Life Story

"Get up, he said.
Hurry or you might be late...."

Woke up late today, a Sunday, with Dick Lee's "Life Story" playing in my head, and vivid scenes from the Insurance TV Ad that used his song so clear before my eyes. The living room with black&white TV announcing the moon landing. The malay girl with the enigmatic smile. The caning. The dress, hair and spectacle styles, the old style house.

At this stage, when I'm looking forward to the kids growing up and wondering what the next 20 years of my working life will be like, I'm also looking backward - remembering things past, collecting items I'd read and listened to in the 60s and 70s.

Decided I'd really like to get a video of the advert somehow, and did a google for it. I didn't find the ad, but I found that there was a DVD made of Dick Lee's 30th Anniversary concert in 2004, called "life.stories". This would be the next best thing, and the DVD was available for loan at the National Library branch in Ang Mo Kio.

I also found a site where the song was available as streamed audio. No idea if Dick Lee gets any royalties from this site, but since I'm about to buy a copy of his 2004 concert DVD, I can somewhat justify posting the link here:


While looking up the National Library catalog, I discovered that Dick Lee had worked on a play or musical based on Ming Fong HO's "Sing to the Dawn". That caught my eye, because Ms Ho is one of Laura's favourite authors. Ms Ho's books are not happy stories - the main characters are children facing love, loss and hardship, and set in difficult conditions in Thailand and Cambodia. Certainly not happy. But very beautiful.

I recently discovered that Ming Fong Ho's brother is Kwong Ping, of Banyan Tree fame. Ho Kwong Ping has had an illustrious career, and in his earlier years spent time in Detention under the ISD in connection with writing that he had done for the Far Eastern Economic Review. A Straits Times report on May 16th described how the airplane that Ho Kwong Ping was on, about to take off from Chengdu Airport, was jolted repeatedly while taxiing along the tarmac. This was the major quake that hit Sichuan on the morning of 12 May 08. Had the quake occurred as the aircraft was taking off, the flight could have suffered a crash. Instead, the passengers were left shaken and grounded for about 10 hours in an airport without communications and air traffic control services. He's quoted in the article as saying "how fragile life is and how everything is due to luck."

Luck is something I wish in great abundance to the unfortunate victims of the Cyclone Nagis in Myanmar and the Sichuan Earthquake in China. There are horrifying stories - in the papers and radio reports, in emails from people on the ground. But one positive thing that arose for the Chinese leadership is how well they have responded to the crisis. There are countless articles contrasting the Chinese response to that of the Myanmar Generals, and even the response of the Bush Administration to Hurricane Katrina's hit on New Orleans. This is a welcome PR break after the bad publicity from the Tibetan protests at the Olympic Torch runs.

Tens of thousands of lives lost in just a short time, from two natural disasters not far from each other. Many millions more lives from far beyond the disaster areas will have their courses changed dramatically as a result of the experiences and stories that emerge from the bravery and hardship of the victims and their rescuers.

"Just my life story
Minute by second a story
That goes on forever with each breath that I take..."

I'm still on the lookout for the video of the advert. I'll keep looking. eMail me if you know where I can find it.