Singapore National Day: What happened a year ago?

National Day 09 Special:


I would like to share with readers what happened a year ago on our National Day:

Close to 50,000 Singaporeans flocked to the floating platform and the vicinity of Esplanade and Raffles Place to partake in, participate in, or view the nation’s most spectacular parade of the year, painting the town red (literally).

Red is the colour for today as Singaporeans jammed the streets from City Hall MRT all the way to the Esplanade area.

1500 hours, parade-goers already began thronging in, law and orderliness is being continuously reinforced by the hundreds of police officers stationed all around the area, preventing a stampede J.

While yesterday, the world reverberated in the China’s Olympics, Today is a day belonging to Singapore and Singaporeans!

The parade is as spectacular as ever , though for the first time in many years, it rained for an hour an hour into the parade.

Nevertheless, Singaporeans soaked the fun as much as the rain!

Yesterday, the sky was not cooperative in the celebration of our National Day Parades as in all years except 1968, but all Singaporeans still have fun!

I would like to revise the figure of the number of people who I said participated or went to watch the extravaganza last night in my post yesterday. The actual number was in the range of 200, 000 to 300,000.

No wonder the streets around City Hall were quite empty as all Singaporeans flood around Marina Bay and Singapore River for a glimpse of the action and the fireworks.

Missed the dazzling fireworks? Here are the videos that I have captured for readers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-efG51X6Xg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg6r4uvy-YE

Enjoy!

There is a dearth of national flags hung up and displayed by residents outside their apartment units this year (if one is to exclude those flags hung up by the town councils).

I noticed that Marina Mandarin Hotel is patriotic and supportive and thus have captured the above photo for it is not that common for a hotel to be decked in national flags.

Maybe other hotels will start to take a leaf from Marina Mandarin Hotel next year and we may see more hotels than housing apartments being decked in red and white !