Christmas Day
Posted: December 25, 2007Today is Christmas Day. There is no Christmas service for our church on this day if this is not falling on a Sunday. We had our Christmas celebration last Sunday and all of us have great fun and words from the Bible. We decided to visit the National Museum today.
Yes, in Singapore, the National Museum is opened today. It is opened for Free ! Free admission, free rental of audio devices to introduce Singapore history. Free children Christmas card making session. Free exhibitions events! There was even a pre-registered tour for locals lead by one of the Singapore very local Mandarin TV presenter Mark Lee. (We are not one of the participants as we wanted our free and easy visit and was never a fan of his jokes.)
Sammi had a very good time today. She has never been to a museum and did not know or what to expect. We, as parents knew that we will rarely come up with reasons to go for a museum visit. Our last museum trip was when we had to do our history assignments when we were in secondary schools. So getting Sammi to the museum was a good way to let her learn her “roots”. The Chinese believes that it is important to know our roots and to go back to where our roots are. Values and culture practices all come from the roots. As for me, there are 3 main reasons for the museum visits.
1. It was free on Christmas Day !
2. It is time for Sammi to know the history of Singapore. She watched a documentary film on our Mentor Minister Lee Kuan Yew on DVD and she had a glimpse of history and making of Singapore from that DVD. Our history went back long before that and she has to know it.
3. It is better for us as parents to bring her to museum as her first trip then to leave it to her school in future to organise such a trip for her. I want to participate in her history learning process.
The Singapore History Gallery was really worth queuing up for. We waited for nearly 30 minutes before we were given each an audio set with headphone. However, Sammi was below 7 years old and she was not entitled to one of this gadget. The person in charge told us that there are 99 stops along the gallery with more than 900 pictures and items listed. Anytime, if we want to know more about that piece of history, we can press the number on the gadget and either an audio or descriptive words/ paragraphs will explain in details on that item/picture/protrait/that hall/programe.
My husband and I truly enjoyed ourselves. We went quite detail into each of the stations. Little Sammi was more amazed by the visual (especially the videos and the music played at some of the stations). However, she was a very good girl, she stayed with us patiently throughout the 2 hours tour. Our last tour within the museum ended up at the Food Exhibition. Needless to say, Singaporeans have a passion for food. Eating is our past time. The Food exhibition shows the olden time and typical Singaporean food that man on the street will eat. Video footage on how the food were prepared, the way it was sold and the utensils that hawkers used to cook their food were on display. It brought back some memory of childhood for us. (though we are definitely in that era of 60s to early 70s )
The Christmas trip to the National Museum was an excellent time for our family. It is a time for bonding with Sammi, a time to relate and teach her some history of Singapore, also a time to show her how fortunate she was as compared to our time when it come to things she has and things mummy and daddy don’t have when we are children. For now, I am not sure she knew and understand much. To me, Sammi first trip to the National Museum is an important event for us and since it is a non -working day for both of us. We did spent maximum time with her on this day.
