Source: Straits Times, 24 February 2004

24 February 2004
Flag day idea gels into form

LONDON - A group of Singaporean students here has raised funds for The Straits Times' School Pocket Money Fund by making a huge Singapore flag entirely out of agar agar. [This event created a new Guiness World Record. See here for the certificate. --- Added by Limsoon.]

Using 16,125 pieces of the jelly, they took about nine hours to put the 12.8m-by-19.8m flag together at Imperial College. It has been submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest flag mosaic ever made from agar agar.

Miss Doris Ang, who chaired the organising committee, said more than 70 people churned out close to a tonne of the raw material every hour.

The project was also a bid to 'gel Singaporeans and the locals'.

Miss Ang said: 'There are still people in London who ask us which part of China Singapore is, so we thought we should do something to raise the profile of Singapore.

'We were eating jelly when we were discussing this, and the idea just came to us.'

In the run-up to the event, agar agar was sold to raise money.

The First Secretary of the Singapore High Commission, Mr Winston Goh, congratulated the team, then joined the 100 people who turned up to eat, what else but the agar agar!

By Neo Hui Min