I will be chuckling to myself if I can update this on time. Today is the National Day eve, and both my brother and sister are going to come back from school earlier than usual. I had heard yesterday night that my mother also needed someone to accompany her to the temple to pay respect to my late maternal grandfather after she got knocked off from her work.
Not to freak anyone out in the midst of National Day festivities, but it's still the Chinese seventh month. The Hungry Ghosts Festival is still going on, as far as the lunar calendar is concerned.
But back to the whole National Day festivities. Notice lately I did not mention almost anything on my native country's birthday here. Not that this patriotic one is turning her back on her country. I mean, maybe like once I read on ST's Lifestyle on a column about the level of showing the patrioism in all of us. How 'loud' do I want to say I'm patrotic, and not ashamed of it? Maybe it's just our culture. Trying to sing 'We Are Singapore' as loud as I can back in my schooldays during those National Day celebrations can sent the others raising their eyebrows of sorts.
By the way, 'We Are Singapore' is still like almost my all-time favourite National Day song. The lyrics almost explained everything about our struggles, how we survived and just, us. I am aware of all the recent theme songs too.
How strange and always ironic whenever my native country's birthday is coming, and I will always think that I can consider myself lucky for the many little things I have in my life. It's always like that, if one stop to think for a while, then life is actually still not so bad after all. For my father whose job at times need him to travel overseas, he had been able to put things into perspective. For me, the past two holiday trips to Malaysia had made me learned and gained some things along the way. And the inevitable - comparing.
My father had kind of commented recently (it was in regards to those who cried foul over the increase of cab fares) that it's often those who had not travelled abroad to complain our rising cab fares. He pointed out that taking a cab in Japan is just expensive (given he went there before for work reasons). And those past Hong Kong TV dramas had even 'taught' me - cab fares in Hong Kong can be expensive. I mean, after mentally converting to our local currency, you will get the idea. That is if you are aware of the exchange rate.
Let me tell an ancedote from my primary school days. I only began to remember it yesterday night and told my father about it as well. It's only when one think back all the seemingly trivial events, then everything just come into place.
Imagine a teacher to sort of 'lecture' on many students about not really aware of the meaning of the national flag. This was what happened once before the start of the afternoon assembly in the school hall before the afternoon session began. To admit in the mind of a naive primary school student in the case of me then, I had never gave a thought to it. Till we were told to understand what does the various deisgns on the national flag represent.
There. That is the story from my primary school days. From then on, I cannot say I had no much idea of the various meanings on the national flag because I was being 'drilled' into it.
I am happy of where I am from. Maybe it's the case of patrioism in me, I am often not too pleased at especially how the western media (often in the name of press freedom) see our media scene here. Please, tell me what you mean by press freedom. Thank you very much. Democractic systems vary from country to country. What may work for us as a small nation may not work elsewhere (read: the US), excuse me!
To end my entry, here is an excerpt of 'We Are Singapore':
There was a time when people said that
Singapore could not make it
But we did
There was a time when troubles seem so much for us to take
But we did
