Ho Kwon Ping shares secrets on finding the meaning of life | Help Desk

I think the worst thing to be in is wanting to do something, not daring to do it. Not making a decision that you're going to do the other thing, but always lamenting that "I should be doing this, I should be doing it, but I don't dare to." And one day, when you're too old and you retire, you always ask yourself, "I could have been an..."

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Entrepreneur. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Mothership Help Des. I'm your host, Drew. As always, I am joined by my, I have been told that I should call them associates, my associates, Allie and Pris. How you guys doing this week?

Great. Yes, I was doing great until I walked into the toilet at our office. Oh, I was having a good week until I walked into the toilet office yesterday. And let me tell you, there was so much pee. It was a cubicle. Oh, yeah. It was. Our producer, Yacht, just then said that he only uses the cubicles. But okay, I'm saying, there was so much pee on the seat. It was nuts. It was like, it felt like the person who used that cubicle before me, like he saw himself missing, and then he decided, "I'm just going to go. I'm going to miss the whole time." He didn't correct. Yeah, he, he, his goal was to not go in. Yeah. Honestly, it felt that way, like he was trying to, he was trying to make sure that the seat was as wet as possible.

No, you know, that's why I don't sit on public toilets. I like, I only see. I thought it would be better for women's toilets. No, no. My God. I mean, oh, we don't talk about the period bloods. The period blood. We didn't talk about that on. No, but I don't sit on public toilets. I don't understand how people can sit on public toilets. Like, you are, you are exposed and you are exposing yourself to many other, but bacterias. Yes, bacterias. Bacterias. Yeah. I can't, I, I can't see it on public col. Wow. Wow. You guys, this is a big revelation. I, I do sometimes, sometimes. But, but, but it's tough. We, we, we actually have a like a girls' chat for our company and like it's supposed to, I don't know, I don't know what's the purpose of it. But basically, all the updates every day is about the situation in the toilet. Oh, wow. So that toilet needs to be cleaned. Yeah. But I've seen the Auntie, she does a good job. No, she does a good job. It's not, it's not the Auntie. Other people using the. I don't know, you know who you are, the guy who caused that scene. Do you know? Do you know? Do you?

Okay, something about me, I must say, like when I use a public toilet and it's really messy, I must clean it afterwards. Wow. I have like. No, okay. You're your own man. No, other people's. Because I don't, I don't want someone. I just go to the next. Yeah, I just go. Okay. Because that's what I did yesterday because it was so intense that like I was, I'm not going to touch this. But I feel like I don't want people to see me come out the cule and then go again. They think that it's you. They think I'm the monster. They think I'm the monster. Yeah. I can't, I can't, I can't have that reputation. I can't have that be my reputation. Okay. Yeah. But you know what? Public toilets, I will sit on. Okay. Maybe not a public toilet, but a toilet that is not in my home. Toilets at hotels. Oh, yeah. Like B Tree hotels. Oh, yes. Is opening next year. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, that's a good segue. I think for our guest today. So let's get to the episode. My guest today is the founder and executive chairman of the Banyan Group, a hospitality empire boasting some of the swankiest, most exclusive hotels across 22 countries. In 2020, CNA called him easily one of Singapore's most recognizable entrepreneurs, and he is so recognizable that he doesn't even need LinkedIn. And I know this because I checked when I was looking for info to put in this intro. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on Help Desk, Mr. Hokan Ping.

Y. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay, I've got my two help desk intents with me, Allie and Pris. Right. And I'm trying to teach them about making small talk with important people. So I'm going to give them an opportunity to gu to do small talk with, you know, one of Singapore's premier entrepreneurs.

Well, we can talk about the weather if you want to start. But what else are you going to do a small talk about? I mean, we can talk. We can talk about anything. You start. How, how, what do you eat for for lunch? What do you have for lunch?

Oh, I had a, I had a great lunch. It was a, somebody I had not seen for a long time, an ex-director who invited me to this little restaurant. I can make a pitch for it. It's called Voyage. Voyage. Voyage. Super cool restaurant. Don't you guys know it at all?

Well, I am ashamed. We're, we're not cool enough. Not cool enough. It's at Utam Road, and unfortunately, they're likely to be closing down. I think you, you're aware of all the news in Singapore about how, you know, a lot of EES are closing down because it's not, but people are not spending money and so on. So, so, and let me make a pitch for them. As a young chef, it's my first time there. Really great food, a mix of Japanese and not fusion, but contemporary Japanese, etcetera. It's at, uh, Utam Road, exactly where I can't remember, but it's a, it's called The Voyage. Wow. So please, everybody there, please go. And I'm not getting any commission from this, okay?

Do you like Japanese food very much?

I, I, I actually have an apartment in Japan. I go there a lot because we're doing a lot of projects in Japan. It's probably our fastest growing region right now. We've got, um, the B Tree Kilo just opened, and we're opening up about six or seven B Tree. So I go to Japan very often. I just came back from Japan about three or four days ago. I'm going again in October. So, yeah, I, I really do like Japanese food a lot.

Okay. And Bay Tree is known for its like off the beaten path kind of like hidden gem kind of things, right? So what's your hidden gem recommendation for Japan?

Ah, well, okay. The, the hidden gem that that we really have across the whole group right now, and one which is one the most awards, is probably in Banyan in Ubud, okay? Where we built a property that was, uh, by even our sort of relatively unorthodox standards, pretty unorthodox. Yeah. It's, uh, it's tagline is "no doors, no walls," and it's actually a very big villa with a private swimming pool and no doors, no walls, but no mosquitoes, nothing. It's the weather is beautiful. You're looking, you're so isolated that without doors or walls, you can walk around naked, nobody will see you, etcetera. And, and it's, it's doing phenomenally well, really, really well. Over, over a thousand Singapore dollars a night. Yeah. Um, I guess in Japan, one of the places we're looking at, and that's the sub-brand we have called Bantry Escape, rather than a mainstream Banyan Tree. One of the places we're looking at right now is a, is along the Nakasendo trail, which I'm not sure you've heard of, but heard. But it's just, you know, you know, there used to be Kyoto and then was Tokyo, right? And those are the two big sort of kingdoms or, or forms of of Japan. If you watch Japanese warrior movies and so on, and they used to have two trails linking one center to another. One was along the coastal line, and the other one was through the mountains. The mountain's trail has been there for centuries, and much of it is at the lower levels have been sort of transformed by highways and so on. But at a certain section, it's the same trail with the postal sort of villages that they had for hundreds of years. That's become a very popular place for people to hike. And so we're looking at doing something there.

Wow, so cool. So cool. Okay. Pris, do you have a small talk question that you want to?

Sorry, mine was not a small talk, but became, became a sales and marketing pitch, right? So, okay. The weather. Yeah. How's the weather for you nowadays? Like, jeez. Yeah, it was fine. Thank you, ma'am. It's fine. Was that very B? That was very B. It was quite B. How's the weather for you now?

Okay. Yeah.

It's like, um, well, I mean, if I were you, if I'm going to small talk on, on the weather, it would be, you know, how wet did you get the last week?

Gosh, it was horrible, actually. It was quite horrible for the past few days. Yeah. The point is, how wet did you get?

Oh, how wet did I get? Yeah. You could have weather, but you guys sit here the whole day. We played floorball yesterday. We played, um, floorball, which is like a hockey is sport. You got wet. Very wet. Moist. Moist. Yeah. Moist. That's small talk, you see. And you know, you didn't get wet because you were here all the time.

I, I was working. I was working. Yeah. Working hard.

Because you're a singer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how important is small talk for someone like you? It's like, do you, do you engage in it a lot?

I mean, as a businessman, I can tell you the biggest, the, um, this is, this is actually a little story because all of you are too young to have known Lee Kuan Yew. But I mean, you know, he existed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he existed. That's about it. And in the history books. That makes me feel old too. But I'm of the generation that actually sort of pioneer generation, right? So I, I've known him quite a bit off and on and so on. And he is actually, all of them, Dr. Goh Keng Swee and all the pioneer people, never had small talk. Oh. Oh. And it's kind of scary to sit with somebody at a dinner table and you, you sort of try to engage them in small talk, and they kind of look right ahead. But when you want to talk about something substantive, then they really get into it. Wow. So they get straight to the point. That kind of, they get straight to the point. Because, um, yeah. Um, I remember for Dr. Goh Keng Swee, I was doing my, um, OCS Officer Cadet sort of passing out ceremony, and he was there, sitting next to me, and he was very quiet, looking at his watch all the time. Couldn't wait to get out of there.

No, I was intrigued. So I was wondering, try to make small talk. Dr. Goh, who's the defense minister, what are you doing looking at your watch? Are you quite busy? And he said, "No, I'm timing how long it takes for every recruit to go and get up there, because if we could shorten it by five seconds, we could save you know, 30 minutes." Yeah. Okay. So no small talk. Serious guy. Serious guy. Down to business.

Did you meet, did you meet, um, Lee Kuan Yew as well?

Oh, yes. Quite a lot. A lot of people in my generation would have met him. Okay. And I mean, I read in your, in the book about you that you, you went to jail while you were detained under the ISA. Did you ever ask him, like, "Hey, what, what's up? What was up with that?"

Um, no. Um, I have always wanted to ask him. I've, I've been quite open that I think he made a mistake. Yeah. Doing it. And I've also said, I don't bear him a grudge, a personal grudge, because I think he, I think it was a mistake. I was absolutely not a threat to Singapore. I wasn't a communist, but obviously he felt that I was somehow a threat at that time. And the time, in those times, were quite turbulent. Yeah. So it was for Singapore's sake that he did it. And I think it's a mistake. But as a CEO myself of a small company, and he's the CEO of the country, I think we all recognize people, well, compared to Singapore, but we all make mistakes. I've always wanted to ask him, uh, you know, Mr. Lee, why did you do what you did? Yeah. But I can, I never summoned the courage. And I think that what he would have said would have been a sort of gruff kind of like, "Hmm, well, I had to do what I had to do." And I think that's probably quite characteristic of the man. But I think in the end, the fact that he, um, not to say rehabilitated me, the fact that he asked me to take over quite a number of positions, joining GIC, being chairman of the first chairman of Singapore Power, doing SMU, and so on. I think there's an unspoken understanding that, um, whatever it was that I did that the government thought was wrong, they didn't ever say it was a mistake. Yeah. And I don't think they ever will. But I think there's an acknowledgement that, um, we come to terms with who we are, and that they were trying to do what they thought was best for Singapore, and I'm trying to do now what I think is the best for Singapore. And there's no need to to try to uncover these old things and to ask for an apology, which I'm quite sure I would not get anyway. So why bother? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Uh, we're going to get to the questions. Are you ready for?

