Celebrations

Birthday wishes from the Bees. They were very excited throughout the whole weekend, and watched the entire 2.5 hours of the National Day Parade with rapt fascination!

We love National Day. Every year when the nation's birthday approaches, I will mentally appreciate and remember how our little country had grown so remarkably in these short 45 years. 

At this juncture, I would like to highly recommend this book that I had been reading early this year - which captivated me to no end. It is a whopping 663 pages, and took me a while to complete. I do wish for a concise or abridged version just for children, so that I can open up my Bees' eyes to a time when affluence and modernity were unheard of in Singapore. Two sentences that haunted me at the end of the book: "The (Singapore) people shared our feelings and were prepared to do whatever was needed to make an independent Singapore work. I did not know I was to spend the rest of my life getting Singapore not just to work but to prosper and flourish." 

True, the modern Singapore (the quest for our true identity) and him do have myriad naysayers. But for Hubby and me, who had been to so many parts of the world for work and not for leisure travel (we do have the ironical privileges of seeing many ugly sides of people from all nationalities through work!), we fall deeper in love with our country, our ethos and our special culture the more we travel. And we do hope to inspire our own Bees with this somewhat soppy patriotism too! And to imbue in them the fundamental drive for our fragile nation's continued survival.

Which is why it had always been a National Day family tradition not to travel out of the country, and we always make it a point to watch the National Day Parade together - as a family. So that we can remind ourselves that it is no easy feat for us to be sitting comfortably and safely at home, with nothing but our everyday life to worry about. There are many countries who would love to be in our position, but sadly, I know many cynics may not agree. That is just another aspect of our "unique" culture, isn't it? The culture of complaining :)

To commemorate this day in school, Big Bee was tasked to create a mural of her vision of National Day - and this was what she created all by herself :) I thought it is a colourful piece of work! 

Big Bee created a mural of herself watching fireworks at night, with helicoptors holding our flag up high. 

Throughout this long weekend, we stayed home and spent plenty of time with our loved ones. Dinners with grandparents on 2 separate occasions. Gatherings with close friends. And merely ambling around town to appreciate all of what we have. 

I hope your National Day had been blissful too.