There’s a joyous mood in the air and every street is decked out in red and white, our national colours. Today is Singapore’s 43rd birthday, and we are celebrating the Singapore Spirit.
Over the years, many National Day theme songs were penned and this year is no exception. The National Day theme song for 2008 is titled “Shine For Singapore“, the English version is sung by our own Hardy Mirza – the first Asian Idol, and the Chinese version sung by Joi Chua.
晴空万里
Today’s date is a very special one – a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, 08.08.08 will only come by in another century in 2108.
The number 8 is an auspicious number to us Chinese. The Chinese word for number 8 is pronounced as “ba”, which is very similar to “fa”, which stands for fortune and prosperity in Chinese. As such, the number 8 is always associated with wealth, money, and fortune.
Since it is such a special and unique date and considered to be auspicious, many people around the globe will want to do something memorable in their life on this special day. Thousands of couples will be tying the knot on this day and many would-be parents had requested their babies to be due by caesarean section today.
Most visible event of all, China will kick off the 2008 Summer Olympic Games on 08.08.08 at 8.08pm Beijing time. Costing US$40 billion, it will be the most expensive games ever hosted in the history of the Olympics.
The biggest sports event on Earth will be set in motion with an epic extravaganza of an opening ceremony by 15,000 performers and 29,000 firework shells and which will last 3.5 hours, attended by more than 100 heads of states and national leaders and 91,000 spectators in the National Stadium and watched by a worldwide television audience of 4 billion people! That’s 8 billion eyeballs! It will indeed be One World One Dream.
Providing buzz to the run-up to WCG Singapore 2008, AsiaSoft held the first ever AsiaSoft GameFest 2008 over the weekend from 1st – 3rd August. There was something for every gamer young and old in this inaugural gaming festival.
During the 3 days event, members of the public were able to try out new and exciting AsiaSoft games in the demo booths, watched the action heat up in the competitions, have fun with the fringe activities and take home exclusive AsiaSoft GameFest freebies!
For more pictures, view my slide show.
I was there on the third day to watch gamers pit their online gaming skills in the exciting Monster Carnival Showdown and slug it out for honour in Rise of the Champions battle. It was indeed a great celebration of games and gaming in this very colorful Game Fest. Watch the short video which I put together of this event.
Last week I posted A Prelude to F1 Grand Prix showing you three exciting videos of the motor sports carnival. In this post, we’ll take a look at the picture gallery and wrap up this series with the final video of the event.
To view more pics, check out my photobucket album.
Now let’s view the video of an F1 race of miniature radio-controlled racing cars.
Three years after the successful hosting of the World Cyber Games in 2005, Singapore will be hosting the World Cyber Games Asian Championship this year.
The WCG Singapore 2008, which is scheduled to take place from 7th to 10th of August, at the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre, will see local gamers battling on the first 2 days for the rights to represent Singapore. The Asian Championship will take place on the 9th and 10th of August will see elite gamers from 14 different countries across Asia battling each other.
Stay tune as I’ll be covering the event to bring you the sights and sounds of the relentless online actions and the very popular and colorful Cosplay competition.