Sure. Yeah. Is that enough small talk now or not?

Yeah. Okay. But before we get to the questions that you guys have submitted, if you are watching this right now, if you have a question that you need advice for, any situation at all, big or small, you can write to us at the link that is on your screen right now, or you can find that exact same link in the show description. Write to us there. Who knows, you might get someone like a hardened criminal, Hokan Ping, to answer the question for you. Could be agony uncle. You've got girlfriend problems. One worried father. I've got one unmarried son. Still, you know, very good advice.

Okay, we can offer advice for your unmarried son. Okay. Okay. I don't think he needs it. He's, he's fine. Okay. Okay. So the first question is from Grace, and this is a long one. Um, but Grace writes, "I've built a highly productive indoor farm in Singapore, growing the most amazing quality vegetables that are nutritious, pesticide-free, and delicious. It's probably the best green you can get in Singapore, seriously. I built this farm to grow clean food for Singapore after realizing that most produce are grown unethically, using lots of pesticide. Unfortunately, I can't sell them due to many supply chain reasons. I started a subscription program to sell directly to consumers now, but even then, the take-up rate is very low, even though we are price competitive. I'm feeling really dejected. If the farm doesn't bring in more revenue, I will have to shut it. Please tell me how I should promote my vegetables to Singapore." Grace wants to know what she should do with her, um, so far failing farm business.

The, I don't quite understand that because we also, meaning understand it, meaning she said that she's price competitive. And I would probably urge her to really examine what she means by being price competitive. Um, I can well imagine for food security reasons, Singapore government has promoted people having indoor farms and so on. But largely for food security purposes, I wouldn't say it's necessary for quality purposes, because you can get very good organic farms in in Thailand and in, um, Malaysia and so on. I've had a bit of experience in the sense that we have a lot of a very large piece of land we didn't know what to do with in Changi. We actually had a farm, and we tried to supply a lot of high-quality, previously only importable vegetables and fruits into Thailand. So we thought we were doing import substitution. We would be competitive. Quality was good. It also didn't work because at the end of the day, after the supply chain costs were were figured in, and economies of scale, we figured in, we actually weren't price competitive. So my question would be to your questioner, are you really that price competitive? If you are price competitive and you claim to be quality competitive, then what could possibly be the reason that you're not doing well? There obviously cannot be some kind of reverse discrimination from the consumer that because you are grown in Singapore, the vegetable must be worse. So something doesn't make sense here. Yeah. Um, is it a distribution problem? Is it that you don't have enough supply so that none of the supermarkets will in fact want to in want to sell your product because it's just too little? So it might be that that problem. But I think the answer is that something's wrong with the question, meaning she has to, she or he has to look deeper into it and say, "If I am really of high quality and I'm price competitive, I'm not doing well, there must be another reason." It cannot be people are not trying to don't want to buy my product because they don't like my product and so on. Yeah. There must be some reason.

Did you ever face this kind of problem, you know, when you're starting the Banyan Group, any of the hotels or anything like that?

Yeah, I think I, I have because I think there's a general tendency that when things are not working, one is not sufficiently and brutally honest with oneself. Okay? And you tend to, and I'm not claiming this person is, yeah, but I'm basically saying it off myself so that perhaps your reader can maybe see a comparison in themselves. So not to be defensive, but I think very often when things aren't working out right, we tend to want to find an external reason. And but when, when your question, your listeners put it that way, yeah, my my tendency in my from my experience is that there's something wrong with the whole way she, she, he's analyzing this whole issue. There must be something wrong with your business model, otherwise you should be succeeding. There's no reason you should not succeed. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you guys ever do like, did you learn about like SWOT? SWOT? And an?

We do it as sort of, it's, it's, uh, it's an in, it's sort of a natural thing that we do all the time. Like if, if you have, have you been in Singapore Army? Okay. Then it's just like, you know, in the Singapore Army, you do, you do appreciation of situation, you analyze terrain, you do that as kind of like a standard thing. Although it used to be a template, you have to read and try to do when you're an officer cadet school, but after that, it's inbuilt in you. So the same way, a SWOT analysis and appreciation of situation, rather combat strength and so on, after a while, it becomes inculcated in you. And we do SWOT analysis all the time without even needing to sort of write it on a blackboard, okay? So it's like, it's just something that you are, like, it's a mental, it's a mental framework that you should have. And I think everybody should have that. Okay.

Wow. So it's a real thing, not just confined to business textbooks?

No, no, no. It's a real thing. Yeah. And, and you should do a SWOT analysis if you have a girlfriend or boyfriend perspective life.

Don't worry, we'll get to that. I feel like you're raring to go on the relationship.

No, it's just that there was a question that you had sent me something about that. So it's not, it's not the kind of stuff I normally talk about.

No, not at all. Um, I want to ask you a bit about, you know, why you decided to start, you know, Banyan Tree in the first place? You know, how did you get the idea for it? Um, and were you ever scared that it wasn't going to work out?

I was never scared it wasn't going to work out simply because I never thought it was actually going to work out. Okay. Because that's interesting, right? Yeah. Um, how we started on this was, uh, more than 30 years ago, probably about 35 years ago, after I had failed in one business venture dismally, so bad that I wanted to resign from the company, family business. This is the oil rig, the oil rig business. And my dad said, "Yeah, go and resign after you make back the money." So there was sort of, you know, like licking my wounds, not knowing what to do. Um, and then at that time, 35 years ago, uh, they, they were just the beginning of a flight from from Bangkok to this little place called Phuket. So I wanted to get away from it all. So I went with my younger brother, who's an architect, yeah, my wife, myself, and a cousin. We went to Phuket just for fun. And again, for fun, we found a piece of land and happened to buy it. Um, and as I've said before, I never went to business school, never heard of due diligence. We just bought it. Didn't know how big it was. Didn't know, knew nothing. Yeah, just bought it for luck.

And you're not allowed to say how much it costs?

I'm not allowed to say how much it costs because it would be, yeah, it was pretty cheap. Okay. Um, by now, I think I've almost forgotten because for so long I've said I'm not allowed to say. It's kind of like Singapore government reserves. I, who, who would get in trouble if you said, if you said how much it costs? I don't think anybody would get into trouble. It's because actually, I'm afraid that if I were to disclose it, I'm not sure of the number anymore. It was, it was quite, it was quite cheap. I mean, it's, it was really quite cheap. And the reason it was cheap was actually because after we found out, and this not only because of 35 years ago, but because there was a United Nations Development Program, UNDP report on Phuket, on the development of Phuket way back in the 80s, right? When the UN was trying to help Thai government develop Phuket. So they actually analyzed every single bay in Phuket in a deep, thick report. Being a journalist, I, I need at least I knew how to do research. Not to do due diligence, but research because I bought the land already. And then we read up about this Bang Tao Bay, which is the longest and biggest bay in Phuket, and found out they had written it off completely because it was totally polluted. Because I had never read that report. And you read this report after you bought. Other people read the report before, which said that Patong Beach, which I'm sure many of you have been to, it is has got the greatest potential because it's a deep bay. So everybody bought land there. So, so that's why it was ridiculously cheap because it was completely written off and nobody really wanted to buy it at all. And there's a large piece that was basically a tin mine. Yeah. So cut a long story short, after having bought it, we had to do something with it. So my brother, being an architect, and I sat down and literally at the kitchen table, literally, we designed the first hotel. We got somebody to manage it, and then we built the second hotel, third hotel, and so on. And it was quite successful. Um, by the fourth hotel or so, um, we, we had our last piece of land, which now we expanded, of course, to be much bigger than the last than it was before. At that time, it was our last piece of land, and it had no beach. It had a road between it and the beach. And so none of the companies we wanted to bring in to manage it wanted to manage it. And so that was that Eureka moment, uh, when I said, "Why don't we manage it ourselves?" Now, that's not a total accident. And I've always said that in in life, success always has to be, um, a mix between intent and luck. Okay? Yeah. Luck meaning, luck meaning the happenstance of basically having a piece of land that I said, "Let's go and do something with it," because nobody would. But also intent, because for the last 10 years before that, when I was running the rest of our family business, I had been gradually selling every one of them because these were basically the type of businesses where we never owned the customer. We were doing what in economics is called contract manufacturing. We were basically assembling things for other people, or like we were doing assembling of canvas shoes for Nike, Adidas. We're assembling televisions and so on for other brands, or we were doing trading. Okay? Right. Which is also trading other people's things, but we never owned a customer. And you're always running just to stand still. Anytime any cheaper country comes along, companies will move there, remove and basically relocate their sourcing from there. So I decided at that time that I needed to find a brand. I needed to do something. But not being of any particular industry background, I had the intent of saying to myself, "Next thing we're going to do in life, I'm never going to do contract manufacturing or trading. I have to own the customer. I have to have a brand." So that's the intent. And then the luck was this piece of land. You put two and two together, and we said, "Well, let's try and do a hotel brand." Yeah. And that's what we did. We launched Banyan Tree. We did, we did things that we were not knowing was luxury. We did a small hotel with only 25 keys because that was the only risk we were willing to take. Um, we put in a private swimming pool because they were not that expensive, but because then we thought people can use a private swimming pool rather than go to the sea. We did a spa because it was just the beginning of the idea what a spa was all about. And a whole lot of stories about the whole spa, the tropical garden spa, that I've written about, that Aaron has written about in the book. So that's how it all started. And, and I think the moral of that story is, I think luck and intent have to come together for for venture to take off. Anybody who tells you that they did it entirely from intent all along, they knew that what they were going to do, isn't really telling you the truth. Yeah. And at the same time, if it's just luck, you're going for without any longer term intent, you're not going to have a lasting successful enterprise either. Yeah.

Interesting. I want to ask you a bit more about, you know, your business, the, I guess the genesis of your business and some of your, those early days. But before we go into that, I mean, since you mentioned the spa thing, have you seen White Lotus, the HBO TV show?

I didn't get past the first few episodes.

No? Why is that?

