As you may know, around this time of the year, all of the Primary 5’s get to go to the NE show for free! Conveniently, this time of the year also marks the start of the NE Shows/NDP rehearsals for August 9th, which is National Day (Akin to 4th of July for the USA). Since there was nothing to do on this particular Sunday, we thought we might as well catch the National Day Rehearsals at MBS.
National Day Rehearsals – Everything up close
Reaching there at 4 pm after a lot of traffic and parking problems due to inaccessible roads, we finally found somewhere to park. We walked over to the Esplanade Bridge from the Fullerton Hotel. Along the way, we got some pictures of some iconic Singapore places with my DSLR. Surprisingly, I haven’t been here since I got my DSLR, so this is a good chance.
Getting to the Esplanade Bridge, you start seeing hundreds of people walking around. I knew there would be a lot of people, but this shocked me
Of course, to get here you have to go through the checklist. Take a picture of MBS, The Merlion, The Mini Merlion, Esplanade Bridge, CBD, etc. These pictures look so much better with a DSLR. The entire road bridge was blocked off to allow school buses to park there, and we could see students streaming down the staircase.
Got a few more pictures too
After all this, we crammed ourselves past the Esplanade Bridge and past the rows of cameras on tripods to get to the other side. More students were lining up to enter somewhere, I don’t know where. At this point in time, it seemed the NE Show hadn’t even started yet, and they were still funneling students into the destination.
Moving further up towards MBS, we walked around to find a spot to chill, maybe eat dinner later, etc., there was some performance going on, but IDK what it was. We stopped at this food street-esque place next to a building about water or something. There was a big grass patch and a good view of the fireworks and aircraft flying from behind MBS towards the Esplanade Bridge.
On our way here, I realise I’m severely unequipped as people have been camping out here with director chairs, tripods and cameras with lenses so big its actually unbelievable.
We stopped here to grab a drink and eat dinner later. Shifted around a bit to get some sun and then suddenly heard a bang.
Red Lions – What’s that in the sky?
Seems like a misfire of fireworks or something happened, but it turns out it was a signal for something cause not long later, while browsing the stalls for something to eat, people started pointing up in the sky. Monkey see monkey do so not long enough everyone was craning their necks up to see these 4-5 little black dots coming down on us.
Of course, this would be the Red Lions Parachuters which supposedly dropped down from a plane. We rushed out to the grass patch where the entire group of people lined up along the coast was looking up. Slowly but surely the parachuters got closer to the ground, forming a line of ants drifting down from the sky.
Funnily enough, when the Red Lions are falling, if you take a glance at your surroundings for 1 second, you see every dog, human, cat, grandpa, and grandma craning their necks at the sky
State Flag flypast – Majulahhh, Singapuraaa
After the Red Lions seemingly plummeted behind the building next to the food street, there was a noise of helicopters approaching. From the direction of GBTB, 3 helicopters appeared flying the state flag. They paraded around the area of the Merlion and yet again flew directly over us to make their way to the NE Show where the Primary Five’s were.
Jet formation – Ear-Piercingly loud
We went back to our seats to chill for a bit before yet another bang
By hypothesis, this means that something else was coming. Of course, we walked outside to take a look and slowly, 8 dots were flying towards us from the direction of MBS.
These were of course the fighter jets that would fly past us. However, little did we know, after the first 5 jets split, the other 3 flew right above us. I kid you not that was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, genuinely deafening. Of course as a photographer you live through the pain and point your cameras towards the jets, rapidly spamming the button to take a photo to catch some of these!
Thank you, I know I’m good.
21 Gun Salute – Bye to my ears
Went back to drinking my Sugarcane before yet another, SIGNIFICANTLY LOUDER, bang was heard in the distance. This one shook me because it was so loud. Ran over back to the coast to see boats stationed there. This gun salute was performed by trained people who would fire off guns every few seconds or so 21 times. It is a form of respect.
This one was hard to take a photo of because every time it went off, it hurt my ears really bad. I got a few photos then put the camera away to plug my ears.
Fun fact! You can actually see the smoke of the artillery go off, before about a second later, you hear the sound. This is scientifically proven as light travels faster than sound. Science in action!
Flypast 2 – As if my ears couldn’t get anymore broken
This time, 4 jets and one big plane flew directly above us. They were less loud but it was still pretty sick. As I thought the torture was over, we were at it again. Not long after, two jets approached from the MBS direction and flew directly above us. More jets flew around from many directions. You could even see the fire coming from the jet exhaust!
Fireworks – Photos up close
The main attraction. The fireworks would start at 8pm so we went to get some dinner first. To be fair, the food was pretty bad, the chicken wings were okay but everything else sucked ass. Anyways, we finished the food and went to grab a seat along the coast to watch.
Less needs to be said. If you haven’t caught fireworks up close and in real time, you are missing out. This was beautiful, all I can say. The fireworks literally lit up the sky, I am not kidding you, it became day during nighttime.
Here are some good ones
Conclusion
If you want to catch what I caught, I hope you’ve been to the previous rehearsals and previews already, good luck on National Day!
That’s all from me for today. See you next time.