New Year Countdown Singapore 2016

Full Album Here: New Year Countdown Singapore 2016

Singapore celebrates the turn of the New Year in especially grand fashion this year, with the Marina Reservoir positively loaded with fireworks barges amidst the floating Wishing Spheres. The Wishing Spheres have been a fixture since a couple years back, having provided people with the opportunity to jot their wishes for the new year onto these inflatable spheres, to be floated on a selected water body as a gesture of hope. It is unclear exactly what happens to these spheres after the celebrations, but I do imagine they are put aside much the way New Years resolutions tend to be.

Wishing Spheres, because Wishing Balls would’ve just sounded awkward.

Being an event with exceptional popularity amongst the people, one can definitely expect to be wedged amidst surging crowds waiting in the sweaty crush of humanity for hours until the clock strikes 12. And I do not exaggerate this, considering that I arrived on site around 2 hours ahead of time and people were being turned away from the Marina Reservoir perimeter. This is pretty impressive considering that the perimeter is capable of holding hundreds of thousands of people.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Fireworks, viewed from the Marina Barrage

That said, I managed to secure a vantage point atop the Marina Barrage, about a kilometer from the main fireworks with the intention of capturing both a view of the fireworks barrage in addition to the ships at harbor firing off their flares in celebration.

Considering the number of flares that kept popping up for the better part of the first hour of 2016, I speculated that perhaps the ships were making an effort to clear their expiring bargain basement shipping containers of flares. Of course, I also half expected the captains to collude amongst themselves to coordinate a massive flare barrage at a designated time after the fireworks were done, thus turning the sky positively red. Alas, they did not appear to be able to coordinate such an endeavor.

The plan worked out fairly well all told, though I had not accounted for the almost total lack of wind and sheer volume of fireworks going off. Those have conspired to make fireworks photography quite a challenge. Thankfully, Teoh from Parka Blogs managed to secure a vantage point close to the action, and you may enjoy witnessing the fury of gunpowder right here.

While the fireworks cried out across the sky, that most overused SG50 logo projected on the facade of the Fullerton Hotel transformed into a rather similar “SG” logo. What a huge change. I fear, however, that the switchover portends more overuse of the new familiar visual pattern. Oh dear.

Haze or smoke? Why not both!

After the barrage, there was a thick pall of smoke hanging over the central business district. To many Singaporeans, this would be reminiscent of the Southeast Asian Haze that we experienced some months back. As for myself, the sulfurous scent of gunpowder had me imagining the thick of battle as the roar of cannon filled the air with smoke and battle fury. Of course, that did make for fairly amusing photographic opportunities.

By the time everything was done and the excursion concluded, I slowly made my way back to the Raffles Place MRT station to take the train home. I do admit to dallying some in the vicinity in an effort to avoid the worst of the crowd. Enroute, I witnessed the sheer carnage of having a massive herd of humans in a single area, many of whom making no effort to clean up after themselves.

Having reached the train station, I was duly funneled along a rather terrifyingly dense crowd, which had me quaking in fear for my sanity. Oddly enough, my fears turned out to be unfounded, for it seems that crowd control had opted to shovel everyone through a single entrance while blocking off all other options, leading to a quite exaggerated queue. To put things in perspective, I actually managed to secure myself a seat on the train back, which I almost never do at any time on a normal day. Funny, that.

Standing there on the Barrage at night with the wind in my hair and the drizzle on my face did tend to make one a little pensive. All told, 2015 has been quite a year of awakenings and new beginnings. This is the year that EveryThink Else was born, and thus far there have been thousands of unique visitors coming from just about 50 unique locales. (Shout out to you from Isle of Man. I did not expect to see a view from there, but hello if you’re reading this =p) Things have evolved some over these short months, and I expect there will be yet more to come.

Having walked around the Marina Reservoir looking at the waning Christmas moon, I could not help but muse at what new adventures 2016 would bring. I am not one to make resolutions or spout platitudes that a new year portends a new state of being. Yet I shall always watch with amusement as time passes, and eagerly anticipate what the future holds.

Have you thoughts on what your 2016 would be like, or what you think 2015 has been to you? Comment below!