S! I-N! G-A-P-O-R-E! -clapclapclap-

Does anybody remember that little cheer?

Never heard it since I left Primary School, I think. Pity, really. The old school national songs beat the new ones by far. I have no idea what the song was for last year, but damned if I can't remember all the lyrics to just about all the songs I learned as a kid.

We have a vision for tomorrow
(Just believe. Just believe)
We have a goal for Singapore
(We can achieve. We can achieve)

You and me
We'll do our...

Ok, point made. But they were lovely songs, and gall me as it does to admit it, enjoyable to sing. This year's "Reach out for the skies" just slowly grinds your sanity away after the third time you hear it. If you've been trapped in a lift for the past two months, you can download the video at this page, which is the official National Day site. A direct link here, for the one I'm talking about.

Getting around to this a fair bit later than I thought I would. But hey, if they think it's alright to organize National Day dinners and parties right up to the end of the week after the day itself, including one on Sunday at seven in the morning, I'm actually a fair bit ahead.

So, yes. I suppose I should start with a very brief history. Mostly from what I recall from school. A refresher for the natives, and gods help you if you're from a foreign country and getting your impression of Singapore from me.

--

Historically, we can trace Singapore's history back to that of a sleepy fishing village originally called Temasek, meaning "Sea" in Javanese. Then in 11AD (yes I looked it up), a Sumatran prince by the name of Sang Nila Utama sailed by, saw a large feline shadow on the island, and promptly renamed it "Singapura", meaning "Lion City". A little pompous, I felt, going around renaming things like that. But, fair enough.

I might be sitting in my attap hut by the sea with a supper of fish right now, were it not for Sir Stamford Raffles, who tripped over our island in 1819. Discovering that our location was absolutely fabulous for a trading hub, he stuck a flag into the ground and claimed us for the British as a colony. Great man, but a bit of a little snot as well.

So the British came, with their muskets and money and hey, it wasn't like we really had a choice. Thus, it came to be that right up to World War II, we served as a gigantic gas station of sorts. We attracted migrants from all over the place, and lured business to the port with tariff exemption. Quite shrewd, that Raffles.

All that is part of my personal theory on why, no matter how much it's publicly denied, the tradition of White Worship is still very much alive today in Singapore, with the classic example being the SPG. Hee hee.

But then the war came to Singapore. And the damned British took one look at the baby-impaling, rape/pillaging Japanese troops...and fucked off! They just fucked off! Well, maybe not quite so fast. They might have thrown a ceremonial rock at the Japanese or something. But fuck off they did.

No disrespect to the valiant ones that fought and died for what they believed in. That is an amazing way to die and something I don't know if I can do. I suppose you can't blame the commanders of the British troops either. This wasn't their home, after all. Still, all that angst must go somewhere.

We were renamed (yes, yet again) Syonan-to by the Japanese. "Sun of the East", if I do not stand corrected. For four painful years we suffered under the rule of the Japan of that time. Intricate knowledge of what happened is beyond me, but they were real bastards. Or so I hear.

An interesting fact I do know is, when Japanese officials needed to buy things from the locals, they simply printed more money. They were, after all, the government. That currency devalued so fast the price of tissue paper rose during the sneeze. And a packet would cost you, say, two baskets full of notes. It was called "banana money", because the Japanese featured pictures of banana trees on them. Of all things.

Then America dropped that fuck-off affair on Hiroshima, and up went the Japanese flag...without the red circle. The Japanese left, the British came back...and we gave them funny looks. It was time to assert our independence. Because hey, if something like that happened again, we'd know at least some of the ones in charge won't fuck off.

The rest is, to excuse the expression, history. My knowledge of the political chronology after that is too imperfect for me to risk embarrassing myself and possibly have men in black suits and dark glasses knocking on my door for. We became a separate entity after a bitter struggle, and on 9th August 1965 - a Nation was born.

...And now we make most of our money by making chocolate in the shape of a fish with a lion's head, and selling it to tourists. Well, not really. But I'd say one would have to be smoking that shit to come up with something like that. It very strangely works, tourist-wise.

I bring myself a step closer to being banished to Sentosa by saying...it's a godawful creation, for chrissakes. Fish tail, to symbolize fishing village roots - Yes. Lion's head, to symbolize the majesty and such - Yes. The thing is, it's something that only works on paper, really. I suppose that five-storey high statue of the Merlion proves me wrong, though. Weird tourists.

Very curiously, with all the going-ons about the Lion symbolizing Singapore, crests and mascots made about it and such... . Lions never actually inhabited Singapore. Ever. Sang Nila Utama, bless his heart, had his contacts out, that day.

Uh.
That was my...brief introduction. I was actually going to talk about the National Day Celebrations this year, one of which I was at, you see.

The next time I want to write about something, I should start off writing it as an introduction to something else. Sigh.