![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/e\/e3\/Lee_Hsien-Loong_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_2012_cropped.jpg\/220px-Lee_Hsien-Loong_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_2012_cropped.jpg\")
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I want to have prata with Lee Hsien Loong. Or kopi. Or an interview.<\/p>\n
The question isn’t “do you think it’s possible”, but “how could we make this happen”?<\/p>\n
My selling point would be that it’s an opportunity for the PM to speak directly with a blogger, to someone on the ground, that would be more highly publicized than a random event. (I’m certain that it would go viral- it’s a gap in people’s knowledge.)<\/p>\n
It’s a chance for a more perfect union, for both sides to see that we’re all on the same team.<\/p>\n
I have some degree of “street cred”- nothing special lah, but a honest conversation with someone like me would do more for his (& the govt’s) PR than speaking to sources that the public is naturally suspicious of, like the Straits Times.<\/p>\n
I imagine i’ll first have to find out who handles his speaking arrangements, etc. Anybody have any ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n MISSION PROGRESS:<\/p>\n April 11th: Spoke to a friend who works in the Prime Minister’s Office. He is intrigued by the idea, and is willing to help me figure out if it might be even remotely feasible. Score!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Brainstorming a bunch of questions you’d like to ask the Prime Minister: \u00a0(Please suggest your own! Nothing is too ridiculous!)<\/strong><\/p>\n 1: Do you have a handphone? Is it a smartphone? iPhone or Blackberry or Android? Have you tried playing Angry Birds before?<\/p>\n 2: What’s your favourite local food? What’s your favourite type of prata?<\/p>\n 3: What’s your favourite swear word?<\/p>\n 4: What do you geek out about? Some guys are into football, or cars, or books or language… what turns you into an insufferable nerd?<\/p>\n 5: What’s your favourite book- one that shaped your life, the way you think? Fiction? Non-fiction? How, why? Which work of art- literature or film or theater- hit you the hardest when you were growing up?<\/p>\n 6: How would you compare the management difficulties of running a country, being a military officer, and being a parent? What’s the most memorable story you have in each instance?<\/p>\n 7: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? Craziest risk you’ve ever taken? Instance where it paid off, instance where it doesn’t?<\/p>\n I don’t have an interview with the PM yet, but I plan to get one- however long it takes. And Les Brown says, it’s better to be prepared and not have an opportunity, then to have an opportunity and not be prepared~<\/p>\n Crowdsourced Questions:<\/p>\n WT: What’s your favourite cartoon? \ud83d\ude42 H:Your questions fucking jialat. You have a ‘chance’ to grill, investigate, explore, implicate and make him justify his policies and actions and you go with questions that his PR team dreams journalists would always ask him.<\/p>\n Visakan: I’m not interested in doing that. I’m interested in finding out what he’s like as a person, making him human, getting everyone on the same team.<\/p>\n Policies and actions are more complex than we can understand because they take into account information that we do not have and context we do not know<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If there’s any way you think you might be able to help or contribute, please let me know!<\/strong> Hop aboard the mission! Suggest questions, do’s and don’t’s, whatever! Let’s get this on the road!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want to have prata with Lee Hsien Loong. Or kopi. Or an interview. The question isn’t “do you think it’s possible”, but “how could we make this happen”? My selling point would be that it’s an opportunity for the PM to speak directly with a blogger, to someone on… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-1ej","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9331,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions\/9331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nVisakan: But I WOULD like to know his favourite band\/music
\nWT: What would he have wanted to be if he wasn’t a politician?
\nSS: I would ask “are you happy?”
\nSK: what is the one thing he’d want to do if he found out his cancer relapsed?
\nSK: would he consider botox so his eyes don’t disappear when he smiles?
\nBZ: \u200e’Anything you wish you knew when you were my age’?
\nVal: If he had x<9 number of days\/hours left, what would he do?<\/p>\n