My Kind of Hero

In the 60th anniversary issue of Time magazine Asian edition, Simon Elegant wrote about Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Lee was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. Mr. Elegant wrote beautifully and elegantly.

I share the same birthday (September 16) with this veteran political leader. I've been to Singapore twice. And I'd like to quote a paragraph from the ariticle titled Lee Kuan Yew: Smart, Tough, Pragmatic -- an Enduring Symbol of Asia Itself.

Lee is famous for his formidable personality

and unshakeable faith in his own convictions.

Combine those qualities with a burning intelligence,

a cold-eyed pragmatism

and an unrelenting focus on his goals

and you have some sense of the man

who almost single-handedly transformed a sleepy tropical port

into one of the world's most economically vibrant city-states.

Yet that achievement, extraordinary as it is,

it not what makes Lee unique.

Today, at 83, after some 50 years of public life,

Lee can securely count himself as the one and only Asian

who has played witness, sculptor and advisor to all the

great historical shifts Asia has undergone over the decades;

the rise of nationalism; the end of the cold war;

the growth of prosperity; and the emergence of China as a new global power.

It is all this that makes Lee not just an elder statesman and

and a voice for Asia, but an enduring symbol of

the region's pragmatism and resilience.