HAPPY 42nd BIRTHDAY, SINGAPORE !This is my second time I spend National Holiday overseas.
Does it matter?
Yes, it very much matters to ME to be away from my homeland, my country, Singapore on National Day, thank you very much!
Why, because of the simple fact that it is a public holiday back in Singapore but I have to work today!
I was telling deepsix that life is so boring here (work, work, work and work) that I'm actually excited about watching the web livecast of the National Day Parade (NDP) at Marina Bay in the office in about few hours time (It's GMT+1 here). Hopefully, my colleagues of other nationalities will cut me some slack, but hey, it's a day for Singaporeans right?
That's if the connection to the web livecast is successful. From my last year's experience, it was difficult to connect to the web livecast in Algeria because of the low technological infrastructure of the IT department in my office here.
In situations like this, it really puts one's patriotism to the test - how much effort do I wish to expand in order to watch the NDP live and express my fervor as a Singaporean. Based on last year's experience, I discovered that I'm not even close.
But I do hope that this year, the connection will be better. There seems to be a lot of hype put in to this year's NDP. For the first time, the parade will be held away from the traditional site, the National Stadium, as it has been closed for a few years of renovation. This year, Marina Bay is the location of the NDP. A floating platform, offering 27,000 seating capacity, was build along the waterfront for people to watch the parade.
To further "engage and entertain Singaporeans, from the young to the young at heart", claims the official website, the emphasis has been shifted from National Day Parade to National Day Festival, signifying that the celebrations will move beyond a single day.
If you are in Singapore, you can find the list of the activities tied to the National Day Festival here. If you have excellent internet connection, you can catch the live webcast from the official site (http://www.ndp.org.sg/)
As for me, I just hope that I'm able to catch some fireworks online this time round.
The following are some pictures from the rehearsal, gleaned from the official site.
F-16s performing a Flypast over the floating parade
Best military unit of the year - Commandoes performing Guard of Honour duty. That's what you get for being the best: burnt weekends rehearsing at the parade grounds.
The lightning strikes everywhere: Nowhere to run...
Like I said, life is so boring here, I have nothing better to do...
UPDATE (11/08/07):
The internet connection between first world and third world was really lousy, therefore, I wasn't able to watch the NDP live webcast successfully.
2 comments:
You must really be bored to blog about National Day! unless of course you are a keen PAP supporter... haha....
The fireworks were really excellent as always, i think they spent half of our military budget on the fireworks...
Everyone was waiting to see if Ah Gong was going to fall into the sea but alas, he didnt.... he had two bodyguards walking behind/beside him...
Marc,
Maybe I am. Believe you me, I wore white (because it looked good on me), sang the national anthem and said the pledge when I woke up that morning.
Not!!
I heard Ah Gong swims everyday. Even if he fell into the sea and got carried away by the tides, he'll swim back when he feels that something is not right.
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