WOW i'm damn impressed by the new-media-embracing NDPeeps!!! Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, AND Facebook! Wow. Ok was it like that since last year?? Haha maybe i'm just taking more interest this year.

Anyway disclaimer: All photos, videos, articles, are entirely credited to NDPeeps, 3cheers!

And also, EH I THINK THE NDP SONG IS ACTUALLY QUITE NICE. It kinda grows on you lah.

But i did notice that during NDP when the theme song was being played, the kids dont sing along. :S But then again actually this year's parade dont seem to have as much mass-singalong sessions as past years' (OK AS MY P5-YEAR'S HAHA)

Here's a nice NE1 Overview vid from NDPeep's youtube.

If you've ever wondered how the P5 kids magically appear at the Floating Platform for NDP, that's how. Haha! Actually while i was herding Rulang to Lakeside MRT, and then taking the MRT down to Raffles Place, when people see us and go "OOH today got NDP!", "Orhh 国庆 lah..." i feel this sense of pride that i am doing this!!!. I dunno how else to express it. :)

And, this is how our usher uniform looks like:

KFC Dinner for the lucky kids!!

I find that the welfare of students have improved tremendously. Ok some more than others. HAHA! Rulang got MacDonalds, which we helped to pack when we reached at about 2.45pm. They got a McChicken + Apple Pie, and hurhur for our initiative to help, the teachers insisted we take a box each, also to help clear extras. But afterwards i saw that Peitong had the normal mixed-veg-rice kind of packed dinner.

There were 4 of us Heartware Ushers and 2 ALPs (Army Liaison Personnel. Hurhur such an important-sounding title) Zhiying from G2, Kwoon Jiew from G3 (AND I LATER FOUND OUT THAT SHE WAS VENICE'S NETBALL SENIOR IN FUHUA SEC HAHAHA what a small world, especially so in the west of Singapore) [which reminds me, there's a Jurong joke in the NDP performance, wah lau eh] and Junkang from B1, then ALPs PTE SC PHANG and TL TAN HAHAHAHAHA. I was feeling quite amused that they were in their No.4s, because there they were in their camouflage pixelated uniform and black boots and black beret, and there we were in our oversized Angbaos uniform. And also, looking at their nametags on their uniform, i dunno how i should address them - calling by name when they're in uniform seems very inappropriate, calling by initials also damn weird, and calling "PRIVATE PHANG!" is even weirder HAHAHA.

This is this year's Annoying-Noise-Making-Thing, proudly sponsored by Mr Bean. Haha you can see the stick used to strike the Hand Thing to Make Noise, and it's actually in the shape of Mr Bean HAHAHA IT'S ACTUALLY QUITE CUTE.

I found a picture of it!

Ok i thought the red headbands make them look like some guerrilla fighters.

Nice pic :D

These are probably the schools which came by bus, and arrived early enough to have time to camwhore hahaha! But actually i think this is a rather good idea - the whiteboard to write messages to take photos with.

Then it started drizzling a bit. At this point in time, Rulang just arrived at Raffles Place MRT, together with Xingnan, Peitong and Zhangde. So we got them to put on the ponchos, and after walking halfway the drizzling stopped and then the kids just continued to transpire under the plastic sheet HAHAHAHA.

Digressing, this picture is very funny.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMG I BURST OUT LAUGHING WHEN I FRST SAW IT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA AAAH..... HAHAHAHA never let your photo be taken WHILE you're getting the temporary tattoos on.

Rather awe-inspiring!

I think they are the Colours Party, and those are the official flags (with the funny Wizard-of-Oz-Tinman-looking casings)
You can watch Mr Brown's NDP interview of the Guards of Honor and the Colours Party here. Peng san drill is a funny thought.

HAHAHA why this guy am chio-ing?! HAHAHAHAHA!!

This is NYPS! I think they're all wearing some P5 camp shirt, and the right sleeve bears a message like "小五探险" or something. NYPS were sitting next to Rulang at the Seating Gallery, so i was scrutinizing their shirt because on first look, especially when all of them are wearing the same the black-words-on-red-shirt, with that right-sleeve emblazon, AND THE KHAKI SHORTS HAHAHAHAHA that totally adds to the whole image, they look like some childrens' revolutionary army HAHAHA.

Motivators! They are supposed to motivate the public. Their Carebear/Powerpuff Girls-colourscheme uniform gives good pictures hahaha!

I have absolutely no idea what these weird white ingots-looking things are supposed to be HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! And coincidentally Sirui and i saw them at Kallang when we were on our way to SIS for AYG Appreciation Night on Friday.

Fun packs laid out at the VIP seats.

HAHA another funny pic.

