How do you take a great relationship and make it “fantastic-er”?

That was the challenge that departing United States Ambassador Kirk Wagar faced during his 3 1/2 years in Singapore.

The 47-year-old lawyer by training cannot be faulted for not trying. Blessed with boundless energy, a hail-fellow-well-met demeanour, boyishly cropped hair and a penchant for clothes that tend to need volume control, his enthusiasm to build ties has often been infectious to his circle of friends and associates here.

In some ways, the work could not have been too difficult. Few Asian states, not even treaty allies of the US, like Thailand and the Philippines or even Japan, are as welcoming of America as Singapore has consistently been. Security coordination between the two is intense. Much military weaponry, particularly in the Singapore Air Force, is bought from the US. The fireworks at the American community’s Fourth of July celebrations here (Mr Wagar held one Independence Day anniversary on Sentosa Beach) often seem as noisy as those on Singapore’s National Day.

Little surprise there. American companies are some of the largest employers on the island – by Mr Wagar’s calculation, the top 10 US companies here, including Citibank, Seagate, Hewlett Packard and ExxonMobil – employ as many as half the people on the rolls of the Singapore Government.

Still, there is always the danger of taking a relationship for granted.

Outgoing United States Ambassador Kirk Wagar, a lawyer by training who was born in Canada, says his 31/2-year tour of duty in Singapore was like doing an MBA or a doctoral thesis on one of the most important regions of the world, expertise that he wants to put to use in the next stage of his career. ST PHOTO: SEAH KWANG PENG

How, then, do you make it “fantastic-er” – to borrow Mr Wagar’s own phrase? Perhaps, as the advertisement for Old Parr whisky goes, with more of the same. And then some.

Last year, US President Barack Obama did precisely that by putting on a state dinner for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the White House. That it was only the 12th such event he had hosted in the eight years he occupied the place – by some calculations, Mr Obama had 300 rounds of golf in the same period – underscores the value he places on the relationship with Singapore.

The last time a Singapore leader had been thus honoured was more than three decades ago, when founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew paid a visit.

How does one swing such a prestigious event for the leader of your host nation? A lot depends on your relationship with the boss. America has two types of ambassadors – the career diplomat and the political appointee. Typically, an American president sends trusted confidants to critical posts. In Asia, they include the US envoys to China, Japan, India and Singapore. Mr Wagar, like Mrs Caroline Kennedy in Tokyo, is a political appointee.

It helps the relationship, therefore, that Mr Wagar is chummy with Mr Obama, has his mobile number and helped him win Florida, one of America’s most vote-rich states, during his successful runs for the presidency.

Mr Wagar acknowledges that he “knows the President” but says he is given too much credit for the state dinner, adding that Singapore ambassador to Washington Ashok Mirpuri worked equally hard to make it happen. In any case, the austere Mr Obama would not have consented if he had not wanted to.

“The reality is that President Obama has a genuinely (close) relationship with Mr Lee and he wanted to make a statement about him and Singapore,” says Mr Wagar. “You see that closeness at international summits. The two are often in a corner, talking, sometimes laughing. There is genuine affection and respect between them.”

Born in Canada, Mr Wagar arrived in the US as a student at age 18. He stayed on because he enjoyed “the hustle and bustle of the United States as a teenager involved in anti-apartheid activity and stuff like that. It stuck with me how things moved when America took it up as an issue. America was in every conversation”.

Most of his years since have been spent in the Miami area and he was running a successful law practice when he got the “opportunity to serve”, as he calls it. That meant giving up his law practice. His wife Crystal, a lawyer with her own practice in Miami, tried to run her firm from Singapore but gave it up eventually. Mr Wagar takes satisfaction in seeing the bilateral relationship during his term widening into regional projects, cyber and port security and combating extremism.

This week, for instance, a group of Singaporean law enforcement officers is in the US for training in handling an active shooter rampaging in a mall or school. In turn, the US instructors gain perspective on the challenges in this part of the world.

The private sectors are jointly reaching out to new parts of the world, including Latin America, offering expertise on smart cities, financial technology and other things. Meanwhile, Singapore was the seventh country to gain access to the US Global Entry Programme, easing travel into the US for Singaporeans.

US INFLUENCE IN THE REGION

Mr Wagar’s term has coincided with some remarkable geopolitical shifts but he bristles at the suggestion that US influence in the region is waning, saying there is no evidence to support that thesis.

Politically, economically and militarily, America is more deeply engaged in Asia than ever before. It had signed Asean’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, appointed its first ambassador to Asean and was invested more in the region than any other nation. Ties with Vietnam have been normalised.

