Fireworks!

Saturday. Before I get into the main event of the fireworks (involving a mysterious cat), I woke up at 7am to go to the airport to see Jeo off, who was heading to Indonesia for the Asean track and field sports thingy. Besides me, only Edo and Tricia showed up, and we had breakfast at Burger King before heading to the gate to say goodbye proper (the olde putting face on glass and waving and crap). Funny Jeo, she was like "Take care of the girls in class", to which I responded "You're not coming back?", then she hit me. Yep.

Anyway.

Singapore Fireworks Festival was at night (no, really.), so we VJ photographers (all 4 of us) headed down to shoot. Being the Singapore Festival, we went down at 3.30pm to chope a place. People were already lining the rails by 4+. Crazy bastards, and it started at 9pm, and it was raining slightly. I was immensely bored by the 5h of wait. Lemme sum up the key moments:

Sat down on steps under shade of tree, which did a good job of filtering only the large droplets of water to fall on my head.

Saw a leaf.

Suddenly, a cat came.

And then, to our eternal wonder, it rained some more.

Finally set up tripods to reserve the spot near the railings.

Then proceeded to leaf through great ex, with occasional water droplets inflicting liquid mayhem on my notes. Closer to evening, we calibrated our equipment- ok fine we took out our cameras and put them on the tripods- and stood there like idiots professionals.

When next I turned around, the whole of Singapore was seated behind me. To the right:

And to the left:And finally, 9pm came. And left. Then they launched those lighted kite thingies that fly around endearingly for 10s and then irritatingly for the next 5min after. Stadium lighted up, music came on, yada yada yada and someone quipped in a dry yet witty tone, "Have they forgotten the fireworks." (Yeah that was me)

The fireworks finally began at 9.15pm to a tired yet very much excited atmosphere. Every burst of light ignited a similarly loud (maybe not) reaction from the crowd. Oohs and aahs and waahs and a few walaus. Like that scene in LOTR with the fireworks, remember? A bit humorous, but the display was quite fantastic. I can't recall the last time I'd seen fireworks (excepting that time I was in the hotel in KL and suddenly a few fireworks went off behind the Petronas towers and I looked out the window and returned to my book), so it was kinda nice. Sad that it lasted only 15min, and I only got a handful of useable pics, but a good experience nonetheless. Did anyone else see the show? I think my favourite was the bit when the cat came.

Ooh.

Aah.

Wahh.

Walau eh smoke.

More on my Flickr.

Here's something you can learn from my experience: don't bloody follow the crowd. Decided to try Marina Square for dinner (had not eaten since breakfast at the airport), but what wasn't closing was packed with people, so we ventured to Raffles City which, amazingly, suffered the same fate. So we walked/stumbled/crawled to Funan and got into the Mcdonalds there. It took about 45min for this journey, since everyone was squeezing into City Hall MRT and citylink was jammed. And then, this is why I don't like town, I had to find the bus stop that had the bus that went to my house. Alone. With a fricking heavy tripod. Since the only bus stop I was familiar with was the Suntec one, I walked there in the hopes of meeting a similar bus stop mid way. But like the bloody buses themselves one failed to show. So, 30 minutes and many replays of Queen songs later I was at that bus stop. I musta slept for at least 12h that night.