It's so good. I absolutely love. Really? Does it get better later on? Sometimes the first. It gets, I'm told it gets darker. First season is that the one that you, the first few episodes of the first. It's in Hawaii, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it was kind of Italy. And then the was very, I didn't see Italy. I saw it was very light-hearted and a little bit kind of. It gets darker, is it? Okay. Then I should go deep into you. Like you like dark. You like dark shows. You know, I like the one which was the other one, was it called Ozark? Ozark. Yeah, that's, yeah. But it starts out as a very or Breaking Bad, is that called? You know, these movies that these are introduced to me by my kids, by the way. They start out as kind of very mundane type movies, very ordinary, kind of boring, and then it gets, it drags you in darker and darker. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So does White Lotus just get darker?

Um, I, I like shows that like analyze the like each individual's character. So it's more than the plot. I think it's like about each character and how they slowly develop and they slowly expose how crazy they are.

Crazy and like, okay. Okay. Then I, I'll go back and watch it. Give it a, give it a second. It's not like in your face. Like you can feel it. Okay. That's good. You need to. I, I think you need. People have told me about how good White Lotus is. It's just that in the beginning, Hawaii part is kind of sounds like a sort of Love Boat kind of thing, you know? It's not, it's not. Okay. But at the same time, have you guys watched, um, The Bear?

Oh my gosh. It's my current obsession.

Yeah, because I'm in hospitality, so I'm very. You see the, the restaurants and how they work and so. Actually, that's very good too, because it talks about people and challenges and. And, okay, I'll watch White Lotus. But the last one is, I've never watched the Bear. Or, yeah, White Lotus. I should maybe I'll start. I'm looking for a show to watch anyway. So you're too seriously reading books. Books. The last time I read a book was in secondary school.

Wow. Wow. Okay. Wait, no. Okay, back to the question. And, and if you can excuse me asking a slightly rude question, if you don't mind, you know, because you started your business, you were working with your dad's business before that, and you know, you talked about having a failure. Do you think that, and correct me if if you think I'm wrong here, but coming from a slightly privileged background, that you could afford to take a risk like starting a business? And that's not, you know, that's harder for other people to to do?

Absolutely. When it comes to, you know, that that intent and oper and, uh, luck that you are, that you mentioned earlier.

Oh, oh, absolutely. Um, I'm, I'm pretty straightforward about my own circumstances of being an upper middle class person, having a family business where we could afford to lose a lot of money, and I could still succeed. Um, but my circumstances, which I talk about, is not necessarily applicable for everybody else. I have, in fact, spoken at length about how I don't think one should romanticize the whole issue of entrepreneurship. And, and I think a lot of young people, people think that it's such a romantic thing to do that you come fresh out of university, you, everybody's got to go into their own startup, or else you're not legit. You got to really do it, you know, when you're super young, the whole Steve, Steve Jobs kind of idea of doing something in tech in your garage and then becoming successful and being a college dropout. I would actually recommend people not to do that. The most successful entrepreneurs are people who de-risk themselves. And if you just look at the Singapore context, yeah, because we're such a big electronic center, some of the most successful, uh, companies that are that have ventured out, in fact, Venture Corp is one of them. I'm not sure if you know that company, and a few others too, who the founders are friends of mine. They were working in the multinational companies, and usually when they get to be maybe early forties, when they've learned a lot already, and they also don't go out on their own. They usually would go out into business as three or four partners who are perhaps strong in different areas, and then they would, they understand the landscape of what they want to go out into. And they also de-risk by very often being a subcontractor to the big multinational company. So my point is that, um, yes, I'm very open about the fact that I came from a privileged background, and therefore what I did is not a model for everybody else. Um, and if I wanted to propose a model for entrepreneurship, I would say, don't romanticize it. It's already so difficult. Don't romanticize the idea of risk-taking for an entrepreneur. The real successful entrepreneurs are those people who from the from the starting day know how risky it is, so they go to great lengths to try to de-risk themselves. And that's by de-risking the number of measures I mentioned, go out a little bit later when you already have business expertise, go out with partners, go out with potential market and customers, and so on.

And so what would you have done if Banyan, if that first Banyan Tree hotel failed? If it had failed, as the rig deal failed?

I, you alluded to it. I'm not going to be explaining here about the oil rig deal that we did. But I had actually thought it was going to succeed. The oil rig, yeah, because obviously, who is nobody is crazy enough or irresponsible enough to say, "I'm just going to do this for luck." I was quite seriously knowing how much money we were putting into it, and I really quite seriously thought it was going to succeed far more than Banyan Tree. Because Laguna Phuket was succeeding as four or five hotels, but Banyan Tree was just one little venture where we ventured into hospitality investing and management with only 25, 30 rooms. And I never thought it was going to become a bigger thing. So if it had failed, we would have just let it fail, and we'll probably go back to hotel investing, which we were quite good at, and we had good land in terms of Phuket. Um, but I guess for my case, and this is not at all necessarily applicable for other people, the point was that at some point, I began to realize that yes, Banyan Tree as a brand and as a company does have legs, does have traction with its market, strikes a chord with people, and perhaps it is something I could really consider to be my long-term objective of building a brand, and maybe this would be it. But I never knew or decided in advance that that hospitality would be the brand I would build, because I did not come from a hospitality background at all. Yeah. Yeah.

And do you think there are certain temperaments that are better suited to entrepreneurship or to, you know, managing a big business like, like yourself?

Those are two separate questions. Is there a certain mentality that's required for managing a big business? It's quite separate from a certain from attributes for being an entrepreneur. Okay? Because my business is hardly a big business. I've got friends of mine. I've been director on on international boards, yeah, where the management has to manage businesses that are multiple times bigger than Banyan Tree. Yeah. So I guess I would say the attributes needed for managing a very big business would be the standard type of things you would talk about in business school, right? You need, okay, you need organizational acumen, you need analytical skills, you need all those sort of stuff. Those are not so much emotional skills. Those are basically managerial skills. What I have found about most entrepreneurs, small or big, is that generally entrepreneurs, because they don't function that well in big companies, okay, in terms of the, uh, personality trait. Okay. I see now. That's. And, and I think that's a relatively interesting angle of looking at it, because that's how I've seen myself. Yeah. I don't romanticize the entrepreneur in necessarily a positive way, that the entrepreneur is an entrepreneur because he or she has been so driven that they want to do all these great things in life, and they don't want to be an employee because they want to be their own boss, and, you know, all that kind of romantic stuff. You, you, the glorified stuff you talk about. Yeah. I think half the time, people, of course, there are those types too, right, who've always wanted to have a vision and build something massive. Yeah. But on the other hand, there's a lot of people who are entrepreneurs because they don't work very well in big companies. And I'm one of them.

What do you mean you don't work well in big companies?

I'm a bit individualistic, okay? I kind of like to do my own thing. Uh, uh, and that's, I guess, that's the issue. I mean, there's no right or wrong, it's not a value judgment. Yeah. I just like.

A bit of a rebel?

No, it's not a rebel. No, a rebel is somebody who rebels against something else, okay? I'm not a, well, I was a rebel and, and in certain ways, a rebel. But I'm, what I'm talking about being an entrepreneur is that very often you want to go into business, and I'm even talking about some of the guys who do super small businesses, it's because you just like to be your own boss. Yeah. You just like to get up in the morning and do your own thing. You like to, you like to be in control of your own fate. And that might mean that you are not ever going to be the CEO of a hundred billion dollar company. And I take certain other skills. It takes a lot of social skills to be able to navigate a world where you have to work with bosses, you have to work with, um, colleagues, you have to navigate politics without getting dispirited or pressed by politics. Yeah. Um, and some people are just not cut out for the corporate life. Yeah. And I think you have to know yourself enough. So it's not at all an issue of one is better than the other. I have friends of mine who are entrepreneurs, are friends of mine who are CEOs of multi-multi-billion dollar companies, and probably making money a lot more as a CEO of a multinational company than the guy who is an entrepreneur running a low bakery. So there's no value judgment as to which is better. It's just that there are certain, I think personality attributes that make you probably more inclined to be able to succeed as a, a manager in a big company. Yeah. And certain personality attributes that might make you more suited to be a happy entrepreneur, could be a big entrepreneur of a billion dollar company, or even an entrepreneur of a small company. So I think there are certain personality traits. And I only mention this because I think it's important for every person to again, not romanticize entrepreneurship or to romanticize becoming a CEO of a big company. I think it's good to know yourself. Know yourself and what kind of a person you are. If you work well in a big company, and you don't generally think you want to go out and take the little risk of running your own bakery and, you know, whatever that kind of stuff, then go for it and try to be the CEO of a big, big company. But if you notice that somehow you're not, that's not, that's not your thing, it's not your gig to try to do that, and you want to go out and do your own thing, then by all means, do your own thing. And I just happen to belong to the probably the category of people who like to do their own thing.

And writing on that, how, what would you give, what advice would you give for people who are not comfortable in working for a big company or like working under someone, but don't have that courage to take the step to actually go out and do their own business? Like they're too comfortable in where they're at, but they know that they don't want to be there. And, yeah, but they're just not, they just don't have the courage to start their own business.

