Many well-intended people advised me not to pursue this saga. It was too mundane, and people wanted to move on.

But I felt duty bound to resolve this matter, because it goes far beyond clean ceilings.

The core issue is integrity.

The Property Manager of AHPETC, Mr Tai Vie Shun, demanded extra money from hawkers for cleaning the high areas of hawker centres. He did so on three occasions – 8 March 2013, 26 April 2013 and 28 April 2013. The hawkers have confirmed this consistently, and their account is backed up by notes of meetings.

Our skies were blue and the air crystal clear today.

Had a long discussion in Parliament on the cause of the haze and our plans for the future. I thanked Singaporeans for your calmness, patience, and the fact that you refused to get rattled by the situation. It is that ability to respond sensibly, rationally, cohesively and collectively as a people that makes the difference and makes me confident that we will get through this together, whatever happens.

The world is currently at several inflexion points. There are now more than seven billion human beings on the planet, and more than half of us live in cities. Indeed, the most essential elements of life – food, water – are now interlinked with energy, and with fossil fuels. And this portends therefore, either a potential crisis or enormous opportunities for businesses in the years ahead.

In the past, great fortunes were made by simply extracting resources, mining materials – iron ore and energy – from the ground. And manufacturing grew enormously, on the back of the availability of cheap resources and cheap energy. But this era of cheap natural resources is coming to a close.  And we can now no longer afford to ignore the externalities of industrialisation and of human activities.  Pollution and global warming are real phenomena,  which affect not just the quality of the environment, but also involves huge economic costs for all of us. In other words, the old ways of getting rich are not going to be viable in the future.

Like many Singaporeans, I would also prefer to have a smaller population of foreigners in our Singapore but ……

We are facing the crisis of our lifetime. Our citizen population will halve every two generations. This is a serious ‘long’ term problem and the only cure is more babies. But the real emergency is not babies, but ageing. That is why the population will increase in the short term before the inevitable decrease in the long term.

Woke up bright and early to send my youngest son to Primary One, along with thousands of other parents island wide. It brought back many fond memories as my friend and I watched our sons don the same uniforms that we wore 45 years ago.

A new beginning for all our children – and may they fulfill all their dreams and destinies along the ‘path of the infinite’.

I was reminded of the wise words of Kahlil Gibran on Children – words that I believe all parents should reflect on :

Christmas Eve 2012 fell on a Monday, and we spent it at the usual Monday Meet-the-People session. There were fewer residents than usual, but I was so grateful that we had a full complement of volunteers who were prepared to sacrifice time for a cause.

The combination of a festive air and basic challenges of life gave us food for thought as we shared a meal after the session.