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SINGAPORE: Retiring to take it easy is a sure route
to death, Singapore’s 84-year-old founding father Lee Kuan Yew was
quoted as saying Monday.
Lee, who remains active despite
his advanced years, told a conference statistics show that people
tend to die shortly after retiring, and that the most important
lesson he has learned is that we all need stimuli.
“If you believe that at 55,
you’re retiring, you’re going to read books, play golf and drink
wine, then I think you’re done for,” he said in comments
published by The Straits Times.
Lee retired as prime minister in
1990, but remains in the Cabinet as Minister Mentor and is also
chairman of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC).
He is a frequent speaker in
Singapore and regularly conducts diplomatic missions abroad.
“I don’t much like travel but
I travel very frequently despite the jet lag, because I get to meet
people of great interest to me,” he said.
“It is the stimuli, it is the
constant interaction with people across the world that keeps me
aware and alive to what’s going on and what we can do to adjust to
this different world,” he said.
Lee added that he asks people who
want to retire at age 62, “You really want to die quickly?”
He said his advice is: “Keep
yourself interested, have a challenge.”
Lee was also quoted as saying
that in his younger days he smoked, had a big belly, and “was
really fond of drinking beer.”
He said he enjoyed golf but later
found it took too long, so he took up running instead.
In his early 70s, Lee had a stent
installed in one of his arteries, he was quoted as telling the
conference on Sunday after he made a whirlwind trip to visit the
critically ill former Indonesian president Suharto in Jakarta.
Suharto, 86, suffered multiple
organ failure on Friday and was hooked to a ventilator.
After he stepped down in 1998
after 32 years in power Suharto lived quietly at his modest Jakarta
home.
--AFP
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