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
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
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 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
And so we looked at the cost effectiveness after the first year of operations, and I presented it to the board. And it had a very lukewarm reception from the board because actually it wasn’t really making a lot of money. And they said, “Well, do you really wanna continue… Read More
Ah Meng became just instead of breakfast with Ah Meng, it became breakfast with an orangutan at zoo. We had a Japanese breakfast going on. We had a Japanese tea. So we had two concurrent breakfasts and teas going on. We would get 120 people at each breakfast session and… Read More
I said, it’s the most beautiful zoo setting in the world, it’s great. But there’s nothing else about it. And so, eventually, I lamented with a guy called Dennis Pyle, who was the director of the Singapore Tourist Board for Australia. And Dennis said, “I was sitting down lamenting over… Read More
And it was running, it was called Breakfast with Ah Meng because Ah Meng was one of our famous orangutans. It was twice a week. And we used to get like 20 people in a breakfast. Just okay, it’s not bad. And tour operators always got the wrong date because… Read More
So as I say, go on this round of tour operators and everybody said the same thing. Well, there’s nothing unique. Read More
What’s unique about the zoo?… Read More
On the board. There was about 10, various walks of life. Some business people, civil servants. As I said, it was a public limited company wholly owned, but it was set up to be floated on the stock market as one does if you set up public limited companies. But… Read More
We have to pay back this 4 million and we have to depreciate the 5 million. And so it’s like our books were pretty miserable every year. And so we worked on the government to finally say, look, right off the 4 million, so we had $9 million worth. So… Read More
And that’s when I actually got involved in the marketing and started to go and knock on tourist operator’s doors and ask them, “Why don’t you come to the zoo?” If you read a Singapore tourist promotion boards guide to Singapore, you’d see that, they say, “Okay, this is what… Read More
And we said, “Well, we have to put a stormwater drain.” So there was a stormwater drain that ran around the whole zoo. Two meters deep, two meters wide, which would take the first flush. The first flush, meaning, it would fill up with water, that water would go to… Read More
How many members of the commission?… Read More
On the board?… Read More
You said commission. It was set up as a public limited company, wholly owned by the government of Singapore. Temasek Holdings is the company that runs all the government assets. So Temasek owned $5 million worth of shares in the zoo. That was the grant they gave us. The zoo… Read More
And when he told the chief water engineer that that’s where the zoo would be, the guy was aghast. Read More
But since he was his boss, he had no choice ’cause he said, “Kong, do you want a job?” And Kong said, the water engineer said, “Yep.” He said, “Well, let’s have the zoo here.” So how can we prevent the water being polluted?… Read More