You know actually before I got a blog over here, I do have two others on LiveJournal and Xanga. Yeah right, I know. But then somehow I felt each time I update over at LiveJournal, my friends does not really seemed to read it because I had not been seeing comments for my entries over there of late! I don't know...
It's different over at Xanga. At least I do see comments from time to time and so it's okay. So I don't know whether I should give up on LiveJournal and concentrate on this blog and the one over at Xanga. Actually some time ago I mentioned here that one of my friends over at Xanga who is called Jess seemed to be interested about my country and I wrote here that I was just amused. Come to think of it, who will have give a thought about my country? We are just so small on the world map and we are almost ignored till this whole tsunami disaster...
We became the first country to reach to one of the most hardest hit in the Aceh province in Meulaboh and render aid to the people over there (and the people there seemed to know about our Prime Minister the moment he arrived to look at the nature of the disaster). We were the first (in fact, it's our Prime Minister's idea) to come up with the idea of having the emergency summit in Jakarta like a few days ago. We were the ones who had been approved by the UN to be the regional disaster coordination hub and we suggested the idea to the UN initally! And our Prime Minister had promise at the summit to pledge another US$10 million to help those in need, adding to the almost US$1 million ($500,000 in our local currency) our government had pledged initally and those over at Singapore Red Cross where the last amount I heard - raised almost to like $11 million (in our local currency and it's almost to US$20 million) or something like that and still counting...
That is like only the tip of the iceberg, everyone. There had been like so many fundraiser events going on right now and so the final amount may be even more! I even know that the condominium which I lived, well, the committee even organised a collection of clothing and stuff to those who may need it in this disaster. It happened some time ago. Even when Mother and I were out yesterday, we met students who were doing flag day to help the tsunami victims. Mother did donate money.
Love and compassion is just everywhere, in this tiny country call Singapore. I don't know what to say about our fellow countrymen right now...I feel so touched. Now I hear that we are going to have a memorial service which is going to broadcast 'live' on TV tomorrow afternoon to remember those who had lost someone they love and/or had perished in this disaster, and also to those who hope to hear news from their loved ones who may be still alive in those affected areas. There's going to be a minute of silence at 6pm tomorrow. Everything in the country will come to a halt. Or least it seemed. I don't know what my younger siblings (my brother is in Sec 3 and sister is in Primary 5) are going to react to the minute of silence. I did told them about it this morning.
I read over one of my friends at Xanga that Jess (she's from the US, by the way) had mentioned about during her lessons at school, her class watched a newsclip and the announcer guy is right here, in Singapore. The guy was talking about the whole tsunami thingy and we becoming the UN regional disaster coordination hub. Jess actually forgotten about the name for the latter and so I went to the ChannelNewsAsia website and hunted for the archives section on the site because I remembered about the news was being reported here some time ago. Woohoo, Singapore is so famous now!
I love it. Just love it. It's stuff like this which makes me proud of who I am. A Singaporean.
