Paying My Final Respect to Mr Lee Kuan Yew at the Parliament House

March 29, 2015

Paying My Final Respect to Mr Lee Kuan Yew at the Parliament House

I'm not an early bird and love to sleep late on weekends. However, I decided to wake up early on Saturday to try my luck and queue to pay my final respect to Mr Lee Kuan Yew personally. I read that many had to queue very long hours to pay their respect to Mr Lee thus the government suspended the queue on Friday night.

I was glad the government suspended the queue at Padang on Friday night. I decided to sleep early on Friday night so that I could wake up early to pay my final respect to Mr Lee Kuan Yew who had dedicated his life to Singapore. As I wrote in my previous post last year, if Mr Lee were my leader, I would vote for him for sure as he always delivered his promises.

My heart was heavy with sadness when I heard of his passing though I knew it is inevitable with his advanced age of 91. Simply say, I felt uncomfortable, uneasy if I didn't say thank you personally to this great man who helped made things possible for Singapore. A profoundly intelligent man, he transformed Singapore from a third world country to a first world within three decades.Perhaps its what the Chinese say 良心 or conscience. We must thank him for improving millions of lives in Singapore and even overseas.

I woke up at about 5.30am and asked my cousin to join me, to try our luck even though our government had not lifted the temporary queue suspension. I hate waking up early, but yesterday, I was eager to wake up early to do what I felt is necessary. We arrived at Cityhall MRT at about 7.15am to join the queue which was started at 6.15am. Fortunately it only took us about two hours to pay our respect to Mr Lee at the Parliament House.

As I left my home hurriedly, I did not bring water bottles and snacks though I estimated that the queue might take hours. Fortunately, throughout the queue at different stops, be it at Padang or Marina Bay platform shelter, the soldiers on duty handed us free water bottles or sweet packaged drinks and advised us to drink water to prevent dehydration. We were also given umbrella to protect us from the hot scorching sun. I also took some biscuits as I was not sure how long the queue would end as news reported the longest waiting time was 10 hours. Luckily we only queued for two hours as we arrived early. I must say the army was very organised as we spent most of the waiting time in shelter and they let different groups moved on after some time.

I felt much better after paying my respect, bowing and saying thank you to Mr Lee Kuan Yew at the Parliament House. It felt like a heavy load was lifted from my heart. The Chinese believe the soul lingers in the body until a week or after cremation. So I hope he could hear us and see how we appreciate his dedication and are grateful to him.