My own sense is that that's rather a sad situation, honestly. Yeah. I have, I have talked quite a bit about the term. I, I've talked about sleepwalking through life. I've mentioned that a few times, that I think the saddest thing that can happen to a young person is number one, before you know it, you're not going to be young anymore. Okay? You seriously. You mean I'm much older than you are, but I can remember when I was your age, and suddenly you will go, you look back and think and say, "You know, now I'm 70. I, I used to be 20." And I, I know myself. I remember and know myself so well at 20. It's not as if that's a distant person, right? It's it's myself. And yet time has just passed. And I think you don't want to look back and say, "I sleepwalked and I, I kind of wasted those years." So my sense is that if you are a person who are who is at that crossroads, you have to really re-ask yourself a very difficult question. And that's where knowing yourself is so critical. If you know that the risk isn't worth taking, and you don't have that risk appetite, which is fine, then then clear it out of your mind and say, "I would really go for it, and I would, I would be happy in what I'm doing." It doesn't mean you have to aspire to be the CEO of the company, but I will be happy and I will make myself happy. So that when I retire at age whatever, in a big company, whatever position that is, I'm going to be very happy with it, and I will have no regrets. I think regrets is one of the worst things to have. If on the other hand, you, in your, in your heart of hearts, you know that you're not likely to function well in a big company, not that it's right, not that it's wrong, but it's not your temperament, then think seriously about what you want to do in the next five or more years, so that you plan towards having your own business. I have met quite a number of friends who have wanted to to leave a big business and set up their own thing. My advice to them has always been, take your time. De-risk. De-risk. De-risk. Do not over-romanticize entrepreneurship. It is hard. Yeah. But all those of my friends who've done it, five years later, they tell me how happy they are. They're not all billionaires. Some have become billionaires. Many have not. But those that have been successful, moderately successful, tell me how happy they are because it was in their temperament all along to do their own thing. Some have failed, but then they don't feel bad. They feel, I mean, if they've lost, if they've gone bankrupt, of course they feel bad. But some have failed and realized that being an entrepreneur isn't really for me. At least now I know what I want to be. I'll go back and join a big business. I may have lost a few years, but I can catch up, and I would do well. And I may not be a CEO, but I'll be happy because I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I tried, and I really wasn't that good. So I'll go back to where I am. So the long and short of it is that I think the worst thing to be in is wanting to do something, not daring to do it. Yep. And make, not making a decision that you're going to do the other thing, but always lamenting that "I should be doing this, I should be doing it, but I don't dare to." And one day, when you're too old and you retire, you always ask yourself, "I could have been an entrepreneur." You look at your friend down the road who became a very successful entrepreneur, and you will regret. You will hate yourself for it. And that's not the state you want to be in.

I think we're kind of moving towards the topic for the second question. So why don't Allie, why don't you go ahead and, uh, and pose it for KP?

Reg time. Okay. Yeah. Actually, actually, I want to just share also, like I always, I always have friends like everyone around me is they either want to start their own business, start a cafe, they just, oh, I want to work on my own. I want to do my own thing. And I always felt very weird about it because I don't, I never had like a passion to start my own thing. Yeah. And like, I mean, what, what you said just makes complete sense. I guess I got to be CEO now. But, uh, yeah, it's either this or that, right? But, uh, yeah, I think I always felt like I was very weird to not want to pursue that path, like, oh, I need to go out my way, take risks, build like something up by for myself. And I felt a bit like, damn, am I just not ambitious or I'm just not like taking risks in life? Well, all, like I think I'm one of maybe a group of five. I'm just the only one who doesn't take. Yeah. Or doesn't even think in that way.

Yeah, I think what we all need to have is not ambition, even, it's a sense of purpose, right? If you don't find that sense of purpose being an employee in a company, go out and do your own thing. But of course, the other thing I'd caution is that if you're going to go out and do your own thing, again, don't choose the easy thing and just start another cafe, and because you'll die.

You know, you will die. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you better think about what USP, what, you know, what's unique, special features you have, what's your special proposition. And if you do start a cafe, what is your USP in the cafe? But I think more important to that is, um, is to find purpose. If you are working in a company, you don't even need to aspire to be a CEO. If you really like, really love the culture of the company, you love what you're doing, you love the friends, and it's giving you the work-life balance that you really want to have, and you're happy, you don't need to be setting for yourself the aspiration of being the CEO.

Now, but now I feel like I need to take the extra step to try. I think you need to, I think you need a sense of purpose. And a sense of purpose means challenging yourself, whatever it might be, okay? You know, so everybody is different. You may want to say, I don't need to be the CEO, but I want to be financially well enough so that I can pursue another interest I have in life. I want to be a musician, uh, I've wanted to do this, I've wanted to do that, I've wanted to set up a charity mission in Uganda. Whatever it is, everybody is not identical, right? But my only point is that too many young people do not have an idea of what they want to be when they reach 60. And I think what people need to do is sort of project yourself now and say, kind of, you know, where do I see, visualize yourself, self-visualization. What could I imagine myself being at 60? Or I imagine myself as CEO of the company and super powerful, or I could imagine myself very happily in a company, but I have so many other interests outside in music and art and this, I want to be actually a substantial player in this area, or I want to do something else there. I think, I think it's important for young people to start thinking, what do I want to be when I'm 60? And then you plan. I wouldn't call it a career, you plan your, your life goal, and you plan a journey, right? Your journey towards that goal, which is completely different for every individual.

But the sad thing is what I call sleepwalking, is when you don't know what you want to do. You live every day, kind of get up in the morning, you see your friends, you go to work, you're a bit blasé about things, you're kind of generally not very happy, you have a sense of malaise, you know, and emptiness, and you don't know. And you go to a shopping center, the typical Singapore thing, you go, you go to Orchard Road, you go to a mall, you walk around, you window shop, you go and eat with friends, and this kind of keeps on going every day. And before you know it, three years have passed, six years have passed, true. And then where are you? That's the concern I have about young Singaporeans. And it is part of a concern of being an affluent country. You don't have this when you talk to younger Indonesians or Thais, because they're still struggling for just to reach where, where you all are at now. So they have a greater sense of purpose. We are now a rich country. So what do you want beyond material gain? There's very little we want in material things anymore.

Yeah, yeah. I think we can move, 'cause this actually, our second question is quite related to, to what you're saying. So, um, this person called Struggle Town said that she is, she or he is struggling with finding a sense of purpose in life, and she can't really find, you know, fulfillment in my world, and outside of that, life feels pretty aimless. I'm scared of the idea of wasting my time, and I don't want to get to the end and feel like I should have done more. I know it's kind of morbid and not good for a light podcast conversation, but I can't stop thinking about it. So, um, you know, KP, what is, um, you know, how do you find fulfillment in what you [Music] do?

Well, I, I guess, um, for myself, it's clear. Mmm, but it's again easier for myself. Let me tell you about what I see my challenge with all my associates, um, and my big challenge is in the hospitality industry. It sounds glamorous from the outside, but from the inside, it's pretty tough. It's no compensation, very difficult hours, burnt weekends, you know, and I've seen the bear. I know. Yeah, well, it's, it's not much better. Um, and you see the mission on Star, and you see how dressed up they are, but it is, it is very difficult. So my challenge has been always one of, what, what can I do to make my colleagues, who are particularly at the front line, wake up each morning wanting to go to work? Now, I'm posing this question down the second, the different way now. It's not what I'm going to do. The question now is for the person from Struggle Town. Is it, Struggle Town, basically ask him or her, when you wake up in the morning, how do you feel? Do you feel excited about going to work? Really think about it. Do you really want to get up and go to work excited? Excited doesn't mean necessarily that it's positive. You may be excited because there's so many problems, but you're excited to tackle those problems. Or do you feel pretty blah? If you start feeling pretty blah, then start analyzing seriously. Is it because of your boss? Is it because of your colleagues? And if those are not at all good for you, and things don't look like they're going to change, and that seems to be one of the major reasons why you're feeling blah, then you got to change that situation. You got to look for another job. If it's not that, but you are feeling blah because you're stuck in a relationship which is not going anywhere, but you don't have the guts to end it, and that might be the reason that you're feeling this blandness, this feeling, this, this sense of not going anywhere. My life isn't going anywhere. So, so you need to, there's no one answer, but I think the point is, you do have to sit down and be brutally honest with yourself and ask, what is it that's making my life, not to use the big word, purposeful, but what's making my life so that when I wake up in the morning, I feel blah? That to me is a very tangible way of measuring purposefulness, right? If you feel blah, is it because my relationship isn't going anywhere? Is it because my work isn't going anywh anywhere? And then you have got to change it. Otherwise, um, otherwise again, before you know it, you have lived the blah life.

When people are in a difficult situation about their own lives, like Struggle Town, you need to reach into the deepest reaches of your own soul and ask yourself, and be brutally honest, what should I be doing? And I think the answer is there for most people if they are able to be detached and looking at themselves and saying, what is my life all about? Yeah, and what do I need to do to get back in touch with my real self and live the life that I should be living, and the life that I want to live? There's no external answer for that. Um, I just think it is an issue that afflicts a lot of people, and the only thing, the only answer is, you have to be brutally honest with yourself, and the answer is there. That's the thing I keep on emphasizing, the answer is always there already. You just need to find what that answer is for yourself, right? You can't be dulu. Yeah, yeah. Do, do you know what, are you familiar with the term dulu? No. Is it, duded? Or dulu? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's being very deluded, self-deluding, right? Yeah. So if, if, if you ever have to use the word, the new, like slang is dulu. Oh, dulu. It's not, it's not a, it's not a Singaporean slang, is it? It's a global, global. You can use it at all 22 countries that you have hotels in. Okay. All right. I'm going to use it. I have, I have a dinner with my, my two kids, two of my kids today. I'm going to say, my God, y, that's a pretty dulu. You use it perfectly. Okay. All right. Okay. Cool.

And going back a little bit to, to, um, you know, finding, filing, um, you were saying how when you wake up and feel blah, like how do you feel when you, you know, wake up, get ready for work? Right now, I guess the, the happy situation I'm in right now is that I feel there isn't time enough in the day to do the things I want to do. Um, I think that's quite a nice feeling. Yeah. Um, I don't consider, I think I've, I've navigated the company and myself quite well to the extent that, and I do talk to other family businesses about it, that usually, very often, the patriarch of a family business doesn't want to let go. He thinks he's so important, he micromanages everything, and so on, and that really damages the relationship with the next generation. I think to that extent, I, I honestly think I've been quite successful. I have passed on a lot of the things, but it's not as if I have too much time on my hands because I've chosen certain things to be very, very hands-on about. But those are the things that I know I can do well, and also it's not that time-intensive. So I've measured it so that I, I think I wake up every morning very excited about the things I want to do in business. I'm very excited. Our family is a very close family. Although we travel all over the place, I've got five grandkids, I spend time with. So I actually think I'm, I'm in a very happy place right now. And, um, I'm grateful every day for, for the place that I am in, and I don't take it, uh, for granted. I think that's an important point to make about anyone who's happy with the state that he or she is. You cannot take it for granted, and you must always be, uh, grateful for it, otherwise terrible things can happen, hubris can happen, and other things too, right?

