Gone Fishin

“Humans are…” — Player 456, Squid Game

S’pore

Straight off the plane, there’s just a gust of sauna air that hits you in the face, but the inside of Changi Airport has amazing architecture.

One of the things about Singapore is that the architecture incorporates a lot of greenery. I’ve always found it kind of artificial but it can be somewhat soothing.

Hard Work Cafe

The company has quite a few snacks and drinks which makes work a lot more relaxing because whenever I’m losing focus I can just take a quick break.

Oil

is quite different than stocks because the fundamentals are quite different because stocks are generally grounded by some concept of value through cash flows while oil has inherent value because people need oil to survive.

Hat Trader

In fact, it’s quite similar to the TF2 hat economy because people inherently desire hats and even though hats don’t provide cash flows, the prices persist anyway because of supply and demand.

Old Men and the Sea

After viewing some fishing videos/tutorials, I bought some fishing gear for S$50 and went off to Bedok Jetty at East Coast Park to catch some fish in my tank top.

Had some lunch and then shamelessly asked a very nice boy the same age as me to help me set up my gear.

He was very willing to help and immediately I forgot to close the catch and started reeling up, which got the line all tangled up and he had to help me cut it and retie the line.

He caught quite a few sardines that day already and left after I caught my first fish, a little sardine, and gave it to him as a gift for helping me so much.

I fished until about 4 PM, then went to Labrador Jetty on the southwest side of the island and caught two more fish and went home after sunset.

Take Me to Church

I met one of my friend’s old friends from Singapore and since they invited me to church, I decided that I would go just to experience it because I’ve never been to a church outside of the U.S.

It started with a song by a drummer, a pianist, and a guitarist singer, and then the pastor talked about Deuteronomy and how it’s important to remember the past.

I remembered the amount of references to the Bible and especially Deuteronomy. in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but didn’t actually know what Deuteronomy was about.

The choice makes a lot more sense in retrospect because F451 is also a book about remembering the past.

Diverse City

The church was mostly East Asian but there were some South Asians as well. I felt like it was sort of strange of the pastor to sometimes speak in Hokkien or Mandarin because the people that don’t understand will probably feel excluded by nature.

Extra Crispy

After I got home from fishing, I took a shower and noticed that my skin got very tan in a funny pattern around my tank-top.

The next day, I noticed that I was getting some bubbles/blisters on the back of my arms where I couldn’t reach with sunscreen and I looked it up on ChatGPT because it’s much smarter than Google these days, and I got sunburned.

It seemed like I was only in the sun for a while because it was somewhat cloudy, but I guess the UV exposure was quite powerful since I was out there for 4 hours.

Ninjas?

Singapore’s diversity is incredible despite its size. Everyone here says that it’s really big but it seems to only be about 50 km across the island.

I was walking back from buying aloe vera lotion from Watsons for my sunburn and saw two people in the underground tunnel dressed like ninjas, completely covered except for their eyes.

My first thought was, “Wow, I’ve never seen anyone dressed like that,” and my second thought was, “If I was wearing that while fishing, I wouldn’t have gotten this sunburn!”

I think they were Muslim women wearing Niqabs, which is quite rare because it seems that more people prefer to only cover the head.

Food Poisoning

I’ve gotten food poisoning a few times, unfortunately, once from eating at an Indian hawker stall, and once from eating durian/shrimp that went bad.

I also felt quite bad after eating some strange-tasting oysters, but nothing actually happened.

Even though Singapore is so safe, it seems like the food is one thing it has yet to protect the people from.