9:45 p.m. - 2004-08-09
Looking Back on National Day
There's one thing i'm afraid i'll never, ever be: patriotic.
Today is Singapore's National Day and every year they have this grand pageant where all the people are supposed to come together to celebrate the country's birthday... i guess it must be nice to have a country to belong to and be so proud of. i'll never know what that's like.
why? because i dont really belong to any particular country. not Sri Lanka, not Singapore, i dont really know where. i just happen to live in these countries, doesnt mean i'm actually a part of it.
guess the only places i'm patriotic to are Middle Earth and Cybertron.
anyways, because today is National Day, all the museums had a free open house, so Clarice and i decided to go on a little museum tour. like i said, sometimes history can be interesting.
our first stop was the Singapore Philatic Museum. they were having a special exhibition on stamps.. some of the stuff was interesting i should say. of course serious stamp collectors would have found it a veritable goldmine, but hey, to people like us it was just ok. what interested me was the sample of letter from a British POW. glad to say it had a happy ending.
From there we walked to the Asian Civilizations Museum. now as the name suggests i thought it'd be something showcasing the history of all the major races in the country. unfortunately all they had on display was a big exhibit on the Peranakans and a little bit on the ancient Chinese. mreh.. major let down, though i did manage to glean a tiny bit of mythology from the Peranakan exhibit.
after that it was off to the Singapore Art Museum. that place always confuses the slag outta me. i like the Arts, yes, but i'm more familiar with the Performing Arts side of it rather than the ART Arts side. it just bewilders me what can be considered a work of art. weird stuff man.
Our final stop was the Singapore History Museum. again a few interesting facts here and there but nothing not already known. there were some women showcasing some items they consider to be out of use, like the old dial telephone and glass soda bottles. too bad for her alot of that old stuff is still used in Sri Lanka so i wound up telling her more about it than she could tell me. hehe...
anyways, we were too tired and hungry after all that to wait for the shuttle bus, and luckily the Museum was close to Clarke Quay mrt, so we just walked down and took the train to Plaza Singapura where we hung out for a while and had some Burger King and ice cream before heading home.
we really wanted to visit the Istana aka the President's House as they normally allow the public to enter on National Day, but when we went i think they'd stopped letting people in since the President had to go off to attend the National Day Pageant.
ah well...
