Letter from Baba Colin Chee December 2018

Letter from Baba Colin Chee, President, The Peranakan Association Singapore

(This is a monthly column to TPAS members and guests)

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On Friday 21 December 2018, our association’s Christmas Malam Jolly started smoothly in dry, cool and breezy weather. It could have been wildly different. The night before, the weather forecast for 21 Dec was heavy rain and lightning from 11am to 5pm. At 9am on Friday, the weather forecast had shifted the storm later to from 12pm to 7pm.

We had the makings of a perfect storm. Our Malam Jolly guests, were scheduled to arrive at the ballroom from 6.15pm and the dinner and dance, to celebrate Christmas and Tang Chek, was to start at 7pm. Some of us got the umbrellas ready. Some of us covered the event with prayers. Others covered it with their salt, chilli and onions!

After the lovely evening was over, the General Committee breathed a collective sigh of relief that it did not storm outside. No one debated which measure was the most effective in stopping the forecasted storm.

In a way, this is how happy families live their lives. They simply identify a challenge and work together to resolve it. No threat of finger-pointing, no beating of the chests for being right, no I-told-you so.

It was also about teamwork. An advance team was at the venue to dress up the ballroom from 1pm on Friday, knowing that another team had already completed the ballroom’s basic set-up the night before.

And during dinner, we had two teams (including first-aiders) respectively managing the evening’s logistics and sale of our Raffle Tickets that raised $1,950 for the association.

A third team, our choir The Peranakan Voices, brought some colour to the evening. And there was also the team that brought in 55 high-value and attractive prizes for the Raffle Draw! I thank all of them for making the evening run so smoothly.

We thank our sponsors (identified below) for their generosity! And to all our guests and sponsors that evening, a BIG THANK YOU for supporting us. We are sorry we had to turn many of our members away as the response was unexpectedly overwhelming.

We had hoped and planned for 180 guests, but managed to accept 222 eventually without compromising the space for the evening. We will try harder in 2019.

The General Committee (GC) has just completed 7 months of its 2-year term. I daresay we have accomplished much for a volunteer team whose members have full-time jobs and businesses of their own. I would like to thank each of them and their loved ones for their contributions to the association and community.

We are fortunate to register 80 new Life members this year. We are grateful to each new member who has joined us. This has no doubt brought much-needed funds into our coffers for the year.

But the GC is also mindful that this windfall is short-term. It also represents, for the GC, a responsibility to ensure our members are well served in the coming years.

I have mentioned many times before that membership is a key concern. Not simply the numbers, but to bring in more of our young and to engage them in our culture. I believe culture is best assimilated and absorbed when young.

A key hurdle against this happening is that our constitution limits membership to only those 18 years of age and above.

On 7 December this year, a Working Group made up of GC members met to review the constitution specifically around membership to enable the young to join us, and to clarify parts of the constitution to smoothen procedures during future General Meetings.

We are indeed fortunate to be advised in this review by Baba Kevin Tan, who actively participated in our December 7 discussions. He now runs his own consultancy but also currently holds Adjunct Professorships at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (NUS), the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and Nanyang Technological University where he teaches constitutional law, international law and international human rights. Educated at both NUS and Yale Law School, Professor Kevin Tan is known as an authority of constitutional law both locally and internationally. He is a Peranakan and we are grateful to have him guide us in this review of our constitution.

The outcome of our review is now being deliberated by the GC. We will decide on them during our GC meeting on 8 January 2019. We will share with you, our association members, once the final draft is approved by GC, for your approval at our upcoming AGM.

Our Annual General Meeting is now tentatively set for 31 March 2019, if all goes well with our review of the Constitution, our 2018 Accounts and after we are able to confirm the AGM venue.

In the meantime, on behalf of the General Committee, I wish all of you and your loved ones, a Blessed New Year and one that is overflowing with good health, happiness, and loving relationships! And thank you very much for your support.

God bless you!

Sincerely,
Colin Chee
Unity. Stability. Growth
It is not going to be business as usual
31 December 2018

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🎉A BIG THANK YOU TO OUR RAFFLE DRAW SPONSORS FOR MALAM JOLLY 2018!🎉