Spectacular

Peninsular Plaza
10.45 pm

The restaurant, or what used to look like one, was jammed with people. The crowd was milling about, children were agitated and crying, and there were no seats left. “Come here sir, more seats here,” ushered the attendant to the family that had just joined the queue for food. “More seats” were actually seats from a next-door restaurant that has depleted its stocks of food for the night. Food arrived, but it was not the food the family had ordered; food on the menu had all but finished. The thosai’s were smaller and the masala filling tasted funny, rationed. Substitutes were offered. It was stuffy and uncomfortable.

Bukit Purmei
12.01 am

It had begun. The sky lit up as it would when lightning flashed; exploding sounds thundered throughout the housing estate, jolting me from my reverie. A man was screaming from the opposite block. Had the SCDF started the fake terror attacks already? - I thought. From my window, I could see the flashes of light that enveloped the sky from Mount Faber, accompanied by sounds you hear during live firing exercises. People rushed to the left of my block to see something. St Theresa’s Church nearby went in for the kill and started its bell chimes, putting it overdrive – clang! Clang! Clang! Just then, the ships at Keppel Harbour blasted their ship horns.

Er, welcome 2006.

Gone were the days when I used to look out my window at 11.59 pm of 31 Dec and wait to hear only the ships at Keppel Harbour blow their horns, literally. That event was appeared so big, so significant and ‘grand’ to me, when I was about eleven, I think. Today, the story is so different it seems absurd.

My parents related to me the incident at the restaurant at Peninsula Plaza, with the thronging crowds and food ‘rationing’. At such festive times, such places get so crowded until they resemble a National Emergency (hey SCDF, we don’t need the simulated terror attacks!). At about 11ish at Harbourfront, I saw huge crowds making themselves comfortable along pavements and bridges to see the fireworks at the Cable Car station. And back home, horns yelled, bells chimed, things exploded - you know what happened.

It all seems so exuberant it’s funny. Celebrate till you die. Have fun till you drop. Welcome the New Year with a blast. Yeah, some blast alright. It’s funny how we go to great lengths to feed the images in our minds. We want a new year where everything’s changed, new and better. Start afresh. Leave the past behind, although there were good moments. But let’s look forward to a better economy, more jobs and lesser charity scandals. New Year resolutions 1 to 20. I will try my darndest to keep them.

But when the clock strikes 12, the air you breathe is the same; the ground you walk on is the same; the way you speak, eat and sleep is the same; the sun rises and sets in the same way; you’re still in the same job or school (unless you quit or graduated); your friends are the same, your parents are the same, your problems might be the same, your happiness is the same.

While it’s greatly therapeutic to many, a chance to go out and see fireworks to several, and a sincere tradition for many others, celebrating the New Year with some amount of fanfare is nice. But overdoing it just reduces it to a spectacular non-event.

Having said all that: A very happy new year to everyone reading this! (No, I’m not a pessimistic/dull/naysaying orang utan)