Cementing bonds over community National Day decorations

SINGAPORE — Brightly-coloured farm animals, a handmade Merlion statue and an LED version of this year’s National Day Parade (NDP) logo are some of the decorations resident volunteers have put up in their housing estates to mark the nation’s upcoming 52nd birthday.

Working late into the wee hours of the night or on weekends to create their community decorations have helped them to bond better, residents said.

For the barely five-year-old Punggol Coast estate popular with young families, parents have been taking their children to the Punggol Damai Residents’ Committee (RC) to help paint decorations every Saturday for the past four weeks. These include cute styrofoam pigs, chickens and a kampong house, as well as hundreds of kites, on which they scrawled their wishes for Singapore.

The activities have helped the families bond. Said RC chairman Paul Lim, gesturing to a group of preschool-age children playing catch at a communal area: “A lot of new residents didn’t know one other. After our workshops, look, they all play together in the evenings now.”

Mr Lim, 37, who works in the printing industry, heads a team of about 15 grassroots volunteers in charge of decorating their estate for National Day, an annual ritual that started three years ago.

This year’s theme, which depict different stages of Singapore’s history — such as kampong life in the 50s and 60s — is meant to educate the estate’s youngest residents in a simple way, said RC member Joyce Wong, 41.

Over at a junction near West Coast Green Playground along West Coast Avenue, the West Coast Garden Neighbourhood Committee (NC) erected a structure with the official NDP logo that lights up in four different colours from 7pm to 10pm daily.

It took “a lot of time and effort” by about 25 residents, led by NC chair Kim Wei Ling, to string the few hundred LED lights together.

Powered initially by portable car batteries that had to be charged every three to four days, Ms Kim, 44, said on a resident’s recommendation, they switched the structure’s power source to an industrial battery that can last a month.

A mini garden modelled after the Gardens by the Bay, complete with LED lights on the “Supertrees”, is Yew Tee Zone 7 RC’s National Day offering this year.

It took six volunteers almost a month to set it up, with potted plants loaned from fellow residents.

“Gardens by the Bay is a signature Singapore landmark … many of our residents also go on outings there, so we thought, why not bring it home?” said RC member Jimmy Wong, 50, who is in the decorations committee.

They even wanted to install a mini “Singapore Flyer”, but the idea did not pan out due to technical difficulties, said RC vice-chairman Daniel Yong, 61.

Challenges the team had to overcome included welding the metal parts to make the “Supertrees”. The carrying of heavy material was so taxing that one volunteer even had to take medical leave after it was done. “But it was worth it,” he said with a grin.

Another iconic landmark, the Merlion statue has been Woodlands’ National Day mascot every year, for the past five years.

The miniature statue, built for the 2012 National Day, now occupies a permanent spot between two Housing and Development Board blocks at Woodlands Circle

Woodlands Zone 6 RC member Tony Er, along with five other residents, made the statue from a flower vase, cement, and cat’s eye marble.

Mr Er, who is also in charge of the estate’s community garden, planted some plants around the statue and does the necessary touch-ups. “If got cracks, I will go and repair,” the 62-year-old said in Hokkien.

Volunteers “dress” it up for National Day every year by changing its surrounding landscape. This year, two decorations depicting a Merlion and life in a kampong, grace the sides of the statue.

For the volunteers who slogged to put up the decorations, hearing from fellow residents that their effort had made a difference was all the thanks they needed.

At Yew Tee, several residents stopped to chat with the volunteers and check out the garden. One told them that their young son, who ducked into the garden to look at the lights, “really liked” the decorations.

“It warms our hearts that they appreciate our hard work,” Mr Yong said.