[Nervous, stressed and a huge party]
A lot of people have been asking me this and that. I don't think there is a need to explain the negative stuff.

Some have commented that it is a good start. And yes, my blog is not the only site in the blogosphere. In fact, Minister reads Gayle Goh too.

Despite the positive comments - pretty nice people there - and many negative ones on Tomorrow.sg, I feel that having a Minister blog here is a decent (no more ingenious) idea. But anyway, this is still quite a low profile thing and it is still manageable.

I am now a first year social science student at Singapore Management University. And I am proud of it. I have good and supportive friends. And yes, friends are special people.

But enough of dispelling the remarks. Back to serious stuff.

I guess this will be a pretty different style of blogging - need to tweak it a bit now that I've got a great guest. Minister will share his side and I'll try to share mine - so far so good. You can call it diversity.

So one word to sum up the visit today - stressed.

The planning was whirlwind. And because I am only in year one, I don't have much contacts. Thanks to Melvin, things got done pretty easy. We just had to only discuss a little and the plan fell into place.

I find Sheikh Mohamed (we had to address him as "your excellency") a very easy going person and friendly. He mentioned to me that this was his third or fourth time visiting Singapore and even stayed in Singapore for a while. He is also allergic to chocolate stuff and therfore only ate a little of Edmund's delicious brownies.

I loved the cheese cakes though. Walloped two. And I will visit them in future for more.

I would have loved to join Minister and Sheikh Mohamed on the MRT trip and dinner but had promised earlier to help out for the Singapore Biennale 2006. Prime Minister was there and host Najip Ali had several very corny jokes. He even described the rostrum that MICA Minister Lee Boon Yang would use for his address to the audience.

"You know when Minister's go for events, they give their speeches from the rostrum. No rostrum cannot give speech. You never see them here giving a speech (away from the rostrum)," he retorted.

The balloon thingy went well. Even though I reached around 7pm and the balloons were not inflated yet, we managed to get the structure up and flying. Then I moved on to the Guest Registration counter.

The VIP lounge was cool. It was a tent fully air-conditioned with the specially designed artistic furniture by volunteers. It was party, party and more partying. Of course, by the time I went in PM had already left.

White wine, Carlsberg, red wine, punch and lime juice was the order of the day. Najip joked and asked the crowd: "Do you think Ministers drink (as in alcohol)".

He then answered: "Ministers also know how to party".

To that, I say a rousing yes. Sure they do man. I say that with conviction too.

P.S. On behalf of Minister I'd like to give my sincere thanks to Jonathan, Timothy, Jeremy, Edmund, staff at SMU, security people at SMU, MFA staff, Police and the wonderful SOs and people who made this possible in one way or another - we would not have done it without you.