Mrs Herminia Ilano, 72, looks regal as she shows me how a cello should be held.
For a moment, her arms curve around an imaginary cello in a disciplined and graceful arc. She looks poised to perform before a rapt concert audience, as she has done so many times in her younger days with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
Since the eighties, the musician has also trained many cellists in their formative years, including Leslie Tan of the T’ang Quartet.
Her love for music - and for teaching the cello to young Singapore students seven days a week - lights up the grey afternoon as we sit in her little HDB flat.
Poignantly, she sums up her motivation to keep going: "Your calling doesn’t stop when you are old when the opportunity is there."
Ms Herminia Ilano, former SSO sub-principal cellist turned music teacher. -- ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERN
It would be an immense waste for Singapore to mothball that kind of passion and richness of experience, if these older people still desire to work into their 60s, 70s and 80s.
If the nation truly lives by the credo that people are our only resource, then surely senior workers should be appropriately prized.
Many of them have a quiet vitality, as I found in other interviews with senior workers. Take midwife Teresa Jodhi, 74, who can still sprint when a mum-to-be needs emergency care. She delights in her energy.
We know that an older person who works by choice, instead of smelling the roses, is likely to possess innate energy. The reverse is also true: Work energises the elderly.
Work keeps the brain alive. "Retirement means death," Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew framed the issue in the starkest possible light in 2008 at the Silver Industry Conference.
"If you want to see sunrise tomorrow or sunset, you must have a reason, you must have the stimuli to keep going," he said.
Mr Lee, Singapore’s most notable non-retiree, is exceedingly frank. The veterans who spoke with me are gentler in their observations on the value of work for the elderly.
Indeed, they are also a very modest generation and many did not view their job longevity as remarkable. So some declined to be interviewed, or had to be persuaded to be profiled.
But the eight who agreed have told us stories of fulfilment and friendship at the workplace.
They tell of new ideas and adventures, like port and logistics consultant MMJ Subramaniam, 68, who flies often to Libya and other frontiers on business.
Their bodies and minds have adjusted to the work intensity through sheer years on the job, matched by a remarkable work ethic.
While all are modest, and do not wish to amplify their extended contributions to the economy and society, their stories will surely make Singaporeans rethink the role of the rising ranks of senior workers.
And so we start to re-imagine the workplace as a territory with room for talent of every age.
Read the Saturday Special in The Straits Times today.