And apparently, there was a proposal going on!!

HAHAHA she looks rather 0.o in this photo HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Aww. But smart move - i think guys always look good in uniform. HAHAHAHA oops that sounded a bit fetish-like.

And this year's Torchlight-Thing! It has 2 settings for red and white light.

Haha getting ready for their entrance.. STILL CAN CAMWHORE!!

HAHAHA a bit weird (i'm posting according to my browsing through NDPeeps' Flickr) OUR USHERS' DINNER!! Catered by Pizza Hut, + a packet of Yeo's Chrysanthemum.
1) a large slice of NDP Pizza - seriously i dunno what flavour that is. Got ham, pineapples, chicken chunks, green pepper, onions, A LOT OF THINGS, it was nice lah.
2) 3 NDP Wings - it was neither the Hot&Spicy wings nor the Honey-Roasted ones. HAHAHAHAHA. But it was still good too, actually.
3) 2 pieces of Garlic Bread.
Everything was packed into a Personal Pan pizza sized box, if you can see from the pic.

Aah... :)

I think parachuting is damn cool, i want to try it someday HAHA!! :D

Digression: Coincidentally yesterday at Sports Camp Zai2 Kbox&Dinner outing (i only joined them for Dinner) Christopher was sharing Commando stories and said he parachuted 6 times!! SOUNDS DAMN FUN... They do Jumping-Off-5-Stories-height practices HAHAHA!

The parachuters walked up the Seating Gallery after landing, and all the P5 boys were scrambling to Hi-5 them HAHAHA. It was a cute sight.

This was the Total Defence Display Terrorist-Attack-Show thing!! Too bad i missed it, i think i was having dinner.

Here's a vid.

Liwen says it was damn good!! I hope i get to see it this Saturday - it should look better live too, there are probably many things happening at the same time.

If you dont already know how the stage looks like.

You see the red/white dot (i first typed "dotted", then i realized... strictly speaking they're singular dots HAHAHA) boxes Grid Structure, there are parts of the show where performers actually perform in each of the boxes in that Grid Structure!! The visual effect turned out damn well. And i also realized, it must be quite difficult for them to coordinate all their steps, since they cant see each other at all! Hurhur i was wondering if they could see their reflection in the glass windows at the VIP viewing gallery opposite or something.

And the dancers must not fear heights HAHAHAA!

Nice pic of our fellow ushers! I dunno the guy, but Simin's from G2.

HAHAHA THE POLE DANCERS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMG.
Actually i was very surprised they would include this.
1) It cant really be seen from so far away!?
2) It's not really nice as a mass-display sort of performance. Ok there were prob about ... 10-15 of them spread out along the length of the stage.
3) A pole-dance performance... isnt exactly... suitable... for NDP?

OOH ok you can see the dancers in the Grid from this pic!

But anyway this is the ethnic performance segment, so each ethnic group got some "dedicated airtime" on the giant video display thing. If you noticed, in the background of the video, they have falling banana leafs, for the Indian community. HAHAHAHA WTH MAN, for the Malays, the graphic was falling ketupats!! I cant remember what was the Chinese one, but in short, THE MOTIFS WERE ALL DAMN WTH.

You can actually see the fireworks in the rain in this pic.

At this point it was pouring like mad but you cant really tell in this pic...

Haha i vividly remember the 5-stars. After the show ended, because it was still raining heavily and evidently even the NDP performers didnt seem to have a sound wet-weather plan, when the performers were trying to disperse, at the command of Man-Using-A-Microphone (he was speaking very informally though, like he was addressing a rehearsal that kind) and he was barking "THE 5 STARS STOP, DONT GO IN, YOU'RE BLOCKING THE WHOLE WAY!!!"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHA OMG i thought it was hilarious. I think the poor people pushing the bloody star must be feeling damn dulan.

A drenched Mark Lee.

Aiyah too bad got no photo of a drenched RADM Teo in the Flickr album HAHAHA. But the cover photo of Monday's Today newspaper was a photo from NDP featuring a dripping Deputy Prime Minister RADM Teo waving to the parade.

Performers in varying degrees of drenched-ness.

HAHAHAHA they look really wet.

Ok please see this video HAHAHA very aptly titled NE1: Heavy Downpour
but i really hate that soundtrack. Omg. Overkill...

Anyway one thing that we learnt from Saturday was that the drainage of the seating gallery of the Floating Platform is rather non-existent. Within minutes the walkways were getting flooded and the stairs of the seating gallery became waterfalls. There were a few areas where the flooding got to about ankle-depth, and it was also quite gross seeing all the random rubbish floating around. LIKE HALF-EATEN CHOCOLATE BUNS. Arghhhhh.

