I’ve Outgrown the NDP, but Not My Love for Singapore

“Are we all just… not going to watch the National Day Parade (NDP)?”

I had not meant to speak my thoughts aloud. It just slipped out on a video call with my friend group last weekend.

Somewhere between mapping ferry schedules and brainstorming picnic ideas for Lazarus Island on the upcoming National Day, it hit me: nobody had mentioned watching the parade broadcast once.

Which felt unfamiliar. Because for me, growing up, watching the National Day Parade live wasn’t optional. In fact, it was an event.

Getting picked to sit at Marina Bay Floating Platform felt like winning a lottery ticket. On the school bus ride home, I would recount every tiny squeaky detail to my friends, as if I’d just witnessed history.

Now, as an adult, watching NDP stopped being a given but something that required actual, intentional effort. Balloting for tickets, clearing an evening, choosing it over everything else competing for my time.

Does that make me any less patriotic? Or was I just mistaking habit for meaning?

When August 9th Was a Family Ritual

Growing up in Singapore, one of my fondest childhood memories is how every 9th August went like clockwork: the living room, Mum, Dad, Mei Mei, dinner on the table, and Channel 8 on with the NDP live broadcast.

Even hanging the Singapore flag outside our window felt like a genuinely important task, one proudly entrusted to 6-year-old me. (Writing this down, I feel unreasonably nostalgic.)

But at some point, I stopped seeing any of this routine happening anymore, it started to feel repetitive and predictable to me.

And so the parade became something I now watch (easily) in fragments, rather than the full broadcast.

Watching Singa’s latest “6-7” TikTok dance moment also felt less about the parade and more about being able to say I hadn’t completely missed it (though even that wasn’t enough to make me want to catch the real broadcast live).

Realising that my own childhood routines were quietly fading is also what made me confront the real question. And if I am being truthfully honest, it came with a slight flicker of guilt, like I’d failed some unspoken test of being a “good” citizen of Singapore.

I called my best friend of 12 years, Adelle, and asked what she thought.

We’d never actually talked about this before, which is wild. And her answer was blunt.

“Maybe I am just not that into the military displays. It feels more like a defence showcase, a way of telling other countries, hey, we pose a threat, don’t try anything ah.”

“But I catch myself ugly crying when I see the crowd singing Majulah Singapura together.”

She helped me realise that stepping back from the broadcast doesn’t mean we are not caring. It could also mean the feeling comes from somewhere else now.

Feeling Singaporean 10,000 Miles From Home

If I’m being honest, the sharpest jolt of pride I might have ever felt as a Singaporean didn’t happen in Singapore at all.

It happened during my student exchange in 2023, while sharing a room with my Indonesian-born roommate.

She was trying to plan a trip and kept hitting walls, like endless visa applications, and multiple countries she could not enter without months of paperwork.

I didn’t fully grasp her frustration at first, because for me, travel had never worked that way.

I would just have to pull out my passport, book the flight, and it would be settled. No visa, no waiting, no paperwork. It had simply never occurred to me that this wasn’t how it worked for everyone.

At 25, I’ve already been to more countries than most people manage in a lifetime, not because I am adventurous, but because I happen to hold, quite literally, one of the most powerful passports on Earth.

My passport is not just a travel document, it is proof of something greater, a country built through decades of diplomacy. A small nation constructed from scratch.

I just didn’t wave my passport like the fabric flag I held at 6 years old. But it heavily shapes how the world treats me far more than any parade ever could. And for that, I think I will always be grateful.

I still think about her sometimes. She gave me a lot to reflect on, but I never really got to ask what carrying that burden felt like for her, and I think about that too.

That’s the strange thing about pride: it doesn’t always show up where you expect it to. It’s rarely as loud as a flypast, and it doesn’t always need a stage. Sometimes it’s just as real in the smaller moments that follow.

Finding Pride in the Smaller Moments

Loving and being proud of Singapore doesn’t only have to be about admiring the military tanks, or clapping for the Red Lions (as objectively majestic as they are). Sometimes, it can be much smaller.

It’s the subtle joy of togetherness with the Singaporean aunties I somehow “befriended” mid-hike on the Great Wall of China last year, huffing and puffing next to me, just because we share an accent and for a brief moment, we’re not strangers.

It’s the stupidly disproportionate swell of pride whenever my favourite international artist raves about chilli crab at their Singapore tour stop.

It’s watching a foreign friend try hokkien mee (fried prawn noodles) for the first time, and grinning when they get it.

And above all, it’s knowing that whatever happens, I’ll eventually come home to my mum’s cooking. That alone is comforting enough to make my heart grow fuller.

New Traditions, Same Love

Maybe I found the real answer to the question I started with. Yes, I’ve outgrown watching the NDP, but I’ve also stopped feeling bad about it.

This year, my friends and I are marking Singapore’s 61st birthday in our own way: a quiet trip to Lazarus Island, no broadcast, no fireworks. Just good vibes.

In a way, it’s my personal thank-you to Singapore for giving us a safe and small world to find each other and grow up together.

We’ve outgrown watching the NDP. But our love for this home, and the people in it, never stops growing. That’s okay. Majulah, Singapura!

What about Singapore makes you proud to be part of the pride?

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