What this day means to me

Today is August 9th. It's the national day of my home country.

Anyhow, just a little more about myself. I'm currently living in Germany ---> check my profile Duh! However I was born in Singapore a long while back. Time does seem to fly the older one gets. Anyhow, I digress.

There would always be a huge parade and sometimes military drive-bys, fly-bys, roll-bys, march-pasts, etc etc etc. At the end it would be some fireworks. And the screams of all the businessmen who collectively huddled in one corner with tears in their eyes as they saw their tax money literally being blown up before their eyes. Here's a pic(1) for you.

I'm not Mr Patriotic or one of those tub-thumpers out there who profess love for country and citizens alike. Frankly I think they are pretty cheesy. If you love your country you don't have to announce it every minute, every moment that there is a shred of publicity to be gained. People are not blind or stupid. They know when they are being taken for a ride. At least I hope so. But the more I observe the human race, the lower this estimation gets ^^. There *are* some pretty stupid people out there. I'm sure you've met your share of them yourselves.

Anyhow, to get straight to the point, I came across this post HERE while popping by the site of Mr Brown. It's a very good interview of someone who had gone through the hard times it took to establish our country. Reading that interview made me see the perspective of one who saw both sides of the coin.
My favourite quote in the interview is "There but for the grace of God go I, I know no man who stood totally spotless that he can say I committed no anti-social act." It's great.

All this written while listening to some disco track called Pornostar over winamp. Heh, talk about contractions.

1 - Image sourced from Flickr