From CEO to cashier

Mak Mun San
The Straits Times
Publication Date: 18-08-2008






When The Straits Times asks Lim Ho Seng for an interview, the husband of the high-profile and outspoken farm owner, restaurateur and former Netball Singapore president Ivy Singh-Lim makes a self-deprecating remark.
"I will be delighted as my wife has agreed to the interview," he writes in his e-mail reply. "After all, I am frequently referred to as the husband of Ivy Singh and sometimes called Ho Singh by some of her friends."
It takes a very confident man to be comfortable with a wife who is in the limelight all the time. After all, Lim, 65, is not a nobody. He was the chief executive officer of the NTUC FairPrice supermarket chain before he retired in 1997.
He was responsible for merging the Singapore Industrial Labour Organisation (Silo) and Pioneer Industries Employees Union (PIEU), paving the way for the eventual birth of the supermarket chain in 1983.
Today, he still sits on the boards of five companies as an independent director. But his pride and joy is Bollywood Veggies, the sprawling organic farm in Lim Chu Kang which he runs with his wife.
They are quite a sight on the farm, looking rugged in their sweat-stained tops and with knives dangling from their belts.
During the photo shoot, the knife becomes a prop as Mrs Singh-Lim, 59, tells her husband to pose as a human dartboard while she aims her knife at him.
When he protests and asks why he must "always be the target", she shoots back: "Because I'm a warrior and you're being hunted by me."
He sighs. She goes up to him, pats him on the back and cajoles: "Come on darling, don't be so boring, they need good pictures to go with the story."
After a quick pause, she suggests: "How about this, you aim the knife at me, and I'll surrender to you, okay?"
He glances at her, sighs again, then proceeds to do everything that he is told.
It is not easy to tell if she is, in her own words, "manoeuvring him" to do things the way she wants them done or whether he is demonstrating his love by letting her have her way.
After all, you must love a woman a lot to stomach her calling you a donkey on national television. This happened when she appeared on the Channel 5 talkshow Rouge a few months ago, talking about the differences between men and women.
Is he upset when she says things like that? He replies with a smile: "She's worse. She's a mule. It's very hard to change her mind."
The name-calling does not stop there.
She also calls him a squirrel because of his alleged habit of leaving bits and pieces of food and other items lying around.
In return, she says he thinks she is "a terrorist, a snakey, quarrelsome and troublesome Indian".
As Lim concedes of their partnership: "She has a very strong mind and is too opinionated. She is by far the more outspoken one between the two of us. When she's around, I have no chance to talk."
Fortunately, Singh-Lim excuses herself after the photo shoot and leaves us in the privacy of his den, a self-contained cottage in one corner of the farm.
"She told me she built this for me so I can have my personal space, but it is really so that her mother will have a place to stay when she visits," he says with a grin.
The couple, who have no children, live on the farm with several dogs in a bungalow surrounded by a pond.
He has a daughter, Patricia, 42, from a previous relationship when he was just 23. He and his girlfriend parted ways a few months after their daughter was born, and he raised her with the help of his four sisters.
"I was naive. I should have planned my life better but letting go of my daughter was never an option for me," he says.
As he serves Chinese tea and freshly baked banana cake, the good-natured man calls himself his wife's "appendage".
"In any gathering where she is around, if you hear laughter, it would be coming from her table. People invite me only because of her," he says matter of factly.
"It doesn't bother me because I don't care what people think about me. She enjoys better exposure because of her personality and that's fine with me."
His childhood friend Freddy Choo, 65, says Lim has always been a man of few words. "He listens more than he speaks. Even when Ivy is not around, he doesn't talk much," says Choo, who is the managing director of a company that sells farm supplies.
Lim is the first to admit that his wife wears the pants in the marriage. "A lot of things are unimportant to me. But on major things, like deciding where to live, I have a say and the final decision must be based on what I want too."
This was how they decided to remain in Singapore after he retired instead of emigrating to Perth, where they have a few houses.
They also decided jointly to set up the farm in 2001, on the 4ha plot in Neo Tiew Road. He says: "It was Ivy's idea to run a farm. It was a good idea and I liked it."
According to her, the only major argument they have had in their 26-year marriage was on one occasion when they "differed on a matter of principle" over a family matter a few years ago. She declined to go into details.
The third child of a camera salesman and a housewife, Lim has two brothers and four sisters.
He remembers "playing the fool" a lot as a boy, spending happy hours camping with his scout friends. He was also a good swimmer and represented St Andrew's School in the sport.
His mother died more than 20 years ago; his father, a few years later.
