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Parade's biggest fan

- by Tessa Wong

Article provided courtesy of The Straits Times

Mr Choo Khoon Hock has attended all 42 National Day Parades and treasures his store of parade memorabilia. He will not be missing this year's NDP either, and will watch from outside the venue if he cannot get a ticket. ALPHONSUS CHERN/THE STRAITS TIMES

Retiree Choo Khoon Hock, 68, is arguably the National Day Parade's most ardent fan.

Having attended every one of the 42 parades - including those he had to watch from outside the venue - he believes it to be the "No.1 event" of the year.

He gushed: "They spend so much money to put it up! It's just the biggest and best show in Singapore."

The television cameras roving over the years' parade venues might well have homed in on him.

He is hard to miss. He wears red, like many excited spectators, but his T-shirt is plastered with photographs of himself from past parades.

And then there is his jaunty Boy Scout hat, sagging with the weight of nearly 60 badges from past Singapore Government campaigns and Russian military medallions - souvenirs from his trip to Moscow.

Showing this reporter the hat in his Marine Terrace flat, the father of two grown-up children said: "That one for the smiling one, courtesy one, Sars one also got."

Two of the three bedrooms in the flat he shares with his 66-year-old retiree wife have been turned into shrines for National Day souvenirs as well as vacation memorabilia.

In one room, photos and near-identical red T-shirts cover almost every inch of wall and window space; two televisions play videotapes of past year parades in the background.

He is eager to show his cache of ticket stubs, pictures and old funpack items, including his favourite souvenir - a large shiny blue fan from this year's funpack, which he collected at a preview a month ago.

Mr Choo began attending the parade in the 1960s, when he was a clerk at the Income Tax department. His boss gave him an invitation to the parade at the Padang.

The Batu Pahat boy who has lived here since his primary school days recalled: "The military column was very grand, with the tanks and jeeps. I felt so proud of Singapore."

He was instantly hooked.

Nowadays, his favourite part of the parade is the mass display portion, especially the item put up by the Singapore Soka Association.

"They can make different patterns, so perfect!" he said.

Scoring tickets - whether to the previews or the actual parade - has seldom been a problem.

He either got them at the office - he was a typist in various Government ministries for 42 years - or from being a Residents' Committee (RC) member.

After retiring in 2000 and leaving the RC in 2002, he and his family would diligently ballot for tickets. The few years he failed to snag a ticket, he would stand outside the parade venue to catch the action.

Watching it live on TV at home has never been good enough for him. He simply has to be there.

He thinks this year's parade might just top all of them, because he feels it is showier than last year's.

The snag: He has no ticket - yet.

Tomorrow, he will resort to a tried-and-tested measure: Donning his NDP T-shirt and hat, he will head to the parade venue's perimeter with his wife and look out for people scuttling away with the funpacks - ticket-holders who want the freebies but will not stay for the show.

He will home in on them and then cajole them to give him their tickets.

And if that fails? "Never mind, we'll just enjoy the show from outside," he said with a grin.