NDP2007 - Part 1

On 8 August 2007, I was the 1st to get up from bed. Nothing unusual about that (because I am the 1st to wake up every working/schooling day anyway), except that it was 9:45am and (yet) there was no rush.

After settling the morning routine chores (eg boiling water etc), I went about waking the rest up from their slumber. It was especially nice to remain in bed that morning because the early morning heavy rain had just subsided to a drizzle and the sun had not come out yet.

Once everyone was up, we had a leisurely breakfast at home. This was followed by our packing our cameras, video-cam and binoculars ready for the Parade we have all been waiting for. Then we all showered and got ready to meet up with Mother and CP downstairs at 2:30pm. Then the 6 of us, all donned in red t-shirts, got into the car and set off for Suntec City.

When we arrived at Suntec City, we saw many other people also dressed in red. Some had their red-and-white caps on, and some held small flags in their hands. A group of youngsters even had their flags stuck on their caps! R and WY quickly went to grab some new tapes for the video-cam.

Then we proceeded to walk to Marina Bay. When we arrived at the security checkpoint, we were handed some clear pastic bags and told to empty our bags of all metallic items, including coins and keys. Although it wasn't exactly very troublesome (most people have already come to accept such checks as 'necessary'), I personally feel that such checks do nothing more than just giving us all a false sense of security - which is extremely dangerous.

I mean, will such checks be good enough to detect a terrorist-minded person trying to smuggle some non-metallic weapon into the area? Metallic weapons are probably the last thing any person intending to do mischief will bring to the venue, right? And there are plenty of other non-metallic stuff which can do just as much damage (if not more damage) than metallic weapons, right?

Anyway, no questions are asked these days about such security checks. I suspect that it is even considered 'wrong' to question their effectiveness. So, we all just walked through the frame and were done with it quite quickly.

From this point onwards, Mother and CP made their way to their blue-sector seats while the rest of us just carried on walking towards the other end of the gallery. See if you can spot familiar faces in some of the photos taken: