fireworks

i am high as a kite, on decongestant medication and very strong coffee. it is, like, Lorelai Gilmore/Rodney McKay coffee. yes, it is that strong. i exaggerate all the time, so you're just going to have to trust me on this.

this is such a cliché segue into the blog post proper, but yesterday i accompanied my maternal extended family to watch fireworks. alone. sans iPod. i know, it wasn't wise. i know, the fact that none of my siblings were going should have sounded the air raid alarm. i went anyway---my mother was bending my ear and i was sick of wasting airtime having her bend it (the cordless phone still shows no signs of life).

i would like to at least be able to say that i went because my maternal grandfather (who's lost his right foot to diabetes) was going, and since i am now an expert wheelchair driver, it hence helped that i went. but he only decided to go at the last minute (another victim of ear-bending, courtesy of my mother), so that's out since i didn't know he was coming until i was answering yet another call in the back of my aunt's new titanium-grey Mazda3 sedan.

it did help that i went---we changed location three times, and i had to manuver my grandfather across four very busy roads---but it still was an enormous fuss over nothing. fifteen minutes of fireworks, and the entire nation is hard, wet, horny and waiting. tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of Singaporeans descended on the Marina area, from as early as (we guessed) five PM, all in the name of fifteen minutes of color in the sky.

it was, to modify a Chinese saying, a Mount Fuji of people and a Pacific Ocean of cheap, asian cars. families on mats, children singing patriotic National Day songs. people parking in spots strategically blocking every one else on the road. people i considered to be already parked because traffic simply wasn't moving. EMAS signs on the highway saying "MASSIVE JAM ON ALL ROADS TO SUNTEC" when they really should be saying "GO THE FUCK HOME, YOU LOSERS".

and because it was family and friends, i had to keep some sort of smirk smile on my face, at almost all times. the most scathing remark i passed last night were we don't we just charter a helicopter? and it's okay, i don't/didn't want to watch it, i don't like fireworks.

fine, they're colorful, lovely, romantic, etc etc. i get it. but these thousands upon thousands don't seem to realize that the only reason fireworks are so rare is, well, simply because the government said so. each year, all they have to do is deign to set off a few fireworks a couple of times a year, and half the nation eagerly asks, "And how high would Sir like me to jump?"

it's manipulation, and i can't really see the point of it. it took two hours to get into Marina South, and it took two hours to get out of it. one-and-a-half hours in i was calling haniza up every fifteen minutes, swearing like a sailor and insulting everything in my sight that wasn't european or wasn't even a car. this can't be good for the country, generally speaking. though there were many hundred-and-twenty-dollar tickets being given out to windshields and windscreen wipers that evening. there were even traffic policemen simply taking photos of illegally parked cars, presumbably because they've run out of those fancy handheld instant-printout gadgets.

and i don't even like fireworks. i might, if they weren't this precious, precious thing that is precious simply because of an administration's say-so. i might even sit, watch, enjoy the brief escape of watching explosions of color in the sky and feel, i don't know, romantic or something. instead, i spent the duration of the fireworks display facing construction site offices (and, yes, hence away from the fireworks) and talking to haniza, complaining about everything and nothing all at once.

there are countries where you can have fireworks whenever, wherever. in your own bloody backyard, if it pleases you. Singapore is not one of them. they might as well make clear sunny weather a special, couple-times-a-year event. they're already adept enough it manipulting it---the fact that there's so far only been one Parade that's been rained on is neither luck or conicidence.

and, as if to prove my point, it's just begun pouring. Mother Nature doesn't like being manipulated, i suspect, just like any one once they realize they are being manipulated. the heavens are opening up, the deluge is here. one wonders if the same will happen one day, if the administration ever leaves office.

"Be afraid of the lame
They'll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old
They'll inherit your souls
Be afraid of the cold
They'll inherit your blood
Après moi, le deluge
After me comes the flood

I must go on standing
You can't break that which isn't yours
I, oh, must go on standing
I'm not my own, it's not my choice"

"Après Moi", Regina Spektor