My vision of what National Day would be: everyone would be in their red and white clothing, the National Day Songs playing on every corner. Every so often, someone would shout, "Majulah!" (Onward!) and someone else would shout back, "Singapura!" (The national anthem is Majulah Singapura, Onward Singapore.) Then everyone would high-five and wave their miniature Singapore flags. Later, at a hawker center, people would tell stories about the good old days with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.What National Day actually is: everyone wearing their regular clothes and going about their normal business.
(Actually, I was warned about this. I asked my former student Joe, who now lives here and is married to a Singaporean, what people did on National Day. He said that I was already doing it by planning a weekend trip to Bangkok. :) And that usually people would watch the parade on television.)
To get more of the National Day spirit, I went to the celebrations at the National Musuem, which were pretty nice. They had free admission to all of the galleries (and it was neat to watch Lee Kuan Yew's speeches immediately after independence with a crowd of people). They also had craft stations for kids, some food stalls set up (and in true Singaporean fashion, these included Swiss raclette and Dutch mini-pancakes as well as more traditional choices like satay and prata), and an acapella group singing Singapore songs.Your fun fact for the day: did you know that the "si" in Malaysia comes from Singapore? Before the merger (which came before Singapore's independence), they were Malaya.
This is Singapore's 52nd birthday, by the way. The children were very amused that their dad is older than Singapore. :)(And regarding the bottom picture -- I don't know what instrument that guy was playing, but he was doing an impressive rendition of the Beatles' song Yesterday.)
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