Tuesday, 9 August 2016

Happy 51st Birthday to Singapore!

It's SG51! The parade was great, here are my disjointed impressions:

  • I love military bands in general! The four-cornered interlocking move was somewhat terrifying to watch, I kept expecting someone to bump into something.
  • Bani Hidir has a voice like dark chocolate. His brief rendition of Xiao Ren Wu De Xin Sheng was amazing, would love to hear a full-length version.
  • I can't believe they left out the bit where Badang gets his powers from eating the ghost's vomit.
  • The cannons used for the 21-gun salute looked very shiny this year. I can't remember if they've always looked that good?
  • No mobile column. :'(
  • The costumes of Badang's opponents were all fantastic. Love the shield-wielders' armour design.
  • THEN THE FIRE NATION ATTACKED
  • Oh man, the costumes for the Four Civilisations. So beautiful and intricate. I would love to cosplay as any of them (minus the eight-metre-tall skirts).
  • The unicorn was pretty impressive. I wasn't expecting to be impressed, but I was.
  • Hey, this looks like Tron.
  • OMG DAFT PUNK
  • OMG TAKE ON ME
  • The Sky City segment was gorgeous, really great airborne prop, beautiful music, all just wonderful.
  • Apropos of nothing, What a Wonderful World is a lovely song. 
  • I suppose if they were going to teach us to sign any song with only minutes to practice, Count on Me Singapore was a good choice purely because of the repetitive lyrics. No, but seriously, that was a great idea, I had a lot of fun learning the signs.
  • Singing Majulah Singapura at the endwithout backing music initially, just the sound of everyone's voices all together—gave me genuine chills.
I think this may be the first National Day Parade I'd actually want to watch again. Really, really superb effort by everyone.

In any case, happy birthday to Singapore!

No comments: