A lovely and not overly insightful day...

I nearly ran over a python today while hurtling down a hill on a bicycle. Yeah, it was just that kind of a day. Let me explain:

- We began the day with a visit to the Changi POW museum. Not a whole lot to say about the museum itself, it was a very solemn place, but it has been eye opening seeing WWII from the other side of the ocean. Singapore, and the rest of SE Asia, was occupied by the Japanese shortly after Pearl Harbor. The occupation is still very present in the collective memory of people here, mostly because of the rampant persecution, torture, and slaughter of the primarily Chinese population here. It is weird to see a people who hail the dropping of the atomic bombs as the act of their liberation compared to the questioning in American history of whether it was the appropriate action. All I'm saying is everything has multiple perspectives, and it can be rather enlightening to step outside your own for a bit.

- Most of the day was spent at this little island next to Singapore called Pulau Ubin. We rented some mountain bikes and took off for a few hours of adventure. The great thing was that we split up so that we didn't have to lumber around in our usual group of 25+, which just makes transportation difficult. I spent most of the afternoon riding around with Elliot, Raley, and Patrick. We got a bit adventurous and took on the mountain bike park on the island. This is where that whole python thing came in. After a while riding around on the easy trails in the park, we decided to try out one of the "Black Diamond" courses. (Mother, skip this sentence) Maybe not the best idea given the lack of helmets and relative sketchiness of the bikes, but you only get to do this sort of stuff once. (appropriate for my mom to continue reading) It was a really cool trail, some great downhill sections, and at the bottom of one of them we came across the dead python seen in the picture above. I had just enough time to get out my camera before Elliot came down the hill and freaked out. Anyway, it was a really cool experience. I loved the bit of freedom that we had within a larger group activity, sometimes the need to stick to a big group makes stuff kinda difficult.

- Finally, we spent the evening at the final event of the Singapore Arts Festival (which hosted stuff like Radio and Juliet). It was called Hydro-Sapiens, and was one of the most bizarre things that I have ever seen. I can't really explain it, but just check out the video below, it's from the very end of the performance.