Today is August 31st - Merdeka Day – our country’s National Day.

Commemorating our country’s 50th year of independence from the British rule, the International Fireworks Competition, featuring impressive fireworks displays by countries such as Australia, Japan and Italy, was held in Putrajaya last night.

While I’m sure most of our own MMU students were there themselves, and are telling the story in their own blogs or other networks; I’m still gonna write about it anyways …

Being miserable enough to have lectures until 7 o’clock even on Merdeka’s eve, we departed for Putrajaya at 9 o’clock. Putrajaya is only 10-15 minutes away from Cyberjaya, so the late departure wasn’t a big deal, anyway.

The fireworks performance was scheduled at midnight, right after the countdown to the 31st. We arrived early due to dire warnings from friends who had attended earlier rounds of the fireworks competition, stating that the traffic in Putrajaya would be unprecedentedly terrible.

And it was – really, really jammed! But, only during the return journey!

The journey TO Putrajaya was satisfactorily smooth, and we were there 2 hours early.

Fortunately, Euro Fun Park, a moving amusement park, was business-minded enough to be in Putrajaya during the fireworks competition period, obviously expecting a huge crowd to turn up to watch the competition, and visit their park while waiting for the fireworks display to start!

Oh, it’s been so long since I last went to these fun fairs!

The rides are quite typical of those in normal amusement parks, but there’s one worth mentioning – this spinning rotating thingy:

Now it looks quite fine, doesn’t it?

We thought so too. So, from the seven of us, Alex, Steven and I decided to go on the ride – and it took only a minute to realise that it was a totally – bad – decision.

This ride basically raises and tilts its three arms approximately 45 degrees diagonally, and spins the cars at the tip of the arms while the entire core segment of the machine itself rotates simultaneously – Something like how the Earth spins around the Sun – but at the speed of your washing machine in ’spin’ mode, for, I think, 6 minutes!

It was spinning so go*damn fast that the whole thing was a blur as you can see in this photo:

The excitement and intensity lasted only for the first thirty seconds, and after that, dizziness and nausea floods in. This ride is by no means one of the most intense rides that I’ve ridden. In fact, it was pretty annoying because all it did was spin the shit out of us – low excitement, low intensity, low fun – nothing, just dizziness and … spinning!

After we got down from the washing machine ride, I was the only lucky survivor who didn’t puke his dinner.

Gawd, I really hope they demolish that ride!

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The spinning ride was quite unenjoyable, but there were some that really made us scream:

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At 12A.M. sharp, the lights in the entire fun park went out, and we hurried to the open area where we could have a good view of the Seri Gemilang bridge, above which the fireworks was about to be displayed.

The National Anthem was played, loud and clear from the Putrajaya International Convention Centre; followed by seven deafening chants of “Merdeka!“, which was echoed by the crowd standing excitedly on the ground.

It became silent, and then, it started -

Five long streaks of light soared high up into the midnight sky, followed by a lower array of two dozen white gleams, all speeding off in different directions, and as the first few fireworks reached maximum altitude, they exploded in unison.

We gasped in awe as a myriad of stunning flowers of light blossomed in the sky, illuminating the darkened lake below with enchanting colours of bright blue, white, red, yellow, green. The crowd screamed and cheered, as the magnificent fireworks marked the start of our nation’s 50th year of nationhood.

Here’s a clip of the final two-and-a-half minutes of the fireworks display. You can see the whole sky totally raining with fireworks at the end!

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