After graduating from Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in accountancy, he got a job as an assistant accountant in Borneo Motors, making S$650 (US$460) a month.
About three years later, he became a single father. He would take Patricia everywhere he went and says she grew up surrounded by lots of love from her aunts.
He dated casually but never considered marriage, until he met Singh-Lim in 1982.
Apart from Borneo Motors, he also worked at a few large companies, including the former Singapore Telephone Board and Robinsons.
In 1980, he became the general manager of Silo and PIEU, which he merged to form the Singapore Employees Co-operative (SEC). In May 1983, SEC merged with NTUC Welcome supermarket to form NTUC FairPrice.
Although he built up the supermarket chain virtually from scratch, he had always known that he wanted to retire early and lead a different lifestyle.
When he was 52, he told the company that he intended to retire at 55. He says: "NTUC FairPrice is my baby. I have a sense of ownership towards it and I couldn't possibly just say 'I resign', then leave. That would be unfair."
After he retired, he learnt to cook through courses conducted by private instructors and can whip up dishes such as hokkien mee, otah and bak kut teh.
However, there is a cook running the kitchen of their bistro, Poison Ivy, and he is happy to just man the counter.
Former FairPrice colleagues have eaten at his restaurant and he says he is "not shy at all" to serve them.
"Whatever you do, do it well. That is my principle," he says.
It is a drastic change--from CEO to cashier--but the glow on his face tells you he would not trade this life for the world.
Yes, he would like to do more travelling, but gazing at the open fields outside his den, he adds: "I don't think I can complain. Life has been good to me."
He says it with such quiet conviction that you know it is something even his wife could not disagree with.
How love blossomed
Lim Ho Seng met his wife, Ivy Singh-Lim, in March or April of 1982. He was 39 and she, 33.
He was then the general manager of the Singapore Industrial Labour Organisation and Pioneer Industries Employees Union, which merged in 1983 with NTUC Welcome to form NTUC FairPrice.
As a single parent with a 16-year-old daughter, marriage was the last thing on his mind. He did not think he would find someone who could love his child as much as he did.
Singh-Lim was the key accounts manager of tobacco company British American Tobacco and was a 'feared' figure within the supermarket circle for being an uncompromising woman who had high standards for the people she worked with.
Also attractive and fun-loving, she had been divorced for about five years and had no lack of suitors.
The first time she saw him was at the opening of the FairPrice supermarket at Changi Airport where he was giving a speech. Her first impression was: 'This Ah Beng is quite okay looking'.
They met formally soon after during a business meeting and he was impressed by how confident and lively she was.
'She can put you at ease within a minute. You feel you've known this person a long time and you can tell her everything,' he says. 'I didn't know I was a victim, a young lamb to the slaughter.'
According to her, he fell in love with her that day as he had never met anyone so frank in his life. She recalls: 'When he told me he had a daughter but was not married, divorced nor a widower, I immediately said 'You had an affair!'.'
She asked for his number and said she would call him the next time she had a party as 'it is hard to find single guys to join us'. She never did. Tired of waiting, he called her two weeks later.
To his delight, she suggested meeting for dinner, unaware that she intended to matchmake him with her friend instead.
So it was that their first official 'date' - dinner at the Balmoral steak house followed by dancing at a club - consisted of three people.
The next day, he went to Taiwan for business and wrote to thank her for the 'lovely evening', adding that he wished she were there with him. She knew he had fallen for her 'hook, line and sinker'.
Right after his return, they ran into each other again at the opening of a bar at Big Splash in East Coast Park. They went for dinner that night then, while enjoying a romantic stroll at the East Coast beach, they kissed.
He says she called him 'every morning, every day' after that night; she says he was the one who made the calls.
'He may be balding and an Ah Beng, but he is honest and honesty is the most important thing to me in a relationship,' she says. 'With Ho Seng, there is no bulls***. What you see is what you get.'
For him, the thing that convinced him she was The One was when he saw how she treated his daughter Patricia. He says: 'She was totally prepared to accept her. In fact, it was she who suggested adopting Pat legally.'
Less than half a year later on Sept 6, they tied the knot.
HE SAYS
"She wants to be in the driver's seat. She says I can have my own opinions but she always ends up making all the decisions. Sometimes it gets a little irritating.
"Her position is--she knows everything and whatever she says is always right. But I tell her, there are two sides to a story and you cannot jump to conclusions. At the end of the day, she still sticks to her own views."
SHE SAYS
"He doesn't tell me what to do as he respects my strong mind and because he knows I won't listen to him anyway.
"The times when he doesn't listen to me, he usually regrets it. I tell him, of course you must listen to me. You've listened to me for more than 20 years and look how successful you are now."