The Founder | Editor’s Blog

While I’m writing the next entry to the blog which will round up the Brazil visit, I thought I would post this video which someone told me about at the ST. It’s very interesting and sort of puts things into perspective!

Lee Kuan Yew is the man who pushed through Singaore’s independence as the nation’s first Prime Minister in the 1950s and 60s and although Singapore is a “democracy”, he is still in power as “Minister Mentor” to the current PM, Lee Hsien Loong (his son).

If you don’t feel like watching the whole thing, watch the first 5 minutes or so as that’s the main bit about the place at which I’m working!

N. B. I don’t know how factually correct any of it is, but it’s certainly food for thought.

One Nation Under Lee

After a short break, I am back at the Singapore Press Holdings News Centre. This blog is slightly out of sync with real life so you will have to bear with me. I left you on the morning of Thursday 24 July after the Brazil team had arrived so to get up to speed I will run through the events that occurred during their visit up until Monday 28 July.

Naturally, covering Brazil’s visit meant heading more or less straight to the Mandarin Oriental in the morning. Almost as soon as I arrived at the News Centre I heard from Terrence that there was a press conference with Dunga scheduled for 12:30pm. In my inbox I had a congratulations message (for my first ‘additional reporting’ tag) from another intern called Gabriel - he works solely for The Sunday Times, the Sunday edition of The Straits Times, and I had met him the previous evening at the airport. At the moment he is contributing to a large feature about the direct impact the Olympic Games are having on Singapore. I told him about the press conference and we decided to get a cab and get to the Mandarin Oriental sooner rather than later.

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So I am in Singapore for the summer working as an intern for The Straits Times. My parents moved out here early last year and during my visit last summer I became quite a fan of the historical broadsheet.

Established by the British during colonial rule in 1845, it is now one of the largest English-speaking newspapers in Asia, churning out almost as many copies as The Guardian on a daily basis (if you’re interested: Wikipedia article).

Thus, I decided to apply for an internship. After a hitch or two with my visa, I have now finally started and after a couple of days’ “systems training”, I was assigned to the sportsdesk last Monday. Although certainly not my forte when it comes to journalism (those who know me will certainly be chuckling at the idea of me working on a sportsdesk), I’m actually quite pleased with the assignment. Naturally, with the imminent Beijing Olympics and Singapore F1 Grand Prix, the sportsdesk is perhaps one of the best places to be at the moment.

(to keep you interested, here’s some of my photos so far - I’m jumping the gun a bit but it hopefully means you’ll want to hear how I came to getting these photos!)

[Show as slideshow]

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