Happy Birthday Singapore!

It's National Day today. A public holiday! Woo hoo!

Singapore turns 40 today. Man, talk about potential for a mid-life crisis. Hah.

But anyhow, if there's one thing that National Day (and the government) successfully does, is to rally the patriotic Singaporean inside each of us. Make us all want to wear red and white, sing Singapore songs, and hoot and holler at fireworks.

My dad, sis and I are going down to the Padang (malay for big, green, field) to catch the National Day Parade. The hubby says he's all "National Day Paraded" out, after having gone the past 2 years... despite my reassurances that this yr is different, being on the padang and all. So he's going to watch it on tv, while we'll go catch it in person. Guess his "watching sports on tv vs live" preference extends to large public events too.

On a semi-related note, my colleagues and I were lamenting how the youth of today aren't put through the rigor of the "Sing Singapore" campaign. They will never know the thrills of singing songs in malay, chinese and tamil without ever knowing the real meaning of the song... having the corresponding hand actions, and Sing Singapore competitions on tv. This, unfortunately, will remain something that only my generation of school-going kids will know and remember fondly.

A list of some of the songs that I used to know all the lyrics to (and probably still do, if I can be coerced to sing them)
- chan mali chan (hoi! hoi!)
- dayung sampan
- di tanjung katong
- munneru valiba
- wu jiao jie (five foot way)
- five stars arising
- the ever-popular "we are singapore", "count on me singapore", "one people, one nation, one singapore"
- stand up for singapore
- it's you, it's you, it's you who builds community

Yeah... way to go Singapore!! The big old 4-0.. It's your burfday, not really.. we're going to party like it's your burfday, we're going to sip bacardi like it's your burfday.. hee hee.