How to write reports. He really talked about how to write reports. (Bernard laughing) I’m not kidding. I do it tongue-in-cheek, but he really taught me how to write reports. It just relentless, relentless corrections, corrections. I thought you were gonna give me something philosophical. I think he taught me… Read More
Was it management style?… Read More
What would you say you learned the most from him?… Read More
And so I started to understand that he’s actually all not bad. He’s actually quite a nice guy, but he’s just incredibly officious when he’s playing his role as chairman of the zoo. And so one has to, well, respected, of course, but I mean understand that’s the way the… Read More
Would you say he was your protector or would that be too stronger a word?… Read More
He took care of me. Protector is a good word. I would say he was also my mentor. I would say that I was the son that he had, but was not interested in the zoo. His son is to retired as chairman of Pricewaterhouse. Because we were the same… Read More
Suddenly, I see this guy who’s like so officious and suddenly standing up on his bench and shouting and applauding or telling them that they’re horrible. They should be kicked off the field. It’s just a whole new dimension to him that I hadn’t realized. And I think through those… Read More
We were staying at the Beijing Hotel, which is on Tiananmen Square. It was a beautiful old hotel where all the foreign correspondent used to stay. But it was still in the communist, very communist era when everybody’s wearing Mao jackets. And you go up to our floor and there… Read More
And why is this statement so bold?… Read More
Initially, a very draconian character. A huge stickler for writing reports, grammar, spelling, punctuation. We’d have this thing called dispatch where we had a dispatch boy who would typed stuff and send it down to him and he would kind of go through it and send it back. The dispatch… Read More
And so it’s just dealing with him was quite painful. But there was obviously a good side to him, and I really found that out when I used to travel with him. Like one day, he said, “Okay, come, we’re going to visit Zoo Negara.” Zoo Negara is the zoo… Read More
But he hated that idea of that because he was anti-colonialist, brought up under the British, detested the British, detested the fact that I actually asked half British, but accepted the fact that has half Chinese as well, and told me when I joined, don’t ever bully the director. And… Read More
How did he shape your life, your career?… Read More
What would you say your relationship was with him?… Read More
He’d seen a lot of horrible Asian zoos. And he had a very strict policy of not dressing up animals. Technically, he hated the concept of animal shows, but definitely if there were kind of chimpanzee tea parties, he had known of the chimpanzee tea parties in London and thought… Read More
Got through all these directors, really, because he just felt that they were not up to the mark. They weren’t doing what he wanted them to do, which was run the zoo efficiently and effectively. To be honest, I mean, they probably weren’t because they were kind of de facto… Read More
Series of questions. Tell us about him and his management style. Dr. Ong was a autocratic, He was a GP, a general practitioner, so he was doctor of medicine. I was gonna say he had his medical practice, but he was far more interested in public service. And so he… Read More
So even though you didn’t do breakfast, tour agents started saying, “Oh, okay, maybe we should do the zoo.” Because it was in Monday, which is right at the north part of the island, before the expressways came in, it was 20 kilometers drive. And so we set up a… Read More
So it’s like his whole life was love. He’d wanted to set up a zoo. And so he saw this opportunity of doing it and he said, “We’re gonna build it on this promontory.” He went about the world on a study tour when he went to do World Bank… Read More
And it got quite popular. And we got a lot of journalists come in, a lot of TV crews because it was unique. You sat down and had breakfast. And then about halfway during breakfast, an orangutan would come out, it would was Ah Meng, she’d sit down at her… Read More