Neither is America in decline, he insists. “Somebody said America has had a good run but the next Microsoft will come out of China. I do not believe that will be the case. If you walk into Apple today, maybe only half are American passport holders, let alone born in the US. But the other 50 of the best and the brightest are attracted to America because of our institutes of higher learning, our freedom and our fun. We are a long way from being perfect but show me another country that is as attractive.”

Perhaps it was ordained that Mr Wagar, whose wife is African-American, should have been appointed to Singapore, a multiracial nation of immigrants, much like his own adopted country.

While he did not specifically request to be posted here, it was at the top of the list of options the White House put on the table, and the Wagars happily accepted.

His education about Singapore began even before he got here, thanks to his friendship with Mr Steven Green, the former boss of Samsonite Corp, who served as US ambassador here between 1997 and 2001 and built up a close relationship with the senior Mr Lee and his son.

Mr Wagar says the stint here was like doing an MBA or a doctoral thesis on one of the most important regions of the world, expertise he wants to put to use in the next stage of his career. And he endorses the words of Mr Philip Green, his peer at the Australian High Commission, who completed his tour of duty a few weeks ago.

“There are many important cities around the world but my belief is, Singapore is the place where the greatest conversations are taking place right now,” he says.

The last few weeks have been a period of reflection.

It is hard to explain to people at home what it was like to be here for the celebration of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s life, bookended by the celebration of the remarkable journey of President S R Nathan, envoy to Washington during the tense time when Singapore caned American teenage vandal Michael Fay. (Mr Lee died in March 2015; Mr Nathan in August last year).

Mr Wagar’s first meeting with the senior Mr Lee was the one time he lost his natural jauntiness, making him feel he was going for an “oral examination for a job I was not sure I was qualified for”. Already close to 90, Mr Lee was frail in body but, while he often paused for breath, his mind was perfectly alert.

“We all have our hour and our season, but the hour I spent with Lee Kuan Yew was one of the most stressful of my professional life. I felt I was being tested a bit, prodded and also directed and taught – about Singapore, the region and America’s role in what had been and what could be. I didn’t want to embarrass myself, lest the word get out that he thought this guy was a waste of time.”

Mr Nathan, on the other hand, was exceptionally kind to him and Mrs Wagar.

He adds: “To think I am the last US ambassador to have a personal relationship with Mr Lee and Mr Nathan is really humbling.”

Orderly, focused Singapore, of course, has its way of influencing anyone who has lived here for a while. Take the din about needing more babies, for instance. Two of the Wagar children, Rhys and Avery, were born during his stint here.

Mr Wagar’s friends are relieved that his shoes are better matched with his suits these days, although he won’t concede that his sartorial style was ever loud. “It’s just that I don’t have boring socks.”

When he went to make his farewell call on Mr Lee Hsien Loong this month, he wore a suit that raised eyebrows in the PM’s private office – for a different reason.

“Very conservative today, eh?,” remarked a top aide to Mr Lee, smiling at Mr Wagar’s sober navy blue jacket and trousers.

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Photo Gallery

Massive steam-table seafood spread elicits excited exclamations

Source: YouTube video screengrabs

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• Local seafood dishes are ‘mind-blowing’

  As he leaves Singapore, Mr Kirk Wagar is a little cross with his Singaporean friends.

  After taking him to fancy dining places through most of his time here, it was only in the last months that they felt comfortable treating him to local restaurants such as New Ubin Seafood and Chin Huat Live Seafood.

  “It blew my mind. This was some of the best food I had eaten and I said, ‘Why am I learning about this in my last 30 days here’,” he complains, adding he also loves the food centre at East Coast Parkway, even if that is a bit touristy.

  His wife enjoyed taking their two children to Gardens by the Bay and they were grateful for the air-conditioning inside.

  The family also loved browsing in Arab Street and Little India, reminders of an earlier era that shaped Singapore’s evolution.

  Mr Wagar and an older son, who frequently visits Singapore from the United States, are often at the water park when he is here. Father and son also go to Pulau Ubin to explore the place on bicycles.

  One notable friendship he developed during his stint here was with the Imam of the mosque near Botanic Gardens, Masjid Ba’alwi, which he visited about four times a year.

  “I didn’t realise that many friends of mine attended that mosque, including the Pakistan ambassador Nasrullah Khan. It was one of the most enjoyable things I got to do when I was here.”

This article was first published on Jan 15, 2017.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

YOUR SINGAPORE V. MINE

What is your definition of Singapore, and what happens when a fellow Singaporean has a vastly different idea of what the country should be or represent?

A 28-year-old poet has taken to social media to relate an incident last week in which racism reared its ugly head.

Ms Jennifer Anne Champion, a Singaporean with Ceylonese Tamil, Malay, Indonesian and Chinese heritage, was waiting for her partner’s return at Changi Airport last Tuesday, according to her Facebook note. Standing next to her were other people waiting to welcome returning family and friends, including a bespectacled Chinese man in his 40s.

