DO NOT GO GENTLE

The Singapore grandmothers playing rough at a kids' sport

- SUI-LEE WEE

Tussling for the ball on a recent Tuesday, two players attempted to wrestle it from Lee Fong Nam. As she gripped it to her chest, she demanded intervention from the coach. "Are you still not going to blow the whistle?

He chuckled and said: "You all are playing rugby!"

Actually this is Singapore's Ah Ma Flippa Ball team Ah Ma is grandmother in several Chinese dialects. They are a group of women mostly in their 60s, 70s and 80s who play a modified version of water polo designed for children. It is also a microcosm of how this wealthy city state is changing.

As Singapore has prospered, life expectancy here has soared to 84 and now nearly a fifth of the population is older than 65. In recent decades, the government has raised not only the retirement age but also what it calls the re-employment age, or how long employers are required to extend jobs for people after they reach retirement age.

It is also giving more benefits, like cash payouts, to some older citizens, as well as those in their 50s and 60s, whom it calls "young seniors". It has dispatched "Silver Generation Ambassadors" to conduct door-to-door visits with seniors who live alone to encourage them to exercise, play games such as Rummy-O, and learn robotics and other languages.

Older residents are now part of a cheerleading squad, an e-sports team and the flippa ball outfit. It's all in a bid to help people age well.

The flippa ball team started in 2016 when a sports official at a swimming complex saw Ting Kum Luen coaching a children's flippa ball class and asked him if he could do the same for a group of older men and women. He was sceptical.