First off, yay - yay - Tom made it back from Shanghai! Just in time to celebrate Singapore's 47th birthday.
WOW! I mean - WOW!
Singapore is a city state so the whole freakin' country celebrates in one spot: Marina Bay. It's also a totalitarian government so they go all out. Imagine the military pomp of the Washington DC celebration and glitz of New York's fireworks. That's what we saw!
Even cooler? They PRACTICE! For three weeks now, they've been doing fireworks every Saturday night and military planes have been practicing all sorts of formations as well. The first Saturday night I actually thought we were under attack! Ha! By the way, I was told tonight that Singapore only gets 40 minutes a day of their own air space so most of the military air force trains in the US.
For the big bash, we scored an invitation to Connie & Joe's 54th floor apartment in The Sail, an apartment building that overlooks Marina Bay. I mean - it was the place to be. Fabulous view and air-conditioned is hard to beat. Even better? There were 20 adults and 6 toddlers! Toddlers! At a fancy apartment! Oh and wait - it gets even better... there were hot dogs for the kids and fabulous food for the adults. SCORE!
They have one of the nicest apartments I have ever seen - all courtesy of Exxon where Joe works, of course. The views are spectacular with a 180 degree view of the skyline. Equally nice, the floor plan is really open and inviting. Our hosts were the nicest people. I really liked them. Heather asked Connie to invite us. I only met her yesterday. I mean - they invited total strangers to their apartment for such a special event. People here are very gracious and quite international. The guest list read like a roll call at the U.N.
The kids had an absolute BALL! I mean - a ball (so did we!). They played with toys, gobbled up food and screamed their lungs out at the fireworks. It was really darn cute. We watched the shindig on TV since we were literally miles away from the stage. It was quite interesting because the costumes and performances were decidedly Asian. When the fireworks started, we had a front row seat. I've never been ABOVE the fireworks before... it was freaking cool. Across the bay sat the Marina Bay Sands hotel and the super trees of the Gardens, lit up like Christmas trees.
It wasn't just fireworks. Oh no... that was just a part of it. There were two concert stages going full tilt all afternoon. We could hear one when we opened the windows (cool, but unnerving!). Dragonboats and military boats crisscrossed the harbor while huge freighters sat out in the open water. Paratroopers soared to the ground with trails of red smoke behind them. Jets roared through the air in various formations making the loudest noises I've ever heard. Since we were so high up, it was like they were buzzing our apartment just for us. The crowd was all dressed in red so the view was a virtual sea of red. It was a spectacle in every sense of the word. Lucky us! Silly me - I only brought my telephoto lens so it was hard to capture the whole feel.
The kids got to bed three hours late so tomorrow will be a rough one. Sigh.
Here's a list I found.
- Nine planes will make up the fly-by, including six F-16 Falcons
- Four navy boats will create a heart shape in Marina Bay's waves
- 200,000 Lego bricks make up a 12 x 9m scale model of the NDP celebrations
- 2,000 National Day Parade participants
- 30,000 viewers from the stands
- 33m-wide LED screens shaped like Singapore
- Eight smaller screens that accompany the main one
- 5,573m² is the size of the stage
- 10.25m is the height the elevated stage will rise to
- 1,070 Tons of weight that can be handled by the steel Float@Marina Bay
- $1 million is the sum estimated to be spent on the fireworks display