Wanted to post this passage from Ngiam Tong Dow’s May 11 2005 article in the Straits Times on the same day:

Dr Goh Keng Swee was Singapore’s first Finance Minister…As Defence Minister…He adopted what he called reverse engineering…Reverse engineering is the approach of the public service manager faced with resource constraints.

A more vivid example of this cost-conscious mindset is embodied in his decision to build the Jurong Bird Park first, rather than the zoo…Dr Goh asked me to draft a project paper to set up a bird park in Singapore.

When I asked him why not a zoo, he gruffly replied that birds only eat bird seeds, which is a fraction of the cost of meat to feed carnivorous animals at a zoo.