Happy National Day

Today is Singapore's birthday. My boss asked me how Singapore got its independance. I replied, we were kicked out from Malaysia.

In Feb, when I was in Delft, Holland for my 3 weeks of job training, I got to know a fellow trainee who is a Malaysian. A man of about 40 years old, he explained to me why Malaysia abandoned Singapore. I tried to record it down now but I cannot remember most of the reasons after 6 months.

History is important to us. I learnt only in my late twenties now. When I was in school, I detested history for all the dates and foreigns names we had to memorise. And then, the history of south east asia was not very interesting to me and pretty shallow.

In France however, history manifests everywhere in the daily life. The architecture, buildings, food, books, music, transport, cathedrales, museums etc all oozed of history.

My in-laws' summer house in Bretany is at least 100 years old with a big fireplace and stone walls.

The Chartres catherdrale is nearly a thousand years old. And over the weekend, when I visited my granny-in-law in Chartres, she showed me the family genealogy of 8 levels dating back to the 1700s. I wish I can trace back my roots of 200 years ago.

I remembered starkly when after visiting the National Museum in Singapore, Seb told me that it should be called a house rather than a museum as he took 15 mins to finish. Over at the Louvre, it is more likely to take 15 hours to cover the whole place.

The Metro system here though is old (not as old as London's subway) and dirty, it boosts an age of a century.

My mother-in-law sometimes goes for history walk in Paris where a guide explains the history and architecture of a particular area.

Recently when the girlfriend of my brother and her friend came for a visit, I showed them Paris. I explained briefly the reason behind building Arc de Triomphe. And that the Obelix at Concorde was plundered by Napolean from Egypt. The Versailles Palace replaced the Louvre as the King's palace due to the vanity of the Sun King, Louis XIV. The ladies were impressed with my knowledge of French history here. In fact, I was merely repeating what Seb told me when he was my tour guide 2 years ago.

I am fervently reading about history of France through biography books of queens and princess of long ago. I do hope very much that one day, I will start to pick up about the history of China where I believe the roots of my family genealogy 200 year ago lies.