A small, perfectly natural move for an elder statesman.

But for a 20-something like me, it served as a reminder that Mr Lee Kuan Yew turns 84 next month.

For in our mind's eye, we still see MM as he appeared in the videos of his fiery rally speeches, in his younger days.

When you actually see him in person, you are jolted by the passage of time.

And once again we think of how important it is to hear from someone who can make the dry pages of history spring to life.

MM Lee's mind was as razor-sharp as ever, when he spoke yesterday at the first of a seminar series, Pioneers of Singapore: Inside Stories.

For one-and-a-half hours, MM Lee took questions from the 300-strong audience - telling tales of old, linking them to current trends, and all the while peppering his remarks with dates, places and names.

Once, he even reminded the moderator, who was about to move on to another question, that he had not yet answered the second part of the previous question.

It drew laughter, and quite a few nods, from the audience.

The seminar series is organised jointly by the Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Straits Times.

In explaining the idea behind the series, EDB Society president Lee Suan Hiang had said that there was a 'time window of opportunity' to capture the stories of the pioneering generation.

Arguably the best question of the night also centred around the old and new guard.

Someone remarked that for years he had been grooming scholars, meeting potential leaders at tea parties, and developing a new crop of ministers and civil servants. So why, with the exception of PM Lee, have we been unable to find enough talent to match the joint qualities of the pioneering team? How can we recreate such a team?

'My generation was forged... in the crucible of struggle,' said MM Lee.

'I will not say that the present team is inferior in ability. If you look at the successive teams, in fact, the standard has gone up.

'But what is missing is the combat experience, the actual fire.'

The current team, he said, has been through 'a few scares', such as Sars and the Asian financial crisis, and 'did not lose their nerve'. But there is a 'vast difference' between a soldier who has seen real combat and one who hasn't.

The present team, MM Lee believes, is 'as best as you can get'.

In a globalising economy abound with opportunities, someone else wanted to know, how to attract the best into government?

If you were a young high-flying lawyer, he asked MM Lee, would you forsake everything to join the Government?

His response: 'It depends on the kind of life I have had before I reached 30.'

Someone from a humble background who made the grade through a scholarship, MM Lee said, would feel 'a certain moral obligation' to keep the system going.

Someone from a more comfortable family background would hesitate.

'That is the problem we are facing,' he said.

Several questions dealt with the usual issues: Foreign talent and retaining the Singapore identity, the failed merger with Malaysia, and Singapore's unique brand of labour tripartism.

But there were also some unusual ones.

'What keeps you awake at night?' someone asked.

'These days, I don't stay awake at night. I leave that to the PM and his ministers.'

What is your BHAG, another wondered. (BHAG is slang for Big Hairy Audacious Goal.)

MM Lee's BHAG, it turned out, was that PM Lee would find a capable team to succeed him in time.

The last question of the night was: How do you want to be remembered?

'I am what I am' was MM Lee's reply.

The seminar series comes on the wave of a recent interest in political memoir-writing.

Memoirs are great. But storytelling, as yesterday's session showed, can be just as important.

There's a play showing at the National Library called Big Fool Lee.

It tells the story of legendary radio broadcaster Mr Lei Dai Soh, a well-loved Cantonese storyteller on Rediffusion from the 1940s to 1980s.

Mr Lei was said to stop traffic in Chinatown with his tales.

Hearing MM Lee in person had a similar effect. The audience hung onto his every word.

MM Lee once famously said: 'Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.'

His words still make even the inattentive among us get up.

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