National Day

9th August. The date that is all too familiar with all Singaporeans. It is the day where Singapore gained independence. The day we became a sovereign state back in 1965. The day yours truly become all patriotic. You can call it saddening, that throughout the whole year, I only become patriotic on this one particular day. Thing is that, I supposed, sometimes the environment that we are in cloud the way we see things.

Hating it is very superficial whereas loving it is pretty much spiritual.

There are so many things to hate about Singapore. The rigid system that we are under stands out like a sore thumb. The cost of living here is so high that some of us literally work to pay off necessities. For Singaporean males, we have to serve 2 years of National Service which many would view as a complete waste of time and that 2 years could be well-spent scaling greater heights. And honestly, the list goes on and on even to the most minute details and unhappiness.

So what is there to really like about Singapore? For me, it's the sense of belonging and identity. The very fact that I call this place home. Simple as that.

Living in Singapore has been pretty much a love-hate thing. It is like a bad relationship between a parent and child where as kids, we sometimes just hate everything that our parents impose on us but somehow we know that regardless of what they do, we still love them anyways. We love Singapore too much to be hating it and nit-picking every single detail that comes with it.

That said, we cannot satisfy every person here in this small island. As citizens, let's try to make the best out of what is there for us here, to achieve and strive the best we could. Happy 45th Birthday Singapore.

"Sometimes the best things are taken for granted"
- Corrinne May (Song for Singapore)

44th!

9th August marks the nation's birthday. Every year on this day, I feel patriotic. I would watch the parade every year and wish that I was involved in them. And every year without fail I would ballot and hope to get the NDP tickets.

The parade this year was centred on the national pledge. I think most of us have stopped saying the pledge ever since we were 16, when we left secondary school. Back then, we would recite the pledge immediately after singing the national anthem. It was an everyday thing that the words held no meaning, no weight, no diction but last night, the pledge gave me a rejuvenated sense of belonging to the country. I reflected on the words and felt that the words used in the pledge had this strong pull of unity in it. What does being Singaporean mean to you?

44 years ago, independence was forced onto Singapore. No doubt the idea of being a sovereign state was in the minds of our founding fathers, but in 1965, it came earlier than expected. I must say, we did well going solo. MM Lee's vision of turning this island into a metropolis within 10 years back then was realised. Singapore as we see it have grown from strength to strength ever since and never looked back.

It made me reflect about how we as humans react to such situations. Many a times we humans are just plain lazy to get our ass moving in achieving something that we tend to slip into this comfort zone where we feel that everything will be alright. It is when things happen and we are forced to react would we actually start moving into attaining that goal. We procastinate until we have no more room to move before we finally take action.

I have friends who complain about their jobs every other day and when being told to look for opportunity elsewhere, they would go "Slowly, I'm looking around." How do you look around slowly? It's either you choose to move elsewhere and take action or not at all. But when retrenchment occurs, and you are being pushed to a corner, then suddenly we move at double the speeds in our efforts to attain something better, something which we have always wanted to achieve.

So friends, get down to achieving your goals now. Stop procastinating. If not now, then when? Time is something we do not own. What happens tomorrow is up to us to change. What happened yesterday can never be retrieved. The skies' the limit as long as we dare to dream. ;-)

Happy 44th Birthday Singapore!!