and the societal obligations of the very rich.

The most recent round of debate began after The New York Times published an unflattering piece in August, saying 'there is no public record of Mr Jobs giving money to charity... Nor is there a hospital wing or an academic building with his name on it'.

Moreover, Mr Jobs had closed Apple's philanthropic programmes when he returned to the firm in 1997 and never reinstated them despite a profit of US$14 billion last year, the Times reported.

'Many other innovative companies have found ways to apply their ingenuity and resources to helping society,' Mr Vincent Stehle, a long-time grant-maker in non-profit technology circles, said on Thursday. 'It was a little disappointing not to see Apple at the table.'

But Mr Jobs' supporters said the bulk of his contributions to society may reside in the quality of and innovation in Apple products. They also pointed out ways that he and Apple have been charitable.

U2 lead singer Bono quickly responded to the Times article, saying: 'Apple's contribution to our fight against Aids in Africa has been invaluable.'

The company had given 'tens of millions of dollars that have transformed the lives of more than two million Africans through HIV testing, treatment and counselling. And Apple's involvement has encouraged other companies to step up,' he wrote.

Mr Jobs' supporters said it also may be impossible to know from public records what he gave away because he could have requested anonymity.

The fact that he does not appear on lists of public giving 'doesn't necessarily mean that he's not giving generously', said Centre on Philanthropy spokesman Adriene Davis.

Mr Jobs' most direct effort at philanthropy was when he set up the Steven P. Jobs Foundation, shortly after he was forced out of Apple in 1985.

To run that, he hired Mr Mark Vermilion to head Apple's community efforts. He wanted the foundation to focus on nutrition and vegetarianism but was tied up building another firm and it shut down.

'He's received a lot of criticism for not giving away tonnes of money,' Mr Vermilion said.

'But I think it's a bum rap. There are only so many hours in a week, and he created so many incredible products. He really contributed to culture and society.'

WASHINGTON POST

Apple tribute snags creator offers

Published on Oct 8, 2011

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Mr Mak designed the logo featuring Mr Steve Jobs' silhouette incorporated into an Apple logo. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

HONG KONG: A Hong Kong design student said yesterday that he was overwhelmed and 'flattered' after his sombre logo in tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs became a worldwide Internet sensation.

The design, featuring Mr Jobs' silhouette incorporated into the bite of a white Apple logo on a black background, has gone viral on the Internet since news of his death on Wednesday.

'I feel so unreal,' Mr Jonathan Mak, a second-year graphic design student at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told Agence France-Presse, after he was inundated by hundreds of e-mail and messages on his Twitter account.

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GOOD CAUSE

'I will consider using any proceeds I make from the copyright for cancer research.'

Hong Kong design student Jonathan Mak

The 19-year-old said he had received queries from newspapers in the United States and Germany about buying the copyright to use his logo and had been offered jobs after it spread like wildfire on the Internet.

'I am flattered by the attention but I would like to focus on my study before taking on any full-time job,' said the bespectacled student, adding that he was trying to cope with his new-found fame.

'I'm quite busy now actually as I'm trying to finish a school project,' he said.

When asked about whether he would be targeting commercial opportunities, Mr Mak said he was considering contacting Apple on copyright issues because his design is based on Apple's own logo.

Some merchandisers have reportedly used his logo for commemorative memorabilia for Mr Jobs such as T-shirts and caps that are being sold on the Internet.

'I will consider using any proceeds I make from the copyright for cancer research, as suggested by some people to me on the Internet,' he said. Mr Jobs died at 56 of pancreatic cancer.

Mr Mak said he first came up with the design after Mr Jobs announced his resignation in late August, but the logo received little attention at the time.

The teenager said the Apple founder had inspired him in his design.

'He was a minimalist, which is the way I would like to emphasise in my design - fewer elements but a powerful message.'

'Steve Jobs strongly believed in his own ideas and continued with his beliefs no matter how people criticised him. He was courageous,' said Mr Mak.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

October 21, 2011 at 06:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Doh! The answers to life’s problems really are on TV

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October 21, 2011

Jobs 'lived his life on his own terms'

Intensely private, he spent final weeks mostly with wife and kids

Jobs' charity record queried

Low philanthropic profile of late Apple guru gives rise to speculation about his estate

Apple tribute snags creator offers

Background story