I wanted to ask a bit about your, you know, coming back to Singapore to serve NS, right? Um, because you were, you had a reputation as a student radical, or like you were protesting war. Did your friends, or did you, did you find it ironic that you were coming back to Singapore to join the army, having like, kind of pacifist leanings when you're in the States? No, I wasn't a pacifist at all. Okay. In the States, um, in fact, most of us who left university, either voluntarily or, or, um, or otherwise, um, some of them, my friends, who Americans, joined the US Army because the talk at that time was, you got to get into the belly of the beast and slay the beast from within, okay? And that's the kind of radical talk they had in those days. So I actually came into the army, and I remember very well my first few months as a recruit, I was trying to radicalize my, my colleagues. That might have been why their eyes, that didn't, that didn't go down very well. But, you know, my, my, uh, NS experience was one of some of the best years I had. In fact, I even wanted to sign on. Can you imagine? Yeah. Okay. W. And my parents had to tell me, um, no, don't sign on, um, because I, I, it's not that I like the military such. I really enjoyed the camaraderie there was there. Um, I felt, I felt a strong sense of camaraderie in doing things with people for a common cause. And that's actually quite strong. I mean, we in the army, we weren't there to defend Singapore, don't we say? We were, we were there because whether it's a, as a platoon, or as a battalion, or as a company, we were there going on exercises because of each other, right? It's, it's known even within all militaries of the world that soldiers do not fight for God, they don't fight for country, they fight for the guy next to them. So camaraderie is critical, and I really learned the importance of camaraderie, um, in the military, and it's, and it's something I try to build within my own company today. That camaraderie, which I guess in a corporate world would be known as corporate culture, yeah, is so critical to binding a company together, yeah.

So you make them march around? The binding chain and sing? Yes, yes. And sing the song? No, dos. No, W. No, no, no. They do. Anybody who doesn't do right, they have to do push-ups. Okay. Buddha claps. Yeah.

I find it interesting. I mean, like, how did you make that decision? Because I feel like so many people in your shoes would not have made the decision to come back to Singapore to serve NS. I think if I were to again go back to that, um, question about, because there's no point to to try to extrapolate from my own situation, yeah, uh, when the situation doesn't apply at all. Now, I'm come back, but I need to extrapolate it because I think it deals with the question you asked about people who are suffering a sort of midlife crisis, whether they're midlife or even pre-midlife crisis, quarter-life crisis, where do I want to go from here? And as you had mentioned earlier, I don't think I'm very happy in my job, and I really want to go out and do something, but I, the risks are too high. The courage and the risk, in my case, I didn't go into business because it was risky and so on. I think the riskiest thing I did for a personal level was making the decision to come back to Singapore, right? From a, from a life, a personal life point of view, um, if I didn't come back to Singapore, life would have been easy, pretty easy. But coming back to Singapore was a risk, not of imprisonment, not of this or that, but the risk that I was throwing away everything I knew about life and coming back to something that I could actually be highly unhappy in. I would have been stuck with two years or two and a half years in those days of utter unhappiness, and then beyond that, maybe in a country which I never knew as my own, except by passport and so on. But there's a part in you, and that's why I'm saying, I don't want to tell about why I decided one or the other, I can't even remember, but I just remember really well, I kept on walking around around that lake all alone because school had already ended, and finally I came to a conclusion that I felt at peace at. Now, how do you define that? I don't know. But I took a difficult decision that was risky, but I somehow felt at peace with that decision, and then I came back. And it could have worked out wrongly, but then I guess I could always go back to the US. But it turned out well. So by that same token, I think sometimes we all have risks to take in life. They're not like life, their life-changing risks, they're not fatal risks, they're not financial risks, except for some if you're an entrepreneur. But sometimes you do have to take a risk and say, look, I'm, everything tells me I should do this, and then I make that decision. And once you make that decision, you live with it for a few days, and it's really true what the books, science books have said about sleeping, you know, sleeping with a problem for a while, because your brain digests it, yes, even when you are sleeping. And then with every day, either the decision you've made feels more and more uncomfortable, or it feels more and more right. But I think confronting that is important, rather than just letting it slip by.

Would you say that that was the first big decision, or the first step in the path that has led you to become as successful as you are today? I think so, because I was 20 years old at that time. Before that, my life was, my life was following the path of least resistance. I went into student activism because in Thailand, in the high school, and this was in the 60s when there was a big, you know, outpouring of student activism all over the world in the 60s because the baby boomer generation was coming of age. I had got, I had become president of the student council, we introduced things, so it was, I was being propelled along a comfortable wave, which culminated in my being thrown out. Yeah. And the throwing out of school, I could have gone on on that same wave and gone on to Cornell, and I don't know what have happened after that. But that was the first decision at 20 to do something which I actually did not want to do, and I was scared to do. But that has taught me a lesson that sometimes, now ever since then, making decisions, making difficult decisions is now less difficult because I tried to then draw upon myself as a 20-year-old and trying to ask myself, what was it that enabled me to make that difficult decision? And now, of course, you think of it, it's really a certain detachment, a certain brutal honesty with yourself about who you are and who you are not. So that allows me to make more difficult decisions later in life. And I've said this to a lot of young people, that if you want to learn how to make difficult decisions in life, which is actually the source of leadership, you can draw upon difficult decisions you've made even early in life. Um, I went to West Point for a number of years, yeah, to give lectures, the military academy, the military academy in the US, because I was not happy with how leadership is being taught at business schools. So I wanted to see how, how do you teach it in a military school? Because leadership, unlike in business, leadership in a military school can lead, can be a life or death thing if you're going to lead soldiers into death or life, right? Um, so I had to, I actually interacted with a lot of students, and I found that when I talked to these young West Point cadets, who are only 19 or 20 years old, and I asked them to think about difficult decisions that they made, you find that every one of them has made a difficult decision. One of them actually reported on his best friend because he had broken the code of honor and couldn't decide whether to report or not to report. He reported at the end, he did the right thing, he lost his best friend. Yeah, some other people made some other decision. So my point is, when you call upon, when you call upon yourself, even as a young person, the decisions that you made that were difficult for you, but which were right decisions, you will, you'll find that calling upon the person that you were when you made those right decisions, um, can help you in the future as you confront difficult decisions. And it's all within us. And it's not as if an older person has, has an easier time to make difficult decisions. It's all upon, it's all about drawing upon the, your own times when you've had the courage to make your own difficult decisions, then you can make it for yourself later on in life.

I'm so glad you said that because just like you, I mean, I was, I was living in Australia, that's why I speak funny, and then I had to make the decision as well, whether I wanted to come back and do NS. MH. Um, and I did. So I think now I can look forward to being a successful entrepreneur. As so I'll see you, not see, I not see, I don't know. Yeah, maybe. But yes, I, yeah, it was a, it was a tough decision, but I think it was the right one in the end. The right one in the end. Um, I wanted to ask a bit about your, you know, because I heard on the Yab Bat podcast, you were talking about how you want to spend the rest of your life, right? You're thinking about, you know, the limited, we all have limited time, but you're thinking specifically about the limited time you have left and how what you're going to do with it. I'm wondering if you have any regrets of how you spent the time your time so far in your life.

I don't think there's much point in life to have regrets. I think there's a lot of, lot to be said about self-reflection and learning things so that you do not repeat those mistakes. Also, that those mistakes can help you have a better life, yeah. But a pure regret, I guess I'm relatively practical. What's the point? You only feel bad. You either you feel bad, but what can you do about it? What is done is done. So my wife actually says I'm one of the most optimistic people she knows. I never have any regrets. Um, and that's why I think I've been able to actually have gone through a, a life that to me was pretty normal, but most people look at it and say, you've been jailed twice, you've been kicked out, you've been this and that. It's kind of unusual, yeah. And I've, I don't bear any deep scars or deep grudges or or mental health problems, um, because I don't have regrets. I don't like to wallow in a lot of regrets, which I think just tear you up and destroy you. But that's not to mean one should be not mindful about one's own past so that you can live a happier life, yeah. So that's where I am at.

When you look back on, on that younger self, you know, the one doing protest in the US, throwing rocks, what, what do you think when you look back on, on that young self? Do you disdain that person, or, or I don't know, do you look at it? I think that was a pretty cool guy. No, honestly. I mean, I think part of the reason why I think it was pretty cool is also because I had parents who were really wonderful, okay? A lot of parents would have, and because my, my father knew the PIA generation, because he was, he knew them well, so the initial, and being Chinese, you would have expected him to say, you brought shame upon us, and so on. Never once did he or my mother reprimand me. And because they knew, probably I was just living out what they themselves had taught, had told me about their own childhood, when my father almost joined the Communist Party in China when he was in, in China, my mother almost joined the army in China and pretended to be a boy to fight the Japanese and so on. She's, mmm, well, yeah, she, well, she got rejected earlier already. She just tried to join, and she, it didn't get her very far at 15. But my point was, they were very patriotic, they were very idealistic people, and so they knew that essentially they had, I had learned a lot of the idealism from them. I'm not at all disdainful, nor at all ashamed of my past, because I don't think I've ever done anything that I should be ashamed about. I lived my values, yeah. I was too headstrong, that's absolutely sure. Um, and if you ask me if I were to redo it over again, again, I would probably say I would have done the same thing, but I would have muted quite a lot of it, so I wouldn't need to get thrown into jail in Singapore, I wouldn't need to have been thrown out of Stanford. But yeah, it's a bit excessive for a young person. But I, I've never felt that I am ashamed of it. And, and I think that's important because today, whatever I am today, what my family is today, in Bantry today, is a continuing manifestation of the same values I had before, yeah. Now I run a capitalist enterprise, yeah, hopefully we make good money, we pay shareholders, I have a good life, and so on. But at the end of the day, the values that we have are still incredibly important. And that's why, you know, we are known for sustainability, but we didn't do it for sustainability. We did sustainability things even before the word, word was even created. So I don't think I have, uh, reneged on the values I had. I think with age, uh, and experience, you mellow a lot, and I've mellowed in being a lot less radical, but I don't think I have changed. And I do not feel any, um, shame nor disdain about what I was in the past, yeah.

That was going to be my next question, which was, if your younger self was looking at you today, do you think that person would feel like KP sold out? No, I don't think so. Yeah, because, because that young person at the age of 20 told himself, if I keep on going this way, I'm playing a game. And that same person at 24 in ISD asked himself, and had the same answer, I'm playing a game. So I have not sold out, because if you were to call selling out, I've sold out twice already before, okay? I've sold out twice before because I decided it was the right thing to do, yeah. So it depends on how you define it, right? You sell out because you are now a business tycoon, and if, but along the journey, I've come to the realization of what I am and what I am not. And I am not a Nelson Mandela, I'm not a Mahathir, I'm not a Ho Chi Minh, I'm not a Lee Kuan Yew. Yeah. So I am living what I believe is the life I want to live, that has got purpose. But I make no pretense at all that I am a great hero, that I have values. I make no comparison to what I think I'm, I should be. So if you don't have any a gap between who you are and what you think you should be, then you are living, living a true life. You're living a fake life if you say I am this, but you are not that, yeah. Yeah.

