The National Day Parade (NDP) tickets at the Padang have recently opened on 23 May (Thursday), giving Singaporean citizens and permanent residents the chance to apply for these tickets.
The event which takes place annually on 9 August is conducted to celebrate the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles in Singapore. However, this year marks to be extra-special as the country commemorates its bicentennial – 200th anniversary.
Although tickets are now opened, but the procedure is not as simple as purchasing it on a first-come-first-serve basis as individuals will have to ballot for it, and if they’re lucky they will get it. Not to mention that a significant number of tickets are reserved for the People’s Association and the Government.
However, things seem very different for the famous travel vblogger Nuseri Yassin, better known as the founder of Nas Daily, who just moved to Singapore last month with his girlfriend, Aylne Tamir.
This is because Dick Lee, the director of the show, recently had personally invited Nas for the parade via Facebook.
Mr Lee, who is a local singer-songwriter, playwright and film director took his social media account to publicly invite the foreigner to the event. He wrote, “Can I invite you to our National Day Parade? I’m directing this year and would love to share our pride”.
In response to this, the vblogger replied and said “I think I’m coming!”
The screenshot of this post was shared by Facebook page Legit Singapore with a caption that said “The perks of being connected. We balloted year after year still no luck with NDP tickets”.
TOC has contacted Nas Daily to confirm if he was invited by Mr Lee to NDP, and in an email reply, the vblogger told that he “knows nothing about NDP yet”. However, he did not confirm whether the conversation between them took place or not.
The same question was asked to Mr Lee but TOC is yet to receive a response.
Upon reading about this invite, as expected it angered netizens as they find it unfair that as locals they have to ballot for the tickets each year with minimum success, whereas a foreigner gets invited just like that. Many of them, especially senior citizens, have highlighted that they’ve been trying to get hold of the tickets for years (some up to 50 years) but to no avail.
However, a group of online users also said that they don’t see a point of going to NDP anymore as it is not special and no longer mean anything. They said it has “lost its significant meaning” and people are not proud of National Day as the “feeling has changed”.
