“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
It's Sunday and I woke up from five hours of sleep around 6 pm, had a lunch of chive dumplings with soya sauce and shredded ginger and sat down to blog about the turn of events that led to this hazy moment. There were copious amounts of caffeine, a hash brown, packed sandwiches, chips, stray cats, the calming sounds of waves, brightly lit oil tankers on the horizon, people camping out and fishing, chilling shivers from the sea breeze, badly used public toilets, a rain shower at dawn, lots of walking, mild food poisoning...
...and the best of all, SHOOTING STARS!
It is the season of the Perseids meteor shower! And I caught it with Ryuu last night at East Coast Park. Singapore is not particularly famous for star gazing due to light pollution but we were pretty lucky to have clear skies without the moon. We managed to spot clusters of stars (none of which we recognised from the constellations on our star map, except for Orion's belt, because it was too dark to read and we forgot to take a torch!) and 4-6 pretty meteors, including a fireball that streaked across the sky in slow motion. Fireballs are bright meteors that come really close to the Earth's atmosphere and appear brighter than Venus. Star gazing brings me much joy. It is comparable to catching a special effects movie with good front row seats on the largest screen ever built, humbled by the fact that I am so insignificant on a celestial scale.
It's at times like these I really feel blessed having adventurous friends who accompany me without so much as a protest to all kinds of places, amid small inconveniences to do fun things like camping at zoos and catching meteor showers. I like to think that I am capable of going wherever I please to experience whatever I fancy regardless of having company or not, but having the same experience in good company makes it much more memorable and that is always appreciated.
This map shows all of Singapore. Put on a map of the world, Singapore is like a microscopic wart. We got from point A to B to watch the meteor shower in under 2 hours.
For star gazers, the meteors would appear to originate from the constellation of Perseus
Bother, it's work tomorrow. The star charms collected over the weekend should help me get through this week.
Don't forget that sudden, insane gust of wind that nearly blew us over! And classical music by the shore in the pre-dawn dark. Also, one of us ate all the sandwiches...
ReplyDeleteO_O nearly forgot that! And classical music goes surprisingly well with the sound of waves.
ReplyDeleteI never realised Singapore was that size!
ReplyDeleteJust spent way too long learning about Singapore on Wikipedia... It's interesting!