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58 S’poreans from every walk of life in SG50 book

SINGAPORE — People from all walks of life, from a female bus captain who has mastered over 40 different bus routes to a teenager who holds four official Guinness World Records for indoor skydiving, are among the 58 Singaporeans featured in a book to mark the nation’s Golden Jubilee.

SINGAPORE — People from all walks of life, from a female bus captain who has mastered over 40 different bus routes to a teenager who holds four official Guinness World Records for indoor skydiving, are among the 58 Singaporeans featured in a book to mark the nation’s Golden Jubilee.

The official SG50 coffee-table book Living The Singapore Story: Celebrating 50 Years was launched by President Tony Tan and Education Minister Heng Swee Keat yesterday at the National Library on Victoria Street.

Mr Heng, who is also the SG50 Steering Committee’s chairman, said the book has chronicled every single step taken by the nation to become what it is today.

“It does so by telling the small steps and great strides that each of us has made individually, including our trips, stumbles and leaps into the unknown,” he added.

Through 58 stories, the book hopes to provide readers with glimpses of Singaporeans from various backgrounds, such as a satay seller, a former police officer with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Madam Noor Aishah Md Salim, who is the widow of Singapore’s first President Yusof Ishak, and renowned singer-composer Dick Lee.

It also contains a contribution from Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, which is said to be one of his final written works and interviews before he died in March.

Professor Tommy Koh, chairman of the book’s editorial advisory committee, said: “We wanted to tell the story of our miraculous journey in the last 50 years in a balanced, thoughtful and engaging manner.”

Chief bus captain Elizabeth Lim, who has been on the road since 1981, said she hopes her story would offer Singaporeans an insight into the days when bus drivers had to sit beside the huge bus engine that was constantly radiating heat, and had to do their own maintenance at the bus bays.

The spirited 57-year-old shared that she derives excitement from being on the road. While most drivers master up to five different service routes, Mdm Lim is familiar with 40.

Former CID homicide detective Abd Rahman Khan Gulap Khan, whose account of his investigations in landmark cases such as the 1978 Greek tanker explosion was documented in the book, noted crime-fighting back then was relatively harder.

Mr Rahman, 65, recalled how his team worked against time in the aftermath of the explosion that killed 76 people, because most of the bodies were not refrigerated in the mortuary due to a lack of storage space.

“I have decided to share my actual experience ... so that our younger generation can realise how the older generation continue through the (law enforcement) process without sophisticated technology,” he said.

Ms Kyra Poh, 13, the youngest Singaporean featured, hopes her story will serve as an inspiration to others.

“I want to tell readers that anything is possible, so long as you put your heart to it,” said Ms Poh. She did her first indoor skydive when she was only eight years old, and is now able to perform 68 airborne backflips within a minute.

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