They had some animal husbandry training, and then a local vet used to come in and look at the sick animals. So I met them, said, “Guys, I’m gonna be your new boss.” And they all looked at me and said, “Hmm.” So I spent one day a week in… Read More
And a lot of them were grass cutters. The zoo was situated in the center or is a promontory into the Seletar Reservoir, now called the Upper Seletar Reservoir, the 28 hectares, 70 acres. And so it’s surrounded by water, then surrounded by forests. It’s actually probably the most spectacular… Read More
What was it like?… Read More
Sure. Okay, so Singapore Zoogical Gardens opened in June the 28th, 1973. I got into Singapore in September, I think. I interviewed the chairman then Dr. Ong Swee Law, and I joined the 1st of November, ’73, as an assistant administrative officer. The position was interviewing for administrative officer. As… Read More
And so when I went to report to the director who was also in the interview, his name was Tan Tiangyo. I said, (Bernard exhales) “So what do I do?” Because the administrative officer had a very clear, defined role. It was administration, obviously, and education. And these were his… Read More
So like to talk about that. Read More
So you’ve talked about how your career began, but were there any other series of events that led you to the first zoo job and what was the position?… Read More
And tell me something about the zoo that you started in. Read More
The PhD was in social behavior of the long-tailed macaques in Singapore. And I’d done that because my father had died a year before. And so I wanted to be back, spent some time with my mother. So I chose macaques because there’s a big colony in Singapore, wild colonies. Read More
I’m not gonna get your job, but you could get an interview.” And so I went down with her and I interviewed. The chairman whose name was Dr. Ong Swee Law, he interviewed me, asked me to write an essay on something or other, and told me many, many years… Read More
We each place a pebble as a remembrance for those people and just talk a little bit about celebrating their lives. So it’s a very, very powerful to me. Anyway, it’s a very powerful reunion that we do. It’s something that I really cherish, actually, and look forward to it. Read More
Then you move on to other schools?… Read More
Yeah. I went off to University of Manchester. I studied animal behavior that was a double degree in zoology and psychology and never went to the Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester. Couldn’t stand zoos. I thought they were really not very nice places. And that’s not really my father, I… Read More
Yeah. Okay, well, in Australia where I was in a primary school, then we went to Singapore. My brother was sent to a boarding school in England. I stayed in Singapore and did two years in a prep school, which prepared you for a British education. My mother was not… Read More
I just came from there. Every two years, we have a reunion. It’s a boarding school, a mixed boarding school. So you have a girls’ boarding house and a boys’ boarding house. Boys started at 11, I was there at 11. And you go into a dormitory of 12 boys… Read More
And as I say, we’re now 70s, early 70s. And through Facebook 20 years ago, we got together. And we’ve really been meeting. As I say, literally every two years we go there. The actual school is shut down, but we stay in hotels and we celebrate. And we celebrate… Read More
You could say consciousness, yeah. It certainly honed a great interest for wildlife. In my brother, it honed an interest for botany. My brother studied botany at Oxford, and we always had this difference in our interests. I mean, he was not particularly interested in animals, but he really liked… Read More
We went to boarding school in England. When we finished school, we both opted to go into biological sciences. So you mentioned school. Read More
Could you tell me a little about your formal education as you moved up you were in boarding school?… Read More
And some of those students I know today, they’re probably maybe 10 years my senior, zoologists in Singapore. Read More