You mentioned the political leaders. I read in Kisha's book that you were once interviewed to be to run for the PAP, but, uh, I guess you didn't pass the interview. Is that? No, that's not true. Oh, okay. It's a, it's a different circumstance. I can talk a little bit about it, but I shouldn't do too much. Kisha has never asked me about it, so he's actually got it a bit wrong. Oh, okay. I was interviewed and was told to be accepted and to be ready for a, for a particular position. In fact, in it was Jalan Besar, yeah. Supposed to understudy, uh, the MP there, I think it's Hang Jin at that time. Then a number of things developed which in fact resulted with the leadership asking me whether I wanted to continue with it or not. And it, it was my choice. And I felt that it was a relatively lukewarm endorsement when they say it's up to you. And my sense was, if it's up to me, that means you guys are not that keen on it. So I would rather withdraw from it, yeah. Um, and the, but the other circumstances behind that, I don't think it's necessary for me to talk about. The end result is that, no, I pulled out, yeah. Okay. So Kisha got rejected, but you pulled? No, I don't know what Kisha. Oh, he said he said he got. Well, that's up to him, yeah. I mean, my follow-up to that, I guess, is do you, looking back now, or even, you know, with the time that you have left, right? Is politics something that you want to be involved in?

I think it, I think an involvement in public life and in the unfolding of a society and being able to have a role in public life is something that's always been of interest to me. But I think it doesn't have to be necessarily politics in terms of parliamentary politics, yeah. It could just be a deep degree of involvement with civil society. Now, Singapore today has opened up a lot more, so that a lot of people can be involved in the evolution of Singapore society without being directly involved with parliamentary politics. Singapore's civil society was far less open in the past, so there were very few avenues by which you could affect change in Singapore without being involved in politics. So to that extent, yes, I think a lot of us, um, my people of my generation from Kisha to myself and other people who were asked, who turned down, who themselves turned down PAP, whatever, there's a number of people. I think, um, we've all discovered that there are other ways to contribute. My parents were dead set against me going into politics simply because of my own family circumstances. They had really high hopes for me continuing the family business, yeah. And in retrospect, I think it was a very good decision that I did not go into politics because I would have to had to give up everything to do with the family business, and political life in Singapore is, is does have a sort of stop date. I mean, it's a retirement date, whereas in family business, you can continue on and on. I've encouraged my children to be very involved with public life in Singapore, okay, to have views about things, to be involved with civil society, and so on. But personally, I think for them, uh, parliamentary politics is not something they need to be involved in, okay?

So, uh, now we're going to do a new segment that we've been doing called One Big Question. The way this works is that our guest, in this case, KP, gets to pick one of these questions. Behind these cards is a sort of philosophical question, and we'll try and give like a quick fire answer to it. So he has the pleasure, the privilege of picking one of these cards. Um, the middle one, okay. The middle one. The middle one is, do ghosts exist? Why don't you start us off, KP? Do ghosts exist? I really don't know because I, I tend to be agnostic about most things in life, except that once or twice, I think I did encounter one. Oh, sorry. Okay, wait, we'll get to that in a second. Ali, do ghosts exist? Yes. Yeah. Please. Do ghosts exist? No. No, I'm, I'm quite skeptical, but open to the idea of ghosts existing, but very skeptical. Okay. But you've opened the door there. Please tell us your your ghost story. Is it a Banyan tree related one? Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, I, I don't believe in ghosts simply because from an agnostic point of view, just like, just like I'm also agnostic about God, about deities, things that I have not experienced. My generally would say, I don't know, right? So I don't run down people who believe in this or that, but I haven't experienced it. Yeah. So I, I'm generally agnostic. I had one example, only one in my life, where I, I woke up in one of our hotels in China in the middle of the night, and I, and I had, I felt this really heaviness in my body, and I felt like totally, totally paralyzed, okay? And I felt something pass in front of me, yeah, and it seemed like an endless time, but it's, it, but it, it passed, and I knew it wasn't a dream, somehow. You know, something isn't a dream, you know, dreaming it, yeah. And then it passed, and then it was over. Uh, and then I just got out of bed and turned all the lights, and I felt really, really scared. I mean, all my hairs were on end and so on, okay? So that was my only experience of something which really spooked the hell out of me, yeah.

Can I reassure people who might want to go to a Banyan tree in China that really sounds like sleep paralysis? Are, are you familiar with sleep paralysis? Generally, okay, those are like the, the key characteristics of sleep paralysis. You wake up, you feel like there's something weighing on you, and you can't move, and then you feel like there's a shadow or something in the room. Now, how do you know that sleep paralysis is not just a medical term for people encountering ghosts? It could be. It could be. I, I read, I read it in a book. It's like the entire plot of, um, this movie like Insidious. Oh, yeah. It's this horror movie. Well, I mean, as I, it could well be sleep paralysis, but then I've never had it ever since. I've only had it once. So, so as I said, were you very tired that day? No, no. But as I said, I'm still agnostic. I don't believe that just because I had that experience and now believe in ghosts, yeah. But, um, I'm still agnostic. I'm not at all saying that was a ghost, but it's the closest to what I've thought was a ghost. If now I can really attribute it to sleep paralysis, I'd be quite happy. Then I would think there are no ghosts. I mean, when you guys open Banyan tree resorts, right? Like, you, you go to, this doesn't happen in a Banyan tree. Happened in one of our other brands, okay? But I won't say which one and where. Don't, don't, don't. Um, but like, do you guys, do you know, I've heard of people who like, when they open a hotel, open like, you know, they do like rituals to like cleanse the land or something like that? Do you ever have to do stuff like that? Well, if, if some of the contractors generally do it, okay? Contractors do it because they think they're Earth spirits. We do that. It in Thailand, um, there are the spirit houses. So whenever we do things, we have spirit houses, etcetera. And that, that to me is just basically doing something that other people believe in. So there's no harm, um, in doing it. But I will tell you a secret about hotels. In a lot of hotels, not necessarily ours, okay? Go on. In a lot of hotels, it's a white envelope, unmarked, that a general manager will pass to the next general manager, okay? And it just contains a few numbers. And these are room numbers. And these are room numbers so that if any guest tells you that they want to move out of that room, you do not question why. Oh, my wow. Oh, my God. And it's only the general manager. Well, you should be kept pretty secret so that, yeah. So if people were to say, I want to get out, I want to change my room because the air conditioning is no good, then, then you know, the, the people may say, I'll go and fix your air con. Certain things. But if it happens to be one, one of the room numbers that are listed there, you do not question. Oh, my God. I got like chills. I think hotels are very good locations for movies. They are. They are. Wow. We got to have you back on our Halloween episodes to speak about, Hall, uh, ghost stories in hotels. Well, we, I can be happily telling you, uh, the Mandai Resort by Banyan Tree is opening in Mandai next year. So we can, and only during Halloween, we'll probably have a lot of ghost stories, animals, and other stuff. F. Yeah, okay. Okay.