When a Filipino family reunited at the railings near the exit of the gate, the bespectacled man began his tirade. At first, he said: “No hugging here. Can you see? This is Singapore. Go hug outside.”

In her note, Ms Champion said she thought the man was perhaps asking the Filipino family not to obstruct the exit. Unfortunately, she was proven wrong.

When confronted, the man reiterated his message, this time in nastier words. “This is Singapore. You Filipinos. Go back to the Philippines. This is Singapore.”

Ms Champion said she was stunned.  “My heart feels sick for this family that such ugliness is the first thing that greets them. The entrance to Singapore, so heavily checked for tax-evaders, contraband smokers, drug takers, but not racists,” she wrote.

She decided to stand up to the racist. “Sir, I am Singaporean and I don’t approve of what you did just now,” she said.

“You Singaporean? I don’t care,” came the curt reply.

The subsequent exchanges followed in the same vein.

It was then, Ms Champion said, that she realised how the bespectacled man might view her.

To him, being xenophobic was the norm, believing he was higher up the food chain in “cultural superiority”.

But a Singaporean who did not tolerate or abide by his viewpoints was an even greater “unknown”.

• NOTABLE TRENDS

  GIVE ME BACK MY TERREX CHIA: YouTuber Alvin Oon uploaded a humorous music video addressing the Terrex incident in a lighthearted manner, sung in several dialects. It is the top- ranking local video, according to search giant Google, with more than 270,000 views since it was uploaded on Jan 9.

  OBAMA FAREWELL: US President Barack Obama gave his farewell address on Jan 10, as his second term in office comes to a close. Aside from his farewell speech, the other video that trended was of him awarding a surprised US Vice-President Joe Biden with the Medal of Freedom.

  O-LEVEL RESULTS: The release of the results was a top trending search on Google. Students who took the O levels last year have outperformed their seniors, with 84.3 per cent of the cohort attaining at least five passes.

“In all fairness,” she wrote, “what happen(ed) here between us should be a national conversation. How to deal with the trauma when Singaporeans come head to head with different ideas of what Singapore is.”

She added: “In my Singapore, the invocation ‘This is Singapore’ as a way of excusing bigoted behaviour in public is not regrettable, but punishable. Because the people of Singapore are a result of never-ending waves of migration.”

The bespectacled man, Ms Champion believes, routinely mistakes privilege for a sense of entitlement that stems from nationality and social standing.

“You work hard, other people are lazy and cannot own your success. You, however, can buy and own others,” she wrote.

“We are a lot of things, but the one thing our historical, cultural, societal make-up does not allow us to be is bigoted.”

Ms Champion’s note had more than 250 likes, comments and shares. But a post’s popularity, or lack thereof, has no bearing on how insightful a piece of writing can be, or how accurate it is.

On social media, many studies have shown that in this era of fake news, it is often the hateful pieces that feed racism and xenophobia that do well and spread quickly.

After all, it is easy to like, share or comment upon a piece that will likely not have any impact on your day-to-day life.

But there is no doubt that there are strong undertones of bigotry in many facets of social media, across all platforms. This is why it makes it all the more important that encounters like what Ms Champion experienced should be shared to encourage dialogue.

Ms Chieze posted a photo of lemons arranged neatly in an egg tray to represent breasts with symptoms such as bumps, redness, indentation or skin erosion, to show what breast cancer could look like and raise awareness of the disease. PHOTO: ERIN SMITH CHIEZE/CORRINE ELLSWORTH BEAUMONT

BREAST CANCER ISN’T A GAME 

If your Facebook feed is suddenly filled with little heart emojis, there’s a chance it may have something to do with breast cancer.

The premise is this: A user posts a heart on a female friend’s Facebook wall, then sends her a private message to tell her to get her breasts checked for lumps.

This “game”, which has resurfaced several times over the years, is supposedly meant only for women. The person who posts the heart emojis is supposed to keep silent if a male user asks her what it is about.

But the “gamification” of the potentially fatal disease has made some critics see red. They argue that the way the game plays out does little to raise awareness of the cancer. Last week, a breast cancer survivor came out to condemn the act even further.

Facebook user Erin Smith Chieze said she realised she had breast cancer in 2015 when someone on her Facebook feed posted a photo of what the cancer looked like.

“I saw an indentation that looked like one of the pictures, I instantly knew I had breast cancer,” she said. “A heart did nothing for awareness.”

She was diagnosed with the cancer five days later, and was informed that it was stage 4.

“A picture of what to look for keyed me into knowing I had a terminal disease. We need to give real information, not cute hearts.”

Instead of posting emojis, Ms Chieze posted a photo of what breast cancer looks like, using lemons as a guide. The lemons, arranged neatly in an egg tray, show symptoms like whether a breast has bumps, redness, indentation or skin erosion.

