-f.l.y-: Happy Birthday Singapore

Been a rather eventful few days. I'm finally using a new laptop. Yes. Good Riddance to Hewlett Packard. My screen went Pink the first time I switched it on back in Melbourne. Yes, P.I.N.K. For all you ladies who love nothing but Pink, you would love my screen. And guess what, It's going to cost almost AUD700 to replace it. $_$ Enough is Enough. . . So here I am, with my new Toshiba Satellite. I would have wanted a Lenovo but there're hardly any models being sold here. So Toshiba it is then, albeit its glossy keypad being a dumb design.

"The most spectacular Opening Ceremony in Olympic history. . ." -Herald Sun. 'Nuff said. An opening of scale and grandeur has aboslutely no equals and probably never will. Mr Spielberg, are you watching this?

Attended the combined NDP celebration held by the 3 main Universities here in Melbourne and for the first time in eons, I watched a National Day Parade. It's somewhat inevitable to make comparisons with the Olympics opening last night but obviously, that's a non-starter. In any case, what a surprise when I saw MWO Shamsudin (Not sure if this is his rank now) being the Parade RSM. If my memory serves me right, he was my Sergeant Major back in my good ol' days in SISPEC. Seeing the Armed forces again in the camouflage uniforms with the SAR21.. The commands... Certainly brings back the memories of my NS days.. Terry asked me an interesting question, "Do you feel that sense of pride or sense of belonging when you watch NDPs?" Hmmmm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . I would put that in a similar context to how I answer questions like "Where are you from?", "I'm from Singapore but I was born in Hong Kong". But undoubtedly, Singapore is my home, that's where my family is. That's where I made my best friends from and that was where I met a certain Badminton player. Then again, to put things in another context, I'm sure it's the same case that even when you place a Singaporean in an overseas setting for prolonged periods, no matter how much that individual loves that foreign country, he/she will never forget his/her roots lie in Singapore.. .. Will probably blog a lot more about it if I wasn't as tired as I am now. To wrap up this post, just a sign of how small a world this is, look at who I met just now at the NDP gathering. . .