Singapore: Celebrating 2007 with 160,000 of our Closest Friends

We celebrated New Years in Singapore. The evening started with dinner at the Szechwan Court Chinese restaurant at our hotel, Raffles the Plaza. It is amazing to see the same zany New Year’s Eve decorations of balloons, streamers, goofy paper hats and noise makers in a Singapore restaurant that we had seen in Rome the previous year, Shanghai the year before that and in endless New Year’s Eve bashes in the US. As we all whirl about in the vastness of dark cold space on our tiny blue planet, we become less distant strangers and closer neighbors in a village with common concerns and habits as the years roll forward.

We dressed in our finest wear for the evening and anticipated closing 2006 with a marvelous meal. We were, unfortunately, very disappointed. Jay’s beef dish contained meager offerings of a wafer thin 2 ½ ounce slice of beef accommodated by a ping pong ball sized scoop of mashed potatoes. Helen’s shrimp dish was mediocre. The wine was okay. All was not lost. It was New Year’s Eve and the evening was still young.

After dinner we changed into more causal clothes and headed to the nearby esplanade at the waterfront to celebrate the opening of 2007 with 160,000 others. We walked to the waterfront and were packed among the crowd of mostly-young revelers. In typically Singaporean fashion, the crowd paused and waited for crossing signals to turn green or to be waved forward by lone traffic control officers.

At the waterfront, large screen panels were set up to display that evening’s musical distraction until the moment the fireworks would fill the sky. The harbor was filled with large white inflated balls on which people had written what we believe were remembrances of 2006 or wishes for 2007.

The arrival of 2007 was greeted with bursting fireworks and hoots and gasps of pleasure and admiration from the crowd while Helen and I shared a hug and kiss of hope and joy for the New Year.

Happy 2007! May our village be more peaceful this year.