Among my souvenirs

Tennis champions win trophies, usually a gold cup.  Editors who retire honourably, e.g. Mr. Khoo Teng Soon, was given an expensive Patek Philippe watch. I was Deputy Managing Director, Focus Publishing Ltd, an associated company of the Straits Times Group, for two years. When I resigned in 1988, the staff gathered in the newsroom for a farewell party and presented me with a Page One mock-up of our WeekendEast tabloid -- with a picture of me and a caption which read:

                        WHAT'S HIS LINE?
 

Marketing Manager,  Financial Controller,  Circulation Manager, Production Manager, Administration Manager, Art Director, Systems Manager, Personnel Manager, Sub-editor, Deputy Managing Director.

                                  Answer: All of the above.

Thanks, AMBROSE, for being the "Khaw" of our company.
Although you're now out of FOCUS, we'll always remember you.

Quite clearly.

                                              The Staff
It was a traditional token of appreciation. The date was June 15, 1988. The next day,
as Consultant Editor, I joined a pioneer group of journalists to prepare for the launch
of The New Paper.

"What's His Line?" background: Our tabloid weekly paper printed on its front page a  picture of
a pretty girl regularly -- no, not like the sexy buxom lasses on Page 3 of The Sun in London --
and asked: "What's Her Line?" The answer to this question was designed to tell our readers
that there were girls doing unusual jobs in Singapore. I got into this act just this once...

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
     

 ---William Ernest Henley