I finally meet the hosts of 938live!

It’s nice to finally see a face after hearing their voices on the radio for the longest time!

Next to me is Keith De Souza and Barathi Jagdish who are both the hosts for Fresh! – A programme on the radio that I tune in each morning on the station 938live.

Each weekday morning, they would open up an interesting topic to be discussed with the listeners, usually about current events and I emailed them about my thoughts some while back in response to a caller who thought that the Singapore National Anthem should be changed from Malay to English.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a reply from Barathi that my email was read on air and I was given an invite to participate in their live talkback outdoors session. I asked around if there were anyone interested and thus, I was accompanied by the two handsomes Mus and Vandalin.

It was a very interesting session for me. At the risk of sounding geeky, it felt like a Secondlife discussion! – We sat in down to listen to the panelists and can join in the discussion at any time.

I really enjoyed hearing the different thoughts and opinions, regardless if I agreed with them or not.

The first topic of discussion was :

Are we a sporting nation? Do we support our local athletes enough? Do we encourage our children to take part in sports? Are we ready to host big international sporting events?

We were joined by National Swimmer, Teresa Goh, her dad, Senior Parlimentary Secretary of the MCYS, Teo Ser Luck, as well as sports editor, Raj Kumar.

There was a parent who said that schools should be more proactive in spotting out young talents and to groom them into sportsmen with more sports activities to be made compulsory in schools.

I thought to myself, why do we always have to depend on the schools when it should be the task of the parents more. If you see that your child is good and interested in an activity, regardless of what it is, why wait for the school when you can do something about it?

And Mus added, an institution could have the best policies in the world, but if the child isn’t interested, there isn’t much point to it.

The second topic was :

Is the job market too competitive? What employment issues do you face? Do women face problems going back to work? What do you feel about the employment of foreign talent?

We were joined by MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC Josephine Teo. I couldn’t catch the other panelist’s name.

I was a little cheesed off when there were one foreigner commented, “Why are Singaporeans so afraid of us taking over jobs when they are not skilled enough to fill them up?”

In any case, it was quite an experience to sit in a discussion. It has been a while since I’ve seen a real life debate and I really did enjoyed myself.

Thank you Mus and Vandalin, it was wonderful to have your company and insightful thoughts. Can’t wait to go to the next one 🙂

Sidenote : Can anyone notice something interesting here?