Breakfast Notes #91 (Young LKY,Rape of Nanking)

Hello friends,

This is the 91st serving of the Breakfast Notes.

Happy reading!

Insightful Links Of The Week

Meditations on Lee Kuan Yew's Early Years

In 1998, Lee Kuan Yew published his memoir The Singapore Story as an attempt to remind a younger generation of Singaporeans how vulnerable Singapore truly was.

Singaporeans were born into stability, prosperity and comfort for the first time in our young nation's history. He was worried that Singaporeans would become overconfident and, thus, permanently lose their place in the world.

Once you scramble an egg, you can never unscramble it.

I poured myself into this book, trying to see the world from his view.

You can find my meditations on his early years here.

The Weight Of Being the Interim Coach

Being the temporary guy in charge has its pros & (mainly) cons. The problem with being the interim is that you are burdened with the need to get everyone's competitive juices flowing again. They are often demoralized and have no real desire to win.

Iris Chang's Rape of Nanking

If you want to see humanity, in its darkest moments and understand a genocide much of the world forgot, read Iris Chang's book.

I pen my meditations here.

One of the things I came to appreciate after this book was how Singapore does not take its defence lightly.

When you read about the complete and comical breakdown of the Chinese military, you find out that many of them were all poorly trained and had no concept of defending China as their motherland.

Naturally, when an organised and ruthless opponent in Japan came, they scrambled.

The whole endeavour of us building a self-sufficient military force is to counter-programme against your survival instincts of self-preservation. The professional military aims to inculcate two counterintuitive but important ideas in its forces- the confidence to believe you can triumph over a formidable hostile and the willingness to die for your country.

Seeding these two ideas deep into the minds of your soldiers will prevent them from scrambling in times of war.

The Perfect Email

A copywriting coach teaches you how to craft the perfect email.

(This takes you 1 minute to read through and will probably 10x your professionalism)

Visual Of The Week

A Young Lee Kuan Yew was both a scout and a nerd.

He came in at the top of his class while tying a Half Hitch Knot.

May the sun shine upon your face,

Keith