geminids' 07

one of the best meteor watches of the year - geminids meteors.

indeed, it was significantly better than orionids, but part of the reason was also bcos we were at a darker place than ecp, and the islands across the sea weren't as bright as whatever land it was across ecp ^^ yepp so less light pollution, we could see more stars! and more meteors...

also, we spent most of the night meteor-watching, whereas on orionids night, we spent most of the night doing erhem interesting activities.

yeah changi beach park was really uncomfortable though! it's full of sand at the beach, and the sea tide kept rising so we had to keep moving to higher ground and it's just so scary to be watching for meteors and all of a sudden, this fishy stinky smell gets really strong and u sit up, to find yourself surrounded by water! AHHH!

ok just jk, the last bit wasn't true, but u sit up, to find yourself suddenly 2 metres from the water! and the tide advancing eerily towards you threatening to swallow you and make you wet and dirtier than you alrd were!

oh and the wind was really strong, and it was colder than it was at the orionids. hmm and we didn't see any perverts. blaws was convinced that the ppl at changi village were trans though. im uh neutral.

oh but we do know that there are ppl who LIVE at cbp, outside the toilet there were quite a lot of big tents and bashas well-equipped for sleep, and ppl who were bathing and BRUSHING TEETH in the toilet. haha but the soap made the toilet smell infinitely better, so i don't mind.

now i know why perverts don't dare to reside in the female toilet. for one, they may end up falling asleep and there would still be no one. (it's so ulu after all haha) also, the toilet stinks so much and it's really dirty, so im sure perverts will faint of the stink b4 they even last an hour in there. HEH.

anyway back to the main point. the meteors! we saw 60! i thought i saw a few more, but im really not sure, bcos it was like 5am alrd, and i hadn't even slept a wink, plus i slept really late the night b4, so i was tired beat. practically spacing out and almost falling asleep then. haha i think that was the worst time, esp since we didn't go night cycling or anything, it was really difficult to last through that last hour. but well, we did anyway.

so yeah i thought i saw a few flashing by, but im really not sure. they're so faint and short and fast that i thought i might have been hallucinating. it might have been someone's light flashing by or something? anw it may have really been meteors, just that it was the light pollution that made them so faint, so yeah. maybe they were meteors. but im not counting them anyway, bcos they are so lousy and faint and not nice at all.

so yeah 60 meteors, out of which about 10+ which were REALLY NICE. there were 2 greenish ones i rmb, with silver tails, and some which were silver in colour and streaked across really SLOWLY! as in they lasted for at least 3 seconds! one even up to 5 seconds! all the way across! and they were really nice and big! especially the two golden ones i saw. those were the best. such a bright yellowish gold, big and fat and nicely streaking across to my right, around 3 seconds. LOVELY.

these were really better than those at orionids. i only saw 1 that was really nice then, and that was the first meteor T.T so i do conclude that, geminids was indeed one of the best watches.

i saw the big dipper for the first time! coolness.

and there were planes taking off constantly in the middle of the night. really big and noisy and ppl kept joking that there were several big man-made meteors that moved really slowly. lameness.

sigh. but really, singapore too bright le. it's not a good place for meteor-watching or star-gazing. it was really irritating that we could only see tiny streaks of meteors when i knew they could have been big and magnificent in darker areas. but i guess it would be too dangerous if they turned off all the lights. but when ur eyes adapt to the dark, u find that the sky is still too bright. u can't see a lot of the stars!

oh yeah and it was pretty cloudy a few times, but im glad it didn't rain! hurray! i think it had something to do with the sea breeze thing, bcos the clouds would all eventually get blown away by the winds haha and we can have our clear sky back. but when clouds cover the view, we just sit up and chat and play random card games like uno and bridge.

and we learnt quite a surprising aspect of deut-fluoride's life. o.o

ah well. i suppose his emoness should be significantly lessened now. good for him.

it's been a pretty great night, though it could have been better. we practically daoed bp and ri and whatever other ppl there were, except for rj. if jovina were there, she would have gone socialising happily. it seems to be a skill that all of us are really lacking in. =P

i mean, how do you socialise in the middle of the night and not disturb other ppl's sleep/meteor-watching??? esp when u can't quite tell who is who in the dark lighting unless u go really close to them, and it's pretty odd to get so close to random guys u don't even know, in the middle of the night!

we were pretty much the only girls around, plus a 3 or 4 others. the rest were mostly guys.

i think the next time i go meteor-watching, i would want to go to some ulu island to watch for it, and not in brightly lit singapore.

i made wishes for the first 22 of the meteors, but i ran out of wishes to wish for specifically. i mean, how to think of so many wishes in such a short time in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere! so yeah i just gave up and simply counted the meteors.

i think all of you should try star-gazing and meteor-watching at least once in a lifetime. it really made me feel closer to nature in the quiet surroundings, lying on my back, looking up to the skies. it feels as though im closer to the stars just by being able to look at them. like we're insignificant beings in the face of the grand universe, and so it's simply worth it to be able to just get closer to the truth of our world, and that is, that we're simply one planet in the middle of millions and millions of glaxies and stars and planets.

once u realise that, it feels as though my life has been fulfilled and it doesn't matter if we're gone and wiped out, because the stars will keep on shining and the planets will keep on spinning even if we're gone. that's the impact that mankind has on nature.

p.s. plus wishing upon a shooting star is really romantic! for all u know, it may come true. ^^ im going to see if my wishes will come true...