A group of people were holding our Malaysia flag and marching in front of the VIPs.  Later the national anthem was played for the second time for the raising of Malaysia flag.  All of us stood straight and I stopped taking photographs while the national anthem was played to show my respect.

The national anthem was played two time, as I mentioned earlier, the first time was played when the ceremony was started, and this is the second time when our “Jalur Gemilang” was raised.

Let listen to a patriotic song called “Jalur Gemilang”.

They were also waving the flag in front of the VIPs but behind us.  I have to turn my head backwards to take this picture.

This is the first time in our life time, standing in the middle of the crowd, and waving our Malaysia flag.  We followed the tempo of the music and waved the flag left and right.

We have never joined a celebration like this such as “Merdeka Countdown” / National Day Count Down before.  In our mind, we had labeled such event as noisy, crazy, and risk of getting hurt in the crowd.  We have taken our risk this time.  Luckily the crowd did not shout crazily.  We only shouted the word “Merdeka” for 7 times and “Satu Malaysia” for 3 times.

I think we were lucky because our area was in front of the VIP and they have limited the number of people.  That’s why it was not really crowded and noisy from people’s shouting.  The loud sound was only from the speakers.

Have you seen so many people in front of you waving the flags?  We have never, and this was our first time, very exciting.

SiewPeng helped me to wave the flag while I was taking photos.  I did not take photos all the time, after I have taken enough photo, and before the song ended.  I took my flag back from SiewPeng and I waved it to proudly enjoy the spirits of patriotism.

The interesting part of this photo is the lady looked at her flag while waving it.  I should have shifted my camera to the right to take the complete shot.

Now everybody was standing up, turning backwards and facing the VIP area, I was actually looking at the stage direction.  They were actually sitting in front of us.  I noticed a number of kids were sitting in their parents’ arm, were also waving the flags.  Their parents hold them in their arm, so that the kids could see what was happening.

There were empty space behind us, it was later filled by the students from a famous college.  They were also waving the flag.

The flag carriers were waiting under a tree for their turn to go up the stage waving the flags.  They were carrying the flags of different states in Malaysia.

… … to be continued.