Let's move on to the last question for today, and I think this is the one that you have been looking forward to the most to answer. Um, Chris, take it away. Okay, so we have a reader named Willow, and Willow asks, how can you tell if a person actually likes you as much as they say, or if they're just playing with you to get the validation they need? Like, what do you mean, you kissed me 10 times, but I still don't know if you really like me back? Like, am I crazy and insane? Do I need a lobotomy? Like, what is going on? Can he just marry me at this point? Also, he says he doesn't want to date because he's not ready for a relationship yet, but we're literally just doing couple things at this point without a label. God help us all. So Willow is asking, how can you tell if a person actually likes you or just doing it for themselves? I can see this is a moment that KP has regretted. This, you're asking the first thing I was going to ask you. If I were equally rude, and you may, you may. No, go ahead, please do. Doing what? Doing what? Okay. Yeah, whether he's liking, whether this guy's doing, I think just like couple things, like maybe, okay, they're talking about holding hands, maybe holding hands, or like this is teeny-bopper type stuff. I'm a grandfather by now. You want me to advise on teeny-bopper stuff? Actually, I should, because my, my youngest grandson's getting is nine. Give him a few more years. I bet I have to give him advice. Yeah. So I mean, uh, I don't know how it was like back in the days, but actually, excuse me, back, back about golden years. No, back in the days. Back in the days. Golden years. Like, okay, you got yourself in a difficult position. I'd like to see you extricate. Um, okay, my life as a romantic youngster, a r was as romantic as your life as a romantic youngster. My wife and I were doing all the exciting things that you guys are doing now. So do not write us off as, as, uh, my bad. Back in the days. The days. But was situationships a thing back then? I think this sounds a lot like a situationship. Are you guys familiar with situationships? Do you know what a situationship? Yeah, well, I know what a situation is. I know what a relationship is. I don't know whether what, what is a situation. I'm slightly older than Chris, so maybe I can bridge this. What situation ship? Do you know, um, do you have a Facebook profile, or have you used Facebook before? I'm, my, my children put me onto Facebook so that I can read other people's. I've never posted anything on Facebook. Okay. Then we might struggle here. But on Facebook, you can set your relationship. Oh, yeah, yeah. You're single, or that. I know my kids do that, and suddenly change from taken to not take, single to taken, or whatever it is. And there's one option on the relationship status called, it's complicated. Okay. Sure. Yeah. So that's what a situationship is. It's like, but there's no different than in my time, except we, we didn't have Facebook, right? But whether you are in a, you're no situation, or you are in a serious situation, or it's complicated, has existed for hundreds of years, since, since Shakespeare's time. It's just that we didn't have internet and Facebook. So, yeah. Okay. So, okay, it's just the label. The label is new. So situation means it's complicated. Yeah. Not, it's, yeah, they have this guy hasn't committed to Willow yet, but I guess he's, he's cashing all the checks without having, uh, without having committed to the relationship. But honestly, seriously, that you're only talking about different labels that you have now. But on a serious note, human relations have been the same for hundreds of years, but expressed differently. So whether it is, um, a, a complicated situation where one is more committed than to the other, one loves the other one, the other one doesn't love so much, it's not an equal relationship, whether it is a very strong one, or whether it's a relationship that has already gotten tired, these are basically age-old situations. So, but to interpret the question there, you're basically saying that this person is essentially very uncertain about how the other person feels about it. It's a her asking that question, right? Because it's him kissing her 10 times, and then she doesn't know what he's to commit, and so on, right? Yes. Yeah. So that problem has existed from my parents' times to my time to your times and to my grandchildren's time. Do you have experience with this problem? Well, I'm not the girl. So, guy. You're the guy. As a guy, no, I do not lead people on. I don't play with emotions. I'm not a, I'm not a Casanova. So when I express my emotions, um, I think it's pretty genuine, yeah. Um, I think though, this does represent a problem that exists today, even in a so-called feminist age, okay? From a work point of view, the, the whole world has become, um, feminized, right? Women's rights and so on, in everything is pretty much accepted as being relatively as being equal. The, the unfortunate thing is that in romantic relationships, it hasn't become that way at all. It's always, I think nine times out of 10, it's a woman waiting for the man to propose marriage, yeah. Nine times out of 10, it's the man who has to take the lead to show interest in the woman. And if the interest show, if the woman wants to show interest in a man, it's somehow seen as being overly aggressive. So my, I guess my point here is that my first point here is that it goes to show, in a way, that while equality and the so sexual revolution and so on has has resulted in many things where there's equality, in the most fundamental of relationships, which is the personal romantic relationship, it's still very difficult to be a woman because you have to wait and guess what does the man want. And that's really quite unfair. I've seen, I see it today as it was a long time ago. It's somehow still not socially accepted for women to really take the first step towards the man, then because the man will rep, would would take it wrongly. Yeah, the woman has to wait. So my first point is that I think it's quite unfortunate that that this writer has to still try to interpret what is the, the man's responses or or reaction to her actions, not responses, in fact, the actions to her, what do they mean? Is he serious? Is he not serious? That's a 1950s question, right? But it's still happening today. So that's actually quite unfortunate. But there's nothing we can change, and I don't think that's changing. The second one is, what then would she can she do about it? And, and I think the answer is probably what grandmothers have given and mothers have given as advice back to 100 years ago, right? And, and that is that you have to probably decide that you are not going to be totally passive. In the old days, really, really, really old days, in Asian society and elsewhere, how do you know about that? I watch movies. Um, you, you, the woman has to be totally passive, right? The man, yeah, has to watch Bridgerton, and so the woman has to be the one who just has to interpret what does a man want to do, and then most, you can just give little signals of this or that, but she's totally passive. A wink of this, and then confide in the other girlfriend, you know, oh my God, he he kissed me. The other is he really serious about it or not? I guess my point now is that because of the first thing I said, which is that somehow it is still culturally not accepted, acceptable for women to take the lead, so that is going to be the case. But what has to change now is that this woman here has to decide for herself the right timing when she has to basically put it to the test and put it to the guy, how serious are you? I'm not going to be led down, led on by your romance and so on. What do you mean? If she's, if, if she doesn't care about it, fine. I mean, just go along. But obviously she cares, but she's still reacting in the old way, right? Which is sort of like passive. What am I going to do about it? Confiding the ghost. And my point is, you've got to take control in your hands, your life in your own hands, and basically put it to him, what the hell, what the f are you doing? And, and I take it from there. Are you playing with me or you not with me? Yeah, you decide. Yeah. Yeah.

I read in your book about, oh, sorry, did you? I read in your book about how you pick business partners. Mhm. My wife is not a business partner, but she is a business partner. She's a business partner. But is there a difference between, okay, I mean, is there a difference between how you pick a business, what's the difference between picking a business partner and a life partner? [Music] Duh. Ask. Do you want to ask that? You really, um, my God, if I were to say that marrying my wife was a business decision, how well? First of all, there's a huge difference, right? Yeah. You make, um, the biggest difference is this. I choose business partners from a totally 150% rational point of view. Okay. I choose business partners with a high degree of not certitude, but with preparation.

In advance, that should it not end well, should it not go well, I have a resolution already in mind. I tell that to my children, everybody else, a business partner. I do not call it a marriage, okay? It is a partnership, which probably has more chances of failure than success. So when you form a business partnership, you form that partnership not because you like the guy and the other people there. You form it because it has strategic rationale for your company. But recognize also that because it's a business partnership, the players in it change very often. They, they go off the scene. You're prepared, and you are, you're well prepared should it have to end, and you are able to end it.

The difference with a life partner is that, and the huge difference with the life partner is that it is not, at the end of the day, a rational decision with a SWOT analysis and a pros and cons. The choosing a life partner is similar to what I said to you about my initial decision when I was 20 years old deciding to come back to Singapore. It is a decision that you make knowing all the risks you are going to take, and then deciding at the end of the day that I'm going to take that risk, come my way, yeah. And then that's it. There's no, you cannot make a decision on your life partner based on listing the attributes. And the trouble is too many young people do look at that because they try to be rational, and they say, does he have all these tick tick ticks? And that's, of course, that's important. But a lot of people now say, oh, you know, does a guy have a good job? Is he likely to make $100,000 in two years? Does he come from a good family? Is he tick tick tick tick tick? Do I get along with him well? Does he do this or do well that?

At the end of the day, and, and as you get older and older, the choices are going to be less. I mean, my advice obviously is, don't, don't go in, um, don't go and marry the first boyfriend or girlfriend you have. That's like to be totally dented by emotion, yeah. My second advice is that you should certainly live with your partner before you make it. And I lived with my wife, yeah, um, before we got married because it's, it's a rational thing. How do you know what life is like living together every day rather than, um, just meeting for romantic circumstances? But ultimately, when you to choose your partner, it's almost a leap of faith, and that's a big difference.

How long have you been married to your wife, Clara? Now, uh, 47 years. Okay. Wow. Congratulations, first of all. Thank you. Um, the, my question about that is, having been married for 47 years, what do you think is the single most important value, um, that she has or characteristics, sorry, that she has or that you have that has made the marriage last that long?

I think it's a very healthy respect for our differences and, and an intentional attempt to strengthen the commonalities between us. Meaning that if you think that in life, your life partner is going to be always exactly the same as you, it's not going to be. It's not going to be successful. And you want them to be like you, you want to be like alter egos of each other. It's not going to work. You have to know how are they different from you, and how do you respect that difference, even in terms of personality and in terms of interest in life. You have to respect that. So you have to have your own space, yeah.

But the danger is, at the same time, too many people begin then to respect their own space, and then they start to live separate lives. Sleep on the same bed, but have different dreams, as the saying goes. So you have to do two at the same time. You have to have a healthy respect that you each do your own thing, but at the same time, you have to know what are your common loves? What are your common interests besides just children? What are your intellectual interests? What are your movie interests? What are this? What are that? So that you build upon those commonalities. So I think with that, you can actually last a long time. Wow. Wow. So we welcome you to our 50th anniversary. Maybe for the 50th, we got to have both you and Clara on. She's, she's made me promise we'll have a renewal of vows at our 50th. Man, okay.

Well, you told us ghost stories. Yeah. Can you tell us a love story? How did you and Clara meet? How did you decide to propose to her?

Okay, the proposal first. Um, I thought was very romantic. She didn't think so. Um, okay, go on. We'll be the judge. We'll judge. Yeah. You better say it's romantic. We had been, um, living together, and that's another very small, very interesting story about about wise mothers. Clara comes from a very, very traditional Haines family, okay? Her mother is very traditional, yeah. And we were living together in a rented place, Westex Estate, which had, uh, one study room with a small bed on it. And where we were living together, which is, which is a, a king bed on the floor, that kind of hippie life existence, yeah. And her mother came to visit us. And her mother, being very traditional but very wise, came in and looked at the room. She saw the bedroom and she saw the study room. She said, "Oh, I see where you where you sleep. Very nice, very nice room where you sleep. And this is where Singo," she, Clara sleeps. That means she was basically, she knew obviously we were sleeping on the same bed, living together, but she was basically acknowledging for herself, openly, that you're both sleeping in different rooms. That's kind of wisdom of of a very traditional mother who sort of has to balance her own sense of values with the reality of life, yeah.

But anyway, um, we were living together in another rented house when I was detained. And during my entire detention, after my confession and so on, my parents could visit me until my release. There's no, after confession, you have to confess first before then nothing happens to you. You're not allowed to see anybody. But during that whole time, even after confession and so on, I was not allowed to see anybody but my parents on a weekly basis. I couldn't see Clara because she was no local standy, as it were. No, no status as a girlfriend. Um, so when we came out, when I came out and we back to the house we were living in together, after a few days, I thought I was being very romantic and I said, you know, hey, you know, if I get detained again, I might not be able to see you until we get married. So how about we get married? Oh, my. No flowers, huh? No flowers. No. So that was the proposal. Yeah.

Do you don't think it was romantic? No. Sorry. Look, it was like, if I get detained, if I get detained again, which I might, we can meet each other, y', because we'll be married. Not romantic. Ooh. I think it's very practical. It is very practical though. Like, I mean, it's very logical. It was like, it was romantic because I was all the time in jail. I wasn't thinking about my parents. I was thinking of her. Her, yeah. But did you pose it that way when you said it? Yeah. It wasn't like, hurry up, let's go, I might be detained soon. No, no, no, no. Just it that way. And then we got, we, we actually got married. And this is the practical part. I know a lot of guys forget their anniversaries, right? Okay. I, we chose a date where I could never forget. It was 7/7/77. We got, ROM registered marriage, registered on that date, yeah. And then the following year, in 1978, we got the Chinese customary, um, dinner and so on. So for one year, we were actually married without the customary tum time, this tea ceremony and so on. So, yeah.

Would you accept a proposal like that, Priya? I don't know. I mean, okay, okay, wait. If I really love the person and I do see a future with the person, I'll let it slide. I'll let it slide. But I'll probably tell him like, three years down the line. But how do you know I wasn't cradling her head and stroking her hair? I don't want to get into that personal. Okay, but frankly, I thought it was pretty romantic. And now you're siding with Clara. So, okay. So that's a, how did I propose? That's how I proposed. Okay. Um, okay, before we get to how you and Clara met, I wanted to ask, cuz, you know, you said she said that she wants a renewal of vows. Will you have to do a proposal for the renewal of vows? And will it be maybe more elaborate than than than your original proposal?

