On George Yeo & Blogging

“When General George Yeo started blogging. I asked myself, why would such a prestigious man court danger. It makes no sense. You see blogging is something that you and I can do with relative ease, but for a minister, it is not so easy. Trust me gentlemen. There are penalties along with a host of pesky reasons. 

 

For one he has to be adept enough to navigate through the thicket and all the nonsense. There is a real cost here and it is sharpened considerably by the reality of how feral the net actually was when he entered the fray. And how blogging was after all perceived by even his peers and MSM as nothing more than an indolent past time. It is easy for us to discount this now.

 

But despite this he has seen fit to do so in his quiet way. Yes, you can say what he writes usually reads like card board chicken. It is really nothing close to what we usually produce, but I would say nonetheless there are some gems. I remember, he once wrote about a Sikh who was tied to a pole to atone for his sins against his community. I remember thinking about this for a very long time and it was even discussed widely amongst us and probably found it’s way into some of our articles. Its somewhere floating around in cyberspace. So we can say a few things here, he has certainly made a difference in his little way by being an all weather producer in our internet. That is something those talking heads can certainly learn from in the P-65 blog. All I see there is bunch of confused people who have grown despondent as they do not know how to really prosper in internet. They lack patience and dedication.

 

Many things can be said about this. I am not surprised, he was first trained as a scholar soldier, then a diplomat, so he has gone through many of the ropes to know the art of long road like many in our own space diplomatic corps. Rome was not built in one day.

 

You can say he has made a conscious decision to reach out for whatever the price or reason. I consider this admirable. We can learn from his example.

 

My brothers what good is the brotherhood if we cannot say, this a man that we should all emulate to some degree? Are we not sportsmen after all?

 

We have never been afraid to learn from others. We are respected in the virtual as we are considered ultimate sportsmen; if we win, it is never by going behind the back door or trickery; we have always done it fair and square.

 

Part of that requires a certain open mindedness to seek out the good points in others whenever we see it. From the Jew, we learnt how tradition can give us all a deep spirited sense of belonging; the French taught us the meaning of fraternity -brotherhood, so we turn no one away because of his creed, race, culture or even nationality. From the Muslims we have learnt the meaning of setting aside a proportion for those in need.

 

I have studied the works of their great intellectuals and many of these values are worthy of emulation.

 

So let us learn from his example. Many people will say there is nothing to learn here. They are stupid. I say we can learn alot from his daring, panache, aplomb and sheer sportsmanship that really elevates him from a mere politician to the upper reaches of what I term a statesman.

 

A statesman that even I cannot claim to be, I still have many years of training before I can call myself one, but I know one when I see one.

 

The qualities General Yeo personifies what we all admire, respect and often term sportsmanship.

 

He shall go down in our history as the father who once brought politics to the common man in the internet. Others will follow in his wake, I am sure. They may even write better, but he was the first and to be the first requires vision and as sportsmen, we cannot take that away from him.

 

Guild see to it, by the end of the decade I want a space station to be christened the KDD General George Yeo.”

 

Darkness 2007

 

This was once posted in a obscure site in APICS in response to a forummers question – BG George Yeo has come up with a competitition, we encourage all to participate in it. I just felt it was timely to republish what once Darkness wrote -Y2K http://www.whenigrowup.sg/

 

Y2K