A time to mourn

Arguably the most well loved of Singapore's Presidents, Wee Kim Wee passed away today.

I haven't been reading the news so I only found out through MrBrown.

I can't say I feel enormously grieved, obviously because he was very much just a figurehead leader of the nation and had so little substantive power and influence. But I do feel a sort of gentle sadness.

From all accounts, he seemed to have been a kindly man, gentle and compassionate. Men like that are perhaps rare enough that the passing of one should be mourned even if I didn't know him personally.

He was my childhood president I guess. His face and his wife's were up in rectangular frames on either side of the stage in the school hall. He and and Ong Teng Cheong both. I suppose I was just used to seeing their faces smiling benignly down at all of us monkeying around in various school halls.

Now that they're both gone, it's another piece of my childhood quietly passing into dust.