Oh, this renewal of vows is going to be like a mass wedding. We're going to decide that all my senior colleagues, like it or not, they're going to join in. There's going to be a parade of elephants. Uh, we'll be sitting on top of the elephants. Uh, we're going to do in Laguna Phuket with a whole procession. Wow. But will there be a proposal? So will there be a proposal? Yeah, since she didn't like the first one. [Music] Um, consider yes. He, he just, he just got the idea. Course. No, I thought, I mean, the reason because I thought, um, if it's a renewal of vows, it's actually quite interesting because we actually never had vows because we didn't have a religious, we didn't have a Christian wedding. We went to the registrar of marriages. And now, what I do remember well was that we couldn't stop laughing, okay? Why? And we were sent out of the room to stop our laughter because you have to read that thing. Have you ever, guys are married or not? No, you haven't read that. Have you read it? Are you guys married? Did you have to go to ROM or not? You have to read that statement. It's very funny statement. So no, it's just very serious. You have to, it's, it's kind of you have to read this, this vows to each other. And for some odd reason, maybe because we were nervous or whether we couldn't stop laughing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, okay, I have to ask you, you know, you were doing protests a lot in America. You, you're a hardened criminal. Was this laughter aided by any substances?

I am offended. Upright, righteous person like myself, who would never break the law. Um, no, no. Okay. And quite honestly, um, the subtext to that is, if I were ever arrested for any of those things, although I don't think that they are wrong, yeah, okay, I would probably be a little bit more embarrassed or ashamed. Whereas for political reasons, I'm never ashamed because there are things I deeply believe in. If I were a great, great advocate of the decriminalization of marijuana and I was openly advocating it, and they found that I was on, I was sort of high on something or the other, then I should not be ashamed of it. But because I don't have any strong views about it, but I certainly believe that in anything where I don't have strong views, I am law-abiding, then I would be ashamed if I broke the law. Just like I would be quite ashamed if I broke the law and I was arrested for drunk driving, for example. I'm more ashamed to be arrested for drunk driving than I am to be detained, yeah, for, for things that I believe we're just exposing my own views. So no, long and short answer is, I was not under the influence of anything except love. Not bad, huh? Okay. Thank you for, thank you for humoring my question. Okay. Okay. Back to the love story. How did you and Clara meet? Did you have to ask her to go steady?

No, there, there was no such practice, yeah, in those days. Um, we, we met, we first met without my knowing when I was in the army. And an army colleague of mine brought me to, to a friend of his, the house he was living in, Little India, in a little walk-up shop house. And, um, so I, I went to the house and I apparently must have met Clara then without even knowing it. But then, we didn't exchange any words or anything. And later on, that same friend, after I left the army, um, introduced me to her again at a place called Salad Bowl at Centrepoint, which has long been torn down. And I thought, well, this is a pretty cute girl. So I was riding a motorbike in those days. Wow. So I asked her to ride, um, my motorbike, yeah. And I, anybody ride a motorbike, you guys know? I'm taking lessons. Oh, I'm almost there. If you ride a motorbike, you must remember to jerk a little bit so that she has to grab you a bit more and more, okay? So she did all that, yeah. Don't worry, there's a lot of jacking on my M. Yeah. Okay. Well, then, so we rode a motorbike and we, you know, then after a while, um, I told her I was, um, living in this house with other housemates, some of whom have become very eminent people. So I don't want to bring them embarrassment by telling them how eminent they are today. We were sharing a house. So I use all kinds of typical guy excuses, you know, I'm living in a house and I don't know how to cook. Can you help me cook a meal? You know, all these ruses that a guy has to use. Um, and so I, you know, one thing led to another, and then we ended up, uh, living together in that house with other housemates. And that was the place where I got detained. Um, and that was quite a traumatic time for us because all her friends left her. Was very ashamed of her and all that. And, and she stood by me very, very strongly, even when there were a lot of bad things, rumors about who I was and so on. Think she never knew, she didn't know about my life in America, and they distorted it completely to make me seem like this really horrible guy. Yeah.

But then when I came out, we moved out, then we moved into, to live together, just the two of us, at a rental place. And, um, it went on from there. But I think the, the besides the nice part about how we first met, is the another story about how the name Banyan Tree came about. And that's because when we first got married, and I left Singapore after one year, um, of, of being released because I was not allowed to be, to leave anywhere until after one year. After one year, I got permission from the government. I went to Hong Kong. And I didn't want to have any family support, so I had to work as a journalist. And Clara was a, um, a master student in Hong Kong, U. So didn't have any income. So we, we couldn't live on Hong Kong Island. We couldn't live in Kowloon. We could only afford to live in a little fishing village on Lamma Island, okay? And that fishing village was called in Cantonese, Yuk Mun, which in Mandarin is Ru Wan, which in English is Banyan Tree Bay. Oh. So we lived there for about three years, having very little money, um, and I was a journalist and she was a student. And those were pretty much for us, and still remain the most idyllic years of of romantic life together because the life in Singapore was really very traumatic, of course, because of things what happened. And here you are, living just as romantic couple without money, but really great life in a fishing village where there are no cars and nothing. And when we decided much later to name the enterprise that we had, we decided to call it Banyan Tree to symbolize that, um, luxury is not about bling bling things which people associate with Banyan Tree, but it's about the romance and intimacy between people and the the connections between people. So, so all along where we live and what we do and where we live now is a continuation of where you, where you live and how you live is itself an expression of your values.

What is it like to work with your wife and to do and start a business with your wife?

I think it can be, I'm asked that quite a bit, yeah, because of other people who have the same, same situation. I think it can be the best of times and the worst of times, truly, okay? Meaning it can be the best of times because here you are with a life partner who you have romantic things to talk about, you have children things to talk about, you have so many things to talk about. But on top of it, you have a common aspiration for your life goals in business and in work. And as we all know, work, not just business, but work takes up half your life. So if you have that, it can be the best of times because you can, you, you can read, have so many common things to aspire and work towards, and you can also have incredible support. Um, and, and it's also a mutual relationship where my wife has put it really well. She says that, "I build the house, she makes it a home." Okay? And that's actually a very good reflection of what we mutually do. I'm responsible for the actual physical architecture, the financial architecture, the business architecture. But Banyan Tree today would be a very successful, but but emotionally empty place if not for the fact that with the management academy that she's heading, she's doing all the learning and development, she's developing all the culture that binds us together. She makes it a home. I built a house, yeah. Um, so that's where you really have that, that, that synergy.

It can also be the most dangerous of times because when you, when you do have inevitably arguments as all couples have, it's intensified and amplified by the fact that it's also work comes into it too. So you have to learn how to navigate that by, by beginning the first thing is to decide where are the mutual areas where you are going to give, um, not say total autonomy to the other person, but a lot more freedom. Like, like what she wants to do regarding the management academy and so on. She asks me for advice, but it's her show. On the business side, of course, I ask a lot of advice, but it's my show. So you've got to navigate that clearly, otherwise it can lead to, uh, deep, uh, misunderstandings and tensions. Also, I see.

Do you guys still make like the big business decisions together? Big decisions on people? Absolutely, yeah. Like, is that like hiring kind of thing? So when you say on people, what, what do you mean? Yeah, I mean, for example, what do we, just like people probably not sufficiently aware about it, but Mrs. Lee was very influential regarding the people aspect of of Mr. Lee governed in those days, yeah. So, yes, people, we bounce off ideas very much about people. Uh, if it's a super big decision, like, um, whether to sell the company or not, then of course, you has to be very much involved. But it's straightforward business decisions, increase of capital and loan, loans and so on, which a board of directors is very much involved in. I probably consult her, but then it's the board that makes the governance call, okay? But I would say game-changing decisions, clearly I would discuss it with her very much beforehand, yeah, because we're in it together, yeah.

And I think to, uh, give her further plights, I think I read in the book that she kind of built in practices in Banyan Tree that would allow women to, you know, not hit a glass ceiling or not hit a ceiling in terms of their career progression. I would say Clara has been strongest on two issues. One is the whole, the whole sustainability issue. But that's besides sustainability, that's what makes us a home. That's what makes our associates so proud to be doing what we're doing. So she's headed the Banyan Tree Global Foundation, which is a foundation for sustainability. She's clearly been heading that up all along. And she started Banyan Tree Gallery, which is in fact not just a money-making retail gallery. It's a place where we've been practicing, um, working with villagers and, and so on long ago. So CSR, or corporate social responsibility, that has been her big thing, whereas, whereas money matters and so on, I've been more or less dealing with, right? Um, but, um, yeah, she's, she's very involved in, in the things that matter, mainly with people, yeah, and the soul of the company.

Okay, we've talked about lots of stories and lots of insights on KP throughout this episode. If you want to get more of it, the place to find them would be this book, Behind the Banyan. Um, you didn't write this book, it was written about you, but you fully endorse it. Um, well, I have a, being an ex-journalist, yeah, I have a commitment to freedom of expression, yes. So I have never censored it, okay? Um, the deal with Aaron and I when he wrote the book was that he would interview me, and I only have the right of pointing out factual errors, okay? So I would say everything that's factual in there is, is true, yeah. How he chooses to interpret things is his choice, and my problem today. You, he, it's 100% factual, but very subjective. But honestly, I've, I've given the book a read. Um, it's the first five chapters, all about KP's life story, really interesting stuff. You can hear about his badass days as a rebel and a criminal. Sorry, I keep calling you a hot and criminal, I hope you forgive me for that. And then the rest of the book after that, a bunch of insights that he has about business, about life, about leadership. I found the, actually found the chapter about leadership quite very, very interesting. And that, and that was written as like a question and answer interview portion. So if you're interested in those kind of things, I think for anyone who's interested in starting a business, being an entrepreneur, very, very good book to pick up and to read. Very easy to read as well, I must say. Very easy to read. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you so much for joining us today on. Thank you. I learned a lot of new terminology. Yeah. We, we always try and give back to our guests. So next time, don't delude me. He was, uh, someone deluded to come on to the show. Yeah, yeah. I cannot say I'm in a business situationship, can I? Oh, I guess you could. A situation different from. No, you could, you could. Okay. Okay. That's all we have time for on this episode of Help Desk. This episode is powered by Audio Technica. We'll catch you in the next one. See you guys. Bye.