Happy Birthday!

Happy 43rd birthday Singapore! To all Singaporeans, happy happy National Day!

I love being Singaporean. (Well, most of the times.) I love the size of our nation. It takes less than an hour to reach most places. There are eating places open 24 hours, heck, even a shopping mall opens 24 hours! Sometimes it can get a little claustrophobic and tough to find those rare pockets of quietness.

I love how "unpure" our chinese dialects are. Borrowing words from Bahasa Melayu, using words like pasat and satboon (pardon the spelling, i meant to say soap in Malay). I love using Singlish. there is an instant intimacy when you use it. You can't possibly order prata or Char Kway Teow in proper english.

"Uncle, can I order a plate of Char Kway Teow, without the cockles and less chilli please?"
" I would like to have a plain prata and another with onion please. Oh, and a milk tea. Thank you. "

So the unnatural lor! As opposed to this....

"Uncle, Char Kway Teow mai hum, hiam jio mai kar zhuay"
"Prata kosong satu, bawang satu, plus teh."

Much better right? Believe me, I tried ordering in proper English, the uncle just went "Har?". We should never feel ashamed about using Singlish. Please lor, the English have their Cockney slang, so why can't we tweak (more polite than using the term bastardize) the English language and give it a little local twist? Quirky, fun and uniquely Singapore! You can't be Singaporean if you can't speak Singlish! Just don't use it at work lah!
Notice how we seem to call everybody auntie and uncle even when they are not anyone we even know? I wonder if the Malaysians practise this as well?

Apart from shopping and buying Toto and 4D, the other national obsession is eating. We are so obsessed with it, that when we meet up with people, the first thing we ask is "Have you eaten?" instead of "How are you today?" We meet up with friends and family to eat, we go on makan road trips, when we travel, we seek out the supposedly best eateries. We have our own favourite chicken rice stalls, wanton mee stalls, briyani stalls, ayam penyet stalls, we even queue for donuts for heavens sake! We have more food blogs than we have political blogs. We not only compare who has the best chicken rice, but also who has the best chilli sauce. All we think about is the next meal. We have lists of must-eat places, we have makan guide books, we even have organised food tours.

I am proud being a Singaporean. I am born here, raised here and I would raise my children here. There is nowhere that I would rather be. My friends and family are here, I will in a heartbeat, defend my country when I have too. Life has been great here, I have been well taken care of, giving back is the right thing to do. No doubt that I do not agree on some policies and how certain things are being run, but nowhere is perfect. I do not think I can find a place where I can totally be happy with every single thing.

I find it a little sad when Singaporeans just quit and scoot off somewhere else and not come back just because you don't agree with everything or think that the grass is greener on the other side.I was at the Kranji War Museum last Sunday. There lay all the men that fought for this nation, to make it a better place, to give freedom to us, they believe in what they were fighting for, so shouldn't we do the same? By walking away, giving up, these people would have died for nothing. In his inaugural address, JFK said "ask not what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

After that spectacular opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games just the day before, I wonder who would tune in to the National Day parade today?