Fireworks

Yesterday and today there was the fireworks festival thingie at the floating podium at Esplanade Bay there, and thanks to an aunt, who wanted my family to babysit her daughter, we got free tickets from her to watch the fireworks live, and with a guaranteed seat. Others had to pay $8 for that ticket, or else have to go down around the area extra early to chope a place around the river and squeeze with tens of thousands of other people. Or else you can pay good money for some other means of guaranteeing a perfect spot.

Even though we were guaranteed a seat, we still went down early because we were told that there was a carnival there and my sister was quite interested about it. I was kiasu and just wanted to go into the amphitheatre early so that I wouldn't need to queue up when everyone starts to throng in. It turned out that we were very early, and the carnival was pretty much pathetic.


We still had some fun taking pictures and admiring the scenery and taking pictures of the scenery and looking for our seats, and buying some food, and exploring the whole premise of the amphitheatre.

I really like the seats! They are so colourful and pretty and nice and because they are still new, they're also quite clean. Or maybe it's because it rained earlier in the day so the rain washed away pretty much most of the dirt from the NDPs in the weeks following this. hahaha~ Because we had a lot of time to spare, I ended up playing handphone games whiling time away while my sister studied for the tests. The parents and Sammie came a bit later and they ate. Sammie's mother just gave birth a couple of days ago and is still in confinement, more of her new baby later.

There were lots of balloon sculpters around plying their trade. I think it's for charity because the price of the balloons are out of our own freewill. Of course, we bought quite a few of them.


My sister started the balloon affair with a Tweedy Bird one, then I got a little blue bear, it so happened that Sammie later got the same bear in yellow, but I had two heart shaped balloons because I bought mine early, and me and my sister had a stick to hole the balloon. The stick turned out to be quite useful because we were squashed when we were leaving the grounds, and I could stick the balloon up into the air to siam all the squeezy people.

It rained briefly in the late afternoon but my sister had an umbrella so we hid under there for a while. It wasn't that bad that warrented an umbrella but my sister was still sick so it's best if she was out of the rain. I went under the umbrella because it was there. haha~ Thankfully, the clouds cleared when the crowds thronged in and the fireworks went ahead without any hitch.


We sat there long enough to see the changes in the skyline.

The afternoon was cloudy and windy and the weather was a bit erratic. By the late evening, the sun set and the lights all turned on. You can see from the second picture that there's a very strong beam of light. I liked that effect, it's almost like it's still not too dark, but it's still also quite artificial. Thankfully, the lights were turned off during the fireworks display if not I'd personally kill the organisers. After the fireworks display, there's another element left in the sky, the heavy smog. Very environmental friendly, very good use of money, but really very pretty, so well, I think I still am in favour of fireworks. haha~


We had guaranteed seats, but for the other who wanted a free show, they had to chope places early, if not, well, there's the possibility of booking a room at the Ritz-Carlton, direct view of the amphitheatre if you are at the correct side, if at the wrong side, no worries, you can go to the stairwell there and peer through the windows. The larger windows are the rooms one, and the bathrooms ones, the smaller ones are the stairs. There were really a lot of shadows, much more than seen in the picture, standing there waiting for a glimpse of the fireworks.

The duck tour boat was also parked at the side of the river mouth waiting to catch the fireworks, so lucky for that batch of tourists on that boat. For those who can't afford for duck tours, the river taxi bum boats were also in service, parked by the other side of the amphitheatre to watch the fireworks. If not, can always join the rest of the people at the Fullerton there to watch.

The funny thing was that as the amphitheatre lights were turned off, a bunch of other lights were turned on, those were the lights from the LCD screens of everyone's cameras. There were really much much more than those you see in the picture, my camera could only capture that fraction, and yes, I was one of those holding a camera. haha~

Okay, enough words already, enjoy the fireworks.





But really, the camera can never capture the full beauty of the fireworks, only the naked eye can. And I think fireworks are nice only when in direct view, and not between a glass window. Yes, it was really beautiful, have I said that?

But it was quite stupid la, waited for hours just for a 15min show, and another 15min lights show before the fireworks display, but well, fireworks are so so pretty.