Singapore is Sixty!

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

Singapore is 60 years old!

I didn't make it to watch the National Day Parade this year; this banner is from the park next door where we went to watch the Red Lions doing flybys over the heartlands--

You probably can't tell from the photo (we couldn't in real life) but one of the pilots in one of those planes is the brother of the fiance of a cousin of one of our neighbours here, which is why we all congregated to cheer them on...

We were also treated to a military and emergency vehicle drive past--though I got a better view of them from home (too many trees in the park!)

At the parade proper there were floats, military formations, cultural presentations, a full fighter jet flypast followed by skydivers, rainbow clouds of (environmentally friendly) dust, fireworks and a sturgeon moon...

It's a big milestone because the Sixty Year Anniversary marks a full cycle in the traditional Chinese calendar system. This is the first Year of the Wood Serpent since our first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s tearful public broadcast in 1965, of which he said,
“By accepting separation, I had failed them. That sense of guilt made me break down. It was my moment of anguish. The deed was done, but I was overwrought at the thought of all the shattered hopes we had aroused.”

The root of the separation was that some in Malaysia would not accept Singapore’s call for racial equality.

As Lee Kuan Yew said, many in Malaysia expected Singapore to “come crawling back” within six months. Malaysia controlled resources like rubber and tin while Singapore, with no natural resources, was dependent on Malaysia for water and food. It was expected that Singapore’s economy would collapse and the island forced to accept terms dictated by Malaysia.

It seemed like a pipe dream when Lee Kuan Yew said to a people colonised by the Brits, crushed by the Japs then kicked out of Malaysia, “Be firm, be calm. We are going to have a multi-racial nation in Singapore. We will set the example... Everybody will have his place. Equal. Language, culture, religion.”

It's been more than six months. So far so good...

But the real gift isn’t military hardware or aerial displays. It's not even the CDC (Community Development Council) vouchers every household receives that can be used to pay for meals and groceries but not alcohol or cigarettes.
Or maybe it is the vouchers, a little, and people saying (after paying with CDC), "Lawrence Wong buying us dinner tonight!"

But the big thing for me is knowing it's possible to take an impossible situation and say "Let's go for it" and survive to thrive.

It's something worth remembering every time you're ploughing through the messy middle of a new book!

Happy National Day, Singapore. And Thank You.