From where I sit, I can see that the skies are cloudy still. I can see that water droplets still hang from the leaves and buds on the trees that line our roads. i can see the puddles on the pavement that haven't evaporated.
Maybe the nation still cries.
It has been a week since the nation mourned the passing of her founding father.
The very first day they lined the streets outside the Istana. They lined the streets again outside Parliament House.
In the four days following, there were sites all around the island for us to leave tributes, words of condolences, words of thanks, bouquets of flowers and to pay our respects.
But you didn't need to go to any of these designated locations to know that the country was grieving. There was a silence that fell over the entire atmosphere. There was that unifying sense of loss that affected everyone in one way or another.
And it wasn't just the people.
You walked into a mall and all of a sudden you realized that the usual crowd-hyping music had been replaced by a playlist more somber. You walked past a store with its shutters down and read a note saying that they were closed for a day out of respect to the nation's founding father. A road that was usually lit with colorful blinking LED lights shut them off for a day, leaving it darker than it had ever been before. And all the OOH- nearly every single one of them- at bus stops, malls, buildings, even at cinemas, blanked out their programming, leaving screens black with a single line of tribute.
There were those who expressed their grief openly. There were those who tried to go about their daily lives whilst acknowledging what they felt, believing that this is what he had worked so hard for. And many queued for up to ten hours to pay their respects at Parliament House, with lines snaking past South Bridge Road, High Street, North Canal Street, Carpenter Street, then afterward when logistics was better organized, into the Padang, the WWII Memorial Park and the Queen Elizabeth Walk.
Maybe the nation still cries.
It has been a week since the nation mourned the passing of her founding father.
The very first day they lined the streets outside the Istana. They lined the streets again outside Parliament House.
In the four days following, there were sites all around the island for us to leave tributes, words of condolences, words of thanks, bouquets of flowers and to pay our respects.
But you didn't need to go to any of these designated locations to know that the country was grieving. There was a silence that fell over the entire atmosphere. There was that unifying sense of loss that affected everyone in one way or another.
And it wasn't just the people.
You walked into a mall and all of a sudden you realized that the usual crowd-hyping music had been replaced by a playlist more somber. You walked past a store with its shutters down and read a note saying that they were closed for a day out of respect to the nation's founding father. A road that was usually lit with colorful blinking LED lights shut them off for a day, leaving it darker than it had ever been before. And all the OOH- nearly every single one of them- at bus stops, malls, buildings, even at cinemas, blanked out their programming, leaving screens black with a single line of tribute.
There were those who expressed their grief openly. There were those who tried to go about their daily lives whilst acknowledging what they felt, believing that this is what he had worked so hard for. And many queued for up to ten hours to pay their respects at Parliament House, with lines snaking past South Bridge Road, High Street, North Canal Street, Carpenter Street, then afterward when logistics was better organized, into the Padang, the WWII Memorial Park and the Queen Elizabeth Walk.
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| sunset of one's time |
I went to write a few words of thanks in the condolence book at the Tanjong Pagar Community Center. Because I believed that the constituency would feel his loss more than any other constituency in the country. I believed that there had been the place he started, and since he began, he'd not left, and so he'd been there for a very long time. I believed that his presence there had been there year on year on year and it would have been felt more strongly there (during the annual dinners, especially) than anywhere else.
Four hours have passed since the gun carriage turned out from Parliament House to UCC.
And like four days ago, the people turned out in full force, armed with umbrellas and raincoats, lining the streets all the way from South Bridge Road to Cantonment Road to Bukit Merah to Queenstown, to Commonwealth and finally, to Dover.
Despite the rain.
Despite the very heavy rain.
Four hours have passed since the gun carriage turned out from Parliament House to UCC.
And like four days ago, the people turned out in full force, armed with umbrellas and raincoats, lining the streets all the way from South Bridge Road to Cantonment Road to Bukit Merah to Queenstown, to Commonwealth and finally, to Dover.
Despite the rain.
Despite the very heavy rain.
