Catching up on the NDP I missed...

I was not in Singapore on Aug 9. So what did I miss?...

Wow, the National Day Parade (NDP) fireworks display at the Marina Bay area looked spectacular! But the clouds "rained" on the parade of the SAF's Shirley Ng who, as a member of the Red Lions, would have been the first woman sky-diving parachutist at the parade -- if not for the cloudy conditions which forced a cancellation of the crowd-favourite event. Let's hope she gets to do it next year.

One piece of shoddy editing spoilt the otherwise very readable front page story. It is impossible to "reach a crescendo"! Indeed, one New York Times writer recently explained why (reproduced in ST):

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As I am wont to do every time I am out of Singapore, upon coming back, I go through the newspapers I had not read. I thought this headline below was strange...

What? It must have been a bad skid, with one passenger -- a cow! -- dead! (It must have been seated in "cattle class".)

You have to read the story to have the mystery cleared up. But that's not the point... a good headline helps to tell a story accurately. All that's needed in this case is a tweak to say "... stray cow killed" instead.

I found this other story interesting, with its very well-crafted introduction an added bonus:

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To get back to this year's National Day Parade, kudos to the organisers for slipping in this ode-to-Singlish segment:

 And of course I found the La La La Song on YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngkJHEE9N-U

...as well as the Social Media song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nob6R5wq_Fg

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Finally, it's always great to fly home on SIA. This luggage tag gave me a thought...

Immigration Officer (upon handing back the passport to someone leaving the country for good):
Go, and SIN no more!

SIN-ful note: Somewhere among my junk are two priceless Finnair boarding passes. One says "From SIN to HEL" and the other says "From HEL to SIN".