Hong Leong Finance Senior Vice President for Operations and Technology/Special Duties Mr Benjamin Ng serenading his colleagues at a company function.
Adding
Melody
To The
Rhythm
Of Life
Contributed by Hong Leong Finance Senior Vice President for Operations and Technology/Special Duties Mr Benjamin Ng.
Benjamin is currently Senior Vice President for Operations and Technology/Special Duties at Hong Leong Finance. During his downtime, Benjamin enjoys listening to music, and singing along with the guitar. He shares with Hi Life about his eclectic music library and how important one’s guitar skills can be when it comes to love!
I enjoy listening to music, and I listen to a very wide variety of genres! Be it instrumental, jazz, bossa nova, and pop. I listen to music from different languages as well, including Hokkien, Cantonese, sometimes even Korean pop! My playlist has songs by artistes ranging from Ed Sheeren, Coldplay , Michael Learns to Rock, to Micheal Buble, Tsai Chin, Wu Bai and Bee Gees, the list just goes on. In fact I learnt to speak Cantonese through the singing of Cantonese songs.
Benjamin (far left) leading his Hong Leong Finance colleagues in a Christmas carolling performance at the company’s community event with seniors.
I don’t have any favourites. As long as the melody is nice, I will listen to it. Sometimes, I will attempt to sing and play it on the guitar if I can, as my guitar skills are limited.
I started playing the guitar back when I was in university. It was something I picked up on my own and just started playing and practicing. To me, it’s the most convenient instrument to learn because it’s so portable. You can bring it along with you anywhere you go.
Like I have told my sons, you can bring it along to any group gathering, strum it, and sing along, and people will always gather round.
Benjamin helping out with friends at a monthly church ‘café’ activity that was opened to outside guests. There were food and drinks and they played live music accompaniment for guests to sing their selected songs.
It was also how I kept the romance going with my then-girlfriend and now-wife when we had a long-distance relationship during our university days. She was doing her final year in Australia and I had to come back to Singapore. In those days, we wrote letters and I found it too troublesome to write. Instead, I would record my message to her on a tape, and I’d always end with a song that I’d sing and play for her on my guitar!
I guess it all worked out – we are married and have three grown-up sons, who can all play the guitar (amongst other musical instruments)!
Music is a therapy to help handle our daily stress. Music helps with our right and left brain development too!
