Daily Lessons from Life 20 July 2014 - 10,000 attend Punggol racial harmony parade

MH17 Udpates - 196 bodies found so far as declared by the Ukrainian State Emergency Services (SES) while the rebel leaders claimed that they might have the 2 black boxes of MH17 in their control! Putin has been urged by world leaders to show leadership and use his influence to get the rebels to allow unfettered access to the crash site by international investigators!

"10,000 attend Punggol racial harmony parade - CNA 20 July 2014

SINGAPORE: The streets of Punggol were splashed with colour on Sunday as residents dressed up in traditional costumes of Singapore's different races for a street parade and carnival as part of Punggol North's racial and religious harmony celebrations.

More than 10,000 Punggol residents attended the street parade which is now into its 10th year and promotes bonding between different races, inter-faith understanding and religious harmony.

This year's parade also focused on wedding customs which let residents have a better understanding of wedding traditions and cultures of the various ethnic groups.

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, who is Member of Parliament for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC said that, as a new town, Punggol needs to build bonds among residents as more of them move into the area. And parades such as this, he added, will help bring people closer together.

"We can see many young families with young children growing up together. But we also have older residents who have moved in with their children, and they have moved from different parts of Singapore where they grew up and had their roots, and their own children,” Mr Teo said. “And now they are moving in together here with their grown-up children; so it's important to bring them together, to create a new sense of belonging for all of them in Punggol.""

Good efforts in creating the kampong spirit. The vision of 'working, studying, playing, resting, retiring and getting medical treatment within close proximity of where you live' is a grand one. We need to make it a reality with fuller development of Regional Centers!

Lessons for me are:

1. it will NOT happen by itself as we are too used to living in a concrete jungle with minimal contact with our neighbours. I am guilty of not knowing my neighbours better than just the cursory: 'Hi and bye'!;

2. 10,000 people getting involved in this PN event is quite impressive. A lot of hard work must have gone into getting people to come out and get involved! Kudos to the volunteers, residents and leaders;

3. we need a lot more of such activities as 'doing will cement the knowing' and provides concrete evidences that indeed neighbours know each other, interact with each others in such a community-based activity, and hopefully get them to gel even better and deeper!

We have divisive issues today for sure. Just look at the recent NLB's removal of 2 books. Just look at the concerns expressed by the government on some Singaporeans' behaviours in the Libya conflict? We need to stay focus on maintaining racial and religious harmony. A task the nation can ill afford to 'mess' up!!