Happy Freedom-From-Malaysia Day!

Actually, that was two days ago. But I never got a chance to blog since then, until right now. Sorry bout that.

Went to the open field opposite the Singapore River (and the Marina Bay Stadium) that day for a nice quiet picnic, and to catch a free view of the celebrations with a pair of binocs. What we actually got was a noisy, rowdy group of fellow Singaporeans, ugly and non-ugly alike, a sea of red and white, among other less prominent colours, having a ball chanting at each other and riling everybody up, shouting things like, "get offa my territory" and "sit down, mamas (Indians)! I can't see!" I found myself a spacious spot near the riverbank to gaze at the stadium, which was soon filled up to my left, right and behind with other people and camera tripods keen on sharing the sights with me. My legs held off really well, especially when I had to crouch there among everybody else when we got shouted at to get down. The sights and sounds were spectacular, nonetheless. I got to see our Air Force's F-16Cs fly past with afterburners at full blast, heard the rumbling of cannons during the 21-gun salute, listened to the stuttering of rotors as Chinooks and Apaches flew past, and most importantly, observed the 3-minute fireworks display with much wonder and delight.

There was a 'Jellyfish' display too, which were lighted balloons attached to motorboats floating around the river (what that symbolizes, I never really paid attention to). Said balloons were actually moored just in front of us prior to the performance, so half the time I couldn't get a clear view of the stadium itself.

Afterwards, when the celebrations were over and everybody was marching back to the nearby parking lots and evading the heavy traffic, I stuck around long enough to see the litter left behind in the grass. So much for a litter-free country. Among the debris were even miniature Singapore flags. So much for patriotism. Dad made me delete the photos I took of them.

We joined the parade (it was a really huge one at that, all those people taking up a 3-lane road and a whole traffic junction, which even had a traffic officer to divert the cars manually. That scene reminded me of Akihabara and Shibuya) back to where we parked our Mitsubishi Grandis, the Old Food Court multi-storey Carpark, where we proceeded to wait 10 minutes before we could finally move out of the lot and join the queue of cars trailing up to the fifth storey that were leaving as well, and another 15 minutes going down to the first floor and passing the toll gates, before emerging into relatively less crowded roads.

By the way, I'm still coughing. I'm on renewed medication now, since I've already exhausted the prescribed cough syrup from the Polyclinic.

I promise I'll rant more about Tokyo in Singapore soon. I'm just kinda unsure of what to talk about now. My aspirations and to-buy list would be ideal, but that'd be too corny.