Wind In My Head: Caught on digital
Wind In My Head
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Caught on digital
It feels like the weekend but it isn't. It's the interruption we have once a year to celebrate our nation's birthday and strangely enough, everyone feels obligated to wear red. Gee, I don't know about that one.Anyway, we decided that since KL was profitting from our National Day by charging a Singapore National Day surcharge on all hotel rooms during this time, we weren't going to drive up to KL as originally planned. Instead, we decided to thumb our noses at the Malaysian Tourist Promotion people and check ourselves into a hotel that faces the Esplanade where fireworks were set off last night. This was a much better choice than to park in the middle of the expressway, climb the barrier and gawk at the fireworks while irate passing motorists stuck involunatarily in the incosiderate jam fantasise about crushing all parked vehicles in sight.
People really make an outing out of it. We'd decided that even though our harbour view room put us at a 14 floor up advantage to marvel at the pyrotechnics, we wanted to go across and be out in the open and watch it up close. There were people camping everywhere. Any empty space was taken up, by families, groups of friends, tourists, gawkers like us. And soon, you couldn't see the ground. Packrat and I had choice spots. The only problem was being packed in like sardines, by the end of it, I had the sweat of a large teenage boy on my arm that I desperately needed to disinfect off.
We didn't bring a camera or anything to take photos. But every other person there did. And when the fire show started, the entire esplanade ground was illuminated. Not by the show in the sky but by thousands of individual irridescent screens pointing up at the sky.
Amazing.
What does it show of our nation? That we're all rich enough to afford little digital play things, that we're all cut from the same cookie mould- with quality varying, about a thousand people would be uploading the same picture of the same fireworks display today, that we're a tech savvy nation and also, that we're all sitting ducks if some jihad-ist decided to send one of those explosives across the bay right into the crowd. And all that, would also be caught on digital.
Oooh... fireworks, pretty, makes big sound, firework, coming closer, pretty..pretty... bigger...bigger...uh oh.... BOOM.
Ow! That burns.
Yes, I'm being morbid, but it is National Day. :)
Happy National Day!
Technorati Tags: Singapore, NDP , Singapore Fireworks Festival
Ondine tossed this thought in at 15:05
