The Day's Takings, Part 1.

WE WANT MOOOOORE!

...your silence tells me.


As far as I know, Singapore's previous 39 National Day celebrations were all held at the National Stadium or Padang. You could queue for your free tickets at your local Community Centre, but be prepared to queue. With each ticket entitling the holder not only to entry but 01 x Decent Goodie Bag, the Singapore Spirit had the things snapped up within two hours of the doors opening every year. So if you lucked out, it was just you and your telly.

Hey, at least you could join the celebrations in your red/white underwear, I suppose. Anything beyond that, I don't want to know. Babies born on 9th May each year must have exceptionally patriotic parents.

This year was different. Other than the Stadium, celebrations were held at four other places: Marina, Yishun, Tampines and Jurong. The actual event would be linked over the airwaves via live broadcasts, with the classic, "HELLO OTHER PLACE. WE'RE HAVING FUN OVER AT THIS PLACE WHAT ABOUT YOU??!" kind of thing done over fuck-off huge monitor assemblies. Which really is quite good. Most people I spoke to felt the travel time to the Stadium of previous years was a bit much.

As with all things done the first time, there were little bumps. Then again, perhaps it's just the way things normally are done around here. One glaring bit, to me, was their idea of good zoning. If you stayed in the West - Commonwealth, for example, your designated place to travel to for "your" celebrations was Yishun. An hour away by anything short of helicopter. Makes sense to them, I suppose.

Organizations the world over seem to have fallen in love with the "@" symbol and of course we're no exception. What this led to were the Celebrations@Yishun, Celebrations@Jurong and Celebrations@Tampines, collectively referred to as the Celebrations@Heartlands. Then there was the Carnival@Marina and Parade@Padang. I swear I'm not making this up. Actual text on the brochures, that is.

And if you don't already know, the symbol is called a snail. So you could be saying to your friends, "Wasn't that ParadeSnailPadang just the greatest thing ever?".


My insignificant opinions aside, it was a day of good fun. The Celebrations@Yishun were held at the open field beside the Golden Village building in Yishun, about ten minutes from the MRT on foot. I got there at about eleven thirty, to an eclectic mix of techno music pumping from one side of the side of the field and warbles of olden-golden Chinese sentimentals from the other. Early look-see-ers were already wandering about, and I study the panoramic view of the field over coffee and cigarettes, waiting for Mr Ancob.

Soon after that chemical kick-start, he calls. I make my way to where he'd said he was over the phone, and there he was looking quite adorable in a pink polo-tee and safari hat! He hands me the camera and sends me packing with instructions to go talk to people.

And here is as much of the day as I can recall. Click on pictures to see it in full size, if you're not familiar with how these things work. I only know Imageshack, so loading may be a little slow. They were taken by Mr Ancob and myself, and I can only appeal to your inherent sense of all that's cute and furry, not to use them without informing me.


Very fitting banner, I thought. The day was as hot as Britanny Murphy - I actually got a tan from the wandering about. This was the rock-climbing section, and quite popular. Some of the kids who gave it a shot proved quite dextrous. I waited quite a bit there, but finally moved on, having decided disappointedly that no one was actually going to go splat.


Army and Civil Defence exhibitions are almost obligatory on National Day. I got quite jealous of the Civil-Dee people walking around nicely watered down. The guns in the first picture shoot a strong, fine mist of water with hardly any recoil.

The contraption that looks like what they used in Ghostbusters was quite impressive. I watched with amusement as an Indian man underwent a rather long instructional brief before being allowed to fire the thing. I found out why. The thing shoots something like...a ball of wet air. Very fast. No, really very fast. Standing next to the dude grinning stupidly to myself, I was decidedly unamused as he aimed the thing at the ground and gouged out a good-sized chunk of already-wet soil. Guess where the mud went.



Mr Civil-Dee with the burny-stick I would dearly love to wield was in charge of relighting the fire...hehe. RELIGHT MAHHH FIREEEE! Sorry. But yes, he was. They had a line of little metal woks on stands you see, which they set on fire. Excited civilians would then queue to use an actual fire extinguisher to put the fire out. Got a little repetitive pretty fast.

Psssssssst. FWOOM. Pssssst. FWOOOM.

They had fresh extinguishers at first, which made that nice noise along with the white mist you see in movies. Then they ran out, and a trip around the back of the Civil-Dee tent uncovered a group of the Civil-Dee men surreptitiously filling the empty ones up with water. They then became very sad squirt-guns, because all they had as propellant was compressed air which they pumped into the extinguishers after filling them up.

I felt bad for the little kid who must have been wondering why his extinguisher seemed to be urinating on the fire instead of doing that cool mist-gush like the bloke next to him.


I'll make this the end of the first bit. Gosh, and we're not even done with half the day yet.

I leave you with obligatory pictures of Cute Kid and Pretty Girl.


Singapore never looked this good.


A rather cute kid I found.

...Say what you will. I still think he's trying to give me the finger, in the second picture.