“If you truly want to help people with cancer, or those who will get cancer, share photos like this one,” she said.

Her message seems to have worked. The photo, posted on Jan 11, has been shared more than 36,500 times.
 

Prankster Verma has posted videos of himself abusing customers in a barber shop by covering their faces with a towel. PHOTO: THE CRAZY SUMIT/YOUTUBE

PRANK VIDEO GONE WRONG

There are limits to playing pranks in the name of raking in hits, as one YouTuber recently learnt.

Police in India arrested prankster Sumit Verma last week for his prank videos which showed him kissing random girls in public places without permission.

The 21-year-old Verma, who goes by the moniker “The Crazy Sumit”, has more than 155,000 subscribers on his channel.

Following the outrage, Verma took down the video and put up an apology, saying that his pranks were purely for “entertainment”.

Some of his other videos involve abusing customers in a barber shop by hitting them and using a towel to forcibly cover their faces, and going up to strangers sleeping in a park and hugging them.

The police have charged Verma with assault. His accomplice, camera man Satyajeet Kadyan, has also been arrested.

New reports say that Verma has denied the charges, and that he kissed only women who had given their consent. So far no one in the video has stepped forward to defend his actions.

This article was first published on Jan 15, 2017.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

Without registration and a nice set of plates, cyclists are viewed as freeloaders by other road users

Every time I go out on my bicycle, I prepare for rain, a flat tyre and probable death.

I ride along Changi Coast Road, an avenue favoured by heavy vehicles driven by those who let nothing slow down their delivery of construction sand, least of all some middle-aged goon using ancient leg-powered transport just to annoy modern people.

I read with jealousy that soon, all e-bike riders will have to have their bikes registered, and will have to display registration plates.

As a cyclist, I too want registration and a nice set of plates. One reason is so that when they pry my machine from between the 14th and 16th wheels of a lorry, it will be a lot quicker to work out who I am (or used to be) compared with searching my corpse for a wallet, allowing the lorry driver to get on with his busy day, which is how I became one with his vehicle’s paintwork in the first place.

Another reason why registration would be a good idea for all cyclists is that it will help get me something I have trouble getting on the road: respect.

The last time I wrote about getting no respect as a cyclist, I received a polite but firm e-mail saying I should not expect anyone to take me seriously because I do not pay road taxes. This is true. I cannot deny that I have been shamelessly freeloading off generous motorists, like a huge lycra-wearing tick.

I don’t enjoy being a parasite. As the law stands, I am not asked to pay a tax. But if money is how I earn the right to not die, then where do I sign?

Bicycle registration is not new. When I was a kid, I owned a bicycle, purchased second-hand from my Primary 5 classmate Kevin for $40 after I had pestered my mum for weeks. It sported a jaunty white licence plate on the front mudguard, like a hat. It was the cleanest, most adult-looking thing on that heap, and I liked how it made me an official member of the road users’ club.

Well, that registration law went away and so now we have a class of road users who pay nothing, yet expect to be treated with the same consideration as taxpayers. To people like the writer of that e-mail, money buys road entitlement, and people like me have none.

In his view, one that I think is shared by a few, non-payers are like unwanted migrants: We come in uninvited to use up resources, so we should expect a grudging tolerance and that’s it; it is rude to ask for more.

No word yet on how much e-bike registration will cost, but it will happen soon. When that rule comes into force, e-bikes will cross a psychological barrier, from toy to mode of transport, from road nuisance to road native. And because they are registered, maybe they will earn more than the right to exist; e-bikers might even be treated like equals.

Yes, there is a slew of restrictions on how e-bikes can be used, but this is part of any technology’s life cycle. A device advanced enough to be useful is also pretty dangerous. Drones and lasers are already there, and now e-bikes are joining the club.

Running down the definitions, it’s clear that a sufficiently fit cyclist is just as powerful, and thus as dangerous, as the average e-biker.

A road cycling enthusiast on a flat stretch can easily outpace an e-biker’s 25kmh speed limit; I have clocked 45kmh going downhill (coasting; my weight, for once, an advantage). In spurts, a seasoned cyclist pushes into the cranks more power than an e-bike’s 250-watt limit.

It has been a while since I took my bike out, so I’m quite flabby, but it is nice to think that with some training, it’s possible for me to break the Transport Ministry’s restrictions on assisted power (“You’ll have to arrest me, officer – my calves are illegal modifications.”).

I can only hope that if registration works for e-bikes, reducing the harm they cause users and others, the road space – and mind space – they are given by other road users trickles down to us non-“e” people.

So I pedal on as unregistered scum. You will have to believe me when I say that if I could pay someone for the right to get home in one piece, I would.

johnlui@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Jan 15, 2017.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

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