Here are some other articles which i found from the NDP site.
Combined Rehearsal 4 - NE Show 1
HAHA "At the end of Chapter 9 of the Parade, there was a video footage by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong relating in one of his National Day Rally Speeches, the National Day Parade of 1968. As one of only two NDPs so far that were donned in rain, he shared with Singapore that not a single person moved despite the downpour. This unforgettable moment in NDP history was soon to be repeated in tonight's Parade as the crowd was greeted with a torrential downpour in the Parade Finale." Yes indeed!

Behind the Scenes at NDP09 NE Show 1
Turns out the Motivators also associate themselves with Carebear HAHAHA!! And SOKA's Little Red Dot performers look a bit strange with that red bulbous looks-like-a-clump-of-red-blood-cells headgear, but their performance was really good. A mass-display (they took the whole stage!) of simple moves and from far, when all those red bulbous rbc-headgear/dress move together in sync, the visual effect was surprisingly good! Oh yah and they were holding lighted orbs,

Oh yah the Jurong joke. HAHAHA ok Hinchong will like this - there was a brief Barbarella segment CAN YOU BELIEVE IT. AT NDP. HAHAHAHAAHHAHA omg. Ok i actually laughed. It was a mixture of Michelle Chong Barbarella and Vernetta Lopez Little Nonya. There was a map of Singapore projected onto the floor of the stage, so Michelle Chong was at the west end and Vernetta Lopez was at the east, and the dialogue was
Michelle Chong: I'm in Jurong!
Vernetta Lopez: Why, are you next to a factory?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA WAH LAU EH!!

And the P5 kids say the funniest things. The Singapore map changed to an "older" looking one, and Michelle Chong and Vernetta Lopez became "shocked" to find that they were standing in the ocean, so the point was that those were the reclaimed lands. Then suddenly, dunno why they said something about "buaya" (which means crocodile in Malay) and like 4-5 furry crocodiles (the costume was weird) emerged and started chasing Michelle Chong and Vernetta Lopez all around the stage?! HAHAHAHAHA!! At this point, the group of boys behind me were discussing "Eh it looks like Barney right?" (for the record, the buayas were NOT purple) then they continued "Pass the message down - look like Barney!!"

Looking through the tweets of that day:
Oh yes there was this dance where all the dancers (they' are the guys in the grey not-bad-looking suits) wore mirrored boxes over their heads, and i really cannot help it but the first thing that came to mind was blockheads. I cant really remember what they were dancing, because their mirrored heads were so distracting haha.

But apparently i said i loved it HAHAHA
[HAHAHA i love the blockhead dance woots!7:55 PM Jul 11th from TweetSG]

You may be able to see this from the MrBrown video. Dont know how many of you know, but ok since i haven been to NDP since my P5 one (and it's already been 8 years and it was at the now-defunct but still un-demolished National Stadium) but at NE Shows (ie, all the shows before the actual Aug9 Parade) some of the hosts and performers, if they're duapai enough, they wont be there and instead, some poor guy will go on stage holding a laminated piece of paper that states for eg "GURMIT SINGH" and "ELECTRICO" etc.

[HAHAHA the fake electrico is like air guitaring his laminated piece of paper.8:15 PM Jul 11th from TweetSG] yes he was doing that HAHAHA. I feel kinda sorry for them though, damn paiseh leh!?

Anyway, the trip back was rather eventful (everything after the downpour was eventful haha) because (and i reflected this to the planning comm afterwards, which probably led to why the leaders and deputys are taken off school deployment and are put on ground for NE2, HAHA to "help") of the rain and how everyone is trying to get everyone else out of the rain asap, it descended into a mess of contradicting instructions and confused ushers+ALPs, and happy-as-ducks P5 kids sploshing around.

The Westbound train was supposed to reach Raffles Place MRT at 2210h, but it got delayed till almost 2245h~. I dont know if it was intentional, because of the dispersal mess from the platform, hence they predicted we might need extra time to find lost sheep and etc. Anyway HAHA i was leading the way back, and turned out along the way, the train of students (they were walking in pairs, so for 370+ students, we had a good 180+ line behind) got truncated into 3 parts, but thankfully we didnt lose anyone. Finally reached Rulang at about 2320h, and i got a ride home from my dad.

:D I'm looking forward to NE2!!!

And btw, ah wonder how many would read on till here,

IS ANYONE INTERESTED IN THE SIS GCO (Singapore Indoor Stadium Guest Care Officer, aka USHERS) JOB?? IF YES, PLEASE GO TO http://www.sis.gov.sg/gen_career.htm AND APPLY!!! Deadline is 24 July next Friday.

PLEASE COME JOIN ME!!! :)