SINGAPORE — When visiting hawker stalls around Singapore, it is not uncommon to see photographs of the stallholder with celebrities who have dined there plastered on the walls.
So, many diners may not bat an eyelid at the photograph of President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and his wife with Botak Cantonese Porridge’s crew, positioned squarely in the stall’s front glass panel at One Punggol Hawker Centre.
Second-generation hawker Lim Hwee Yi, whose parents own the porridge brand, said that the picture was taken when the couple patronised their stall in early July.
However, that was no chance encounter with Singapore’s head of state.
The 26-year-old shares a deeper relationship with the couple, having worked as their bodyguard for six months.
Fresh out of her polytechnic diploma studies and before taking over the reins of her parents’ hawker stall, Ms Lim signed on with the Singapore Police Force in 2019.
There, she served as a security officer to two of the country's presidents, guarding them and their spouses for about five years.
Ms Lim was the only one of the 20 or so cadets in the same training cohort to become a security officer, after she passed three stringent selection rounds.
After that, she underwent three further months of training to be a security officer, where she was taught to fight, to shoot, and to execute certain operations.
Ms Lim resigned from the force in May this year to helm her family’s porridge business, in a move that took her from the grand surrounds of the Istana to a neighbourhood hawker centre.
More at https://www.todayonline.com/feature...idents-took-over-family-hawker-stalls-2476906
