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Ann Elizabeth Wee

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The Resume

    (August 19, 1926-December 11, 2019)
    Born in Corbridge, Northumberland (England), United Kingdom
    Birth name was Ann Elizabeth Wilcox
    Established the profession of social work in Singapore
    Wrote 'A Tiger Remembers: The Way We Were in Singapore'
    Longest-serving head of the Department of Social Work at the National University of Singapore (NUS)
    Taught for four years at Methodist Girls’ School, became a training officer at the Social Welfare Department in 1955

Why she might be annoying:

    She wore her hair like Pearl Buck.
    She came to Singapore to be with her fiancee rather than out of an initial desire to do work with the poor.
    She is critical of the body odour and attitudes of the working-class poor in her memoirs.
    When she started to learn Hokkien, one of the first phrases she learnt to say in Hokkien was 'eee aay Ang both hoh' ('her husband is not good').

Why she might not be annoying:

    She spent over fifty years serving the slums and underprivileged of Singapore.
    She evacuated the London School of Economics, where she had been studying economics for a year, because of the wartime bombings.
    She met her husband, a Singaporean law student, in 1944 at Cambridge University where he was studying. They were married in his home country six years later.
    She learned Cantonese and Malay to better communicate with the low-income communities she was serving.
    Her clients were mostly impoverished women who had been abandoned or abused by their husbands.
    She taught social work classes to first-year students at University of Malaya.
    When she became Head of Department in 1967, she focused on establishing an Honours degree course. Nearly two decades later, the program came to fruition.
    She was bestowed the Public Service Star in 1972 and the Public Service Star (Bar) in 2004.
    She was recognised with the Meritorious Service Medal in 2010 and the NUSS Distinguished Lifetime Volunteer Achievement Award in 2012.
    The Ann Wee NUS Social Work Alumni Award was established in 2014 in her honour.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 6 Votes: 16.67% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 15 Votes: 46.67% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 19 Votes: 47.37% Annoying