Following the appointment of Chan Chun Sing as NTUC's Deputy Secretary General in January this year and with him heavily tipped to take over from Lim Swee Say as next labour chief, it's high time to bid goodbye to the swashbuckling, words-inventing, quote-worthy Lim Swee Say.

During his tenure at NTUC, Lim oversaw these things:

- Implementation of the Progressive Wage Model for low-wage workers

- Revitalisation of NTUC Income with a more "social purpose" driven direction

- Termination of Amy Cheong

As the man with the most colourful quotes exits the driver's seat, Chan Chun Sing looks set to take over the baton.

Mothership.sg looks into our crystal ball and predicts where Lim will end up at.

1. Take over Chan Chun Sing's portfolio at Ministry of Social and Family Development

Traditionally, this ministry is usually manned by younger ministers.

Yeo Cheow Tong was 44 when he led it (then called Ministry of Community Development) in 1991, Abdullah Tarmugi was 52, Yaacob Ibrahim was 48 in 2003 (the ministry changed its name to Ministry of Community Development and Sports in 2000), Vivian Balakrishnan was 43 (another name change: Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports) and finally, Chan Chun Sing was just 42 when he took over (now known as Ministry of Social and Family Development).

Lim Swee Say turns 61 this year. Your guess is as good as ours.

Probability: Nah.

2. Contest at East Coast GRC in the next elections

Okay, to be honest, we didn't predict anything here. He did say that he will contest at East Coast GRC having spending the past three years and developing good relationship with residents there.

Probability: Hell yeah

3. Join Ministry for Trade and Industry

As a leader of productivity initiatives, Lim looks like the man for the job. He spoke of a three-pronged approach to increase productivity: every sector has to be made more productive, helping less productive industries lower their need for workers and the country needs to start thinking of the future.

But he needs to displace another Lim - Lim Hng Kiang.

Probability: Two Lims cannot co-exist. Who will be the biggest, betterest Lim Peh?

4. Join Ministry of Manpower

Yet another portfolio right up his alley, considering his expertise in manpower-based technicalities. Notice we didn't say Ministry of Education, lest the hive mind of the ministry embraces better, betterer and betterest.

This is also a good fit given that he has proven repeatedly that he is genuinely concerned about workers’ plights and their jobs and livelihoods.

Probability: Unless current Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin heads for greener pastures.

5. Join oxforddictionaries.com

Then he can finally add "betterer", "betterest" and "futurise" into the dictionary.

Probability: Only when Singapore becomes "a nation of bottleneck breakers".

6. Be an economic poet

Lim is all about the imagery. Using the backdrop of economics.

To employers who tell him Singapore has become too expensive for them to do business in, he said: "I don't think businesses should (keep) going west, keep chasing after sunsets, keep going for lower-cost locations. Eventually you'll end up with darkness."

Probability: To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: We are so clever that sometimes we don't understand a single word of what we are saying.

7. Go back to pursuing his first love: Mathematics

His dream was to get a degree in Mathematics. get a scholarship and to do a PhD in Mathematics and eventually become a Mathematics professor.

And then he became a politician.

And he showed how he put his math skills to good use as the labour chief. Check out his example in The Straits Times on March 5, 2015:

Employers also should not fret that they are unable to make all jobs attractive to Singaporeans, he said, reminding them that only two-thirds of jobs need to be redesigned, as one-third of the workforce will still be made up of foreigners.

And if workers use the new initiatives like SkillsFuture credits to improve their own productivity, then "two-thirds plus one-third can (add up to more) than one, and we can break the bottleneck of manpower optimisation".

Probability: 3.14159265359

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