NDP 2012 - Building a LovingSG

This year we will be celebrating Singapore's 47th birthday. I'm sure many of you have balloted for the NDP  or preview tickets. Congratulations to lucky ones who go the tickets.

This year's celebration also has an interesting component call Building a LovingSG. Its a project to recreate the Marina Bay Floating Platform using Lego bricks under the leadership of Architect Eugene Tan. Measuring 12m by 9m, this massive Lego structure will use about 200,000 Lego bricks to build. It will have the exact same number of seats as the real Marina Bay Floating Platform, all 27,000 of it in the exact same colour setup.

I came to know of this project from two forums (Hardwarezone EDMW and Lego Users Group Singapore). I was keen to join and be part of it. But like the Chinese saying, 心有余而力不足 (got heart but no energy). The project was completed yesterday and after reading horizonsky's forum post on her experience on this 13 days project, I really kudos to all the people who made it possible with their perseverance and sacrifices.

There were people who took their annual leave to help in this project, people who came after work and build till midnight, and even people who brought their kids along and everyone take turns to babysit them. And although the AFOL (short for Adult Fan of Lego) volunteers from forum were only needed for the first two days to kickstart the project, they stayed throughout the whole 13 days when the going gets rough and things do not go as intended.

Now you too can be a part of this project. With a donation of $5, you will get two Lego minifigures of which one will be put onto the Lego Floating Platform to represent you, and the other to be kept by you as souvenir. There is a limit of 10 pairs of minifigures donations per NRIC but you are welcome to donate more. All money will be going to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund.

Below are some photos from Hardwarezone EDMW forum, Lego Users Group Singapore forum and PlaytimeSG flickr. They are not my photos and all credits goes out to them.

This photo should give you a sense of how big the whole project is.

Fixing each of the 27,000 seats, one seat at a time.

Will one of your minifigures you donated be seating here?

Lights


VIP Box

Group photos of some of the AFOL volunteers.

Fun shot of minifigures on the platform.

I have reserved a seat at the Lego Floating Platform. Have you?

Updated on 16th June 2012:
HWZ EDMW has its own section on the platform, special thanks to horizonsky for organising this. Below are some photos of the "unique area".

"EDMW assemble!"

My Lizardman sitting beside Spiderman.

Parade Commander "Sedi Ya!!"

LEGO

I think I'm bitten by the Lego bug. Its my birthday recently and I bought myself Lego Minifigures, 80 of them to be exact.

Lego started selling a series of collectible figures in sets of 16 in 2010. The figures could be from all walks of life, from something as likable as a clown to something as crazy as a mad scientist or as far-fetched as an alien. To date, they have released six series and you can see all 96 figures in the photo above.

I remember playing with Lego when I was young and there was this particular set of Lego that I fondly remembered. It was year 1985 and I was primary two. I was top 3 (I think) student in my class and had earned a class promotion. I pester my mum to buy this particularly huge Lego set which we saw at Isetan Parkway Parade, the King's Castle #6080.

If I remember correctly, it costed about $89.90, lots of money at that time. Mum was hesitate and was trying to get me to settle for something lesser. But she eventually gave in. It was a great set, with horses, spearmen, archers and knights. And the cool feature was the castle could be extended by opening the rear walls of the castle and sliding it to the front. And it had a working drawbridge too.

How I wished I still have that set. Lego have since release a "remake" version in 2010, also called King's Castle #7946. Though I not really into castles and knights anymore, I'm sure I will be getting more Lego sets.

Xavier's First Lego "Robot"

Lilian proudly declare to me this morning that Xavier did this Lego "Robot" all by himself. Well done my boy.

Xavier's First Lego

I had heaps of fun with Lego when I was a kid, building, dismantling, building again. I remembered once when I got 1st in class for Maths in Primary 4 or 5 and I got my Mum to buy me this huge Lego castle for $80. $80 then was a lot of money. But I loved it to death, as you could open up the sides to form a long wall and the castle gate had to be open with pull strings.

Naturally, I wanted to start Xavier with a Lego set too, so he could have as much fun as I had. So June this year I got him the baby zoo set as I thought he could identify with the animals and would be able to role play. But it was too early for him and he didn't show much interest in it. So I decided to mimic the setup on the box just to take some photos.

It had 4 baby animals (elephant, giraffe, polar bear and lion) and they all look really cute. But I had to shelf it till recently, after two zoo trips, before he wants to play and have fun with it. Just last month, he started to play with toys by lining toys up or stacking them up. And he found the only way to stack up lego blocks is to fix them together.

He did this just tonight (well not entirely. He had the two bigger blocks on top and it couldn't stand so I show him by putting one of the bigger blocks as base, the structure could stand on its own). He wanted to make the Elephant taller than the Giraffe. These are his two favourite animals at the moment, out of the four animals in the set.

Updated on 02Nov10:
Two videos of him lost in his world of Lego tonight...