Episode 1050: What's Up With This Year's NDP Song?

Briefing about MAP took way less time than anticipated (and my batch of scholars isn't even up for the selection process this year, so I bet they'll be calling us back for another briefing next year), so a bunch of us adjourned to Holland Village to catch up. Seems that unlike me, almost everyone is changing universities for their Master's, and there are a lot of people going to Columbia, so maybe I should pay a visit to New York at some point! Incidentally, since it's National Day here tomorrow, can I just say that this year's NDP song, 'In A Heartbeat', is really, really not catchy? I mean, Sylvia Ratonel's got a great voice, no question about it, and Haresh Sharma's lyrics in this song are less cringeworthy than they were in the Fun Pack Song. The song just doesn't work though. It's not the kind of song that you could picture a bunch of Singaporeans singing, which kind of was the problem with Corrinne May's 'Song For Singapore' last year too. Again, great pipes, decently patriotic lyrics, but not very crowd-friendly. I might not like Kit Chan's 'Home' personally, but now that is a song which a huge crowd could belt out together, even if some amongst them went gloriously off-key. (The sentiment behind it though, is so saccharine it makes my teeth ache!)