National Day

It’s Singapore’s birthday today! Happy National Day!

My female owner has never really enjoyed National Day in the past few years. The main reason was that she was always working either on National Day or around National Day, performing work duties which she did not believe in. Last year, she managed to get out of working on National Day and went on a post-break-up trip with Potahto to food paradise Penang.

This year, she spent National Day in Brisbane of course. A last minute jio by her Singaporean postgrad friends saw her going to school in the evening to watch the National Day Parade via live webcam with fellow Singaporeans. The event was organised by the Singapore Student Association.

Note: patriotism has never been in my female owner’s blood. There was a year when she watched a movie during the time when the parade was being telecasted.

She was amazed at how being in a foreign land greatly strengthens one’s national identity and sense of attachment. For example, when the national anthem was being sung at the parade, the lecture-theatre-full of students actually stood up at attention to SING the national anthem. Now, to stand up at attention at will is already amazing. To sing the national anthem, when most students probably stopped singing in Secondary School, was certainly an eye-opening experience for my female owner. As if to prove that the theatre of students were singing with gusto, there was a brief moment when the sound (not visual) stopped transmitting, and you can heard everyone singing “Majulah, Singapura” (ya, coincidentally the sound stopped at those lines). The same act of respect was repeated when the pledge was recited and the national anthem sang (again) towards the end of the celebration.

Watching the national day parade in a theatre full of Singaporeans in a foreign land was really an enriching experience for my female owner. Despite not being physically in Singapore, the crowd cheered, clapped and celebrated as though they were part of the spectators at the stadium.

My female owner certainly felt a sense of patriotism which she never felt before when she was in Singapore. And cheesy as it may sound, she found another reason/ motivator to do well in her programme – to do Singapore proud. Wahaha. She can just see some eyeballs rolling…