It’s hard to know a place by car. When I travel, I walk a lot, and when possible, I bike.

Singapore is tiny. It’s a city and it’s a country and it’s a dictatorship and it’s a melting pot and it has no natural resources. When Malaysia let it go, it was a small fishing population. Didn’t produce much. When it became Singapore, they opened themselves up to banking and finance. Now it’s the financial capital of Southeast Asia.

That said, it’s Asia light. They wouldn’t like for me to say that, but it’s true. It’s an easy place to navigate. It’s utterly safe. It’s modern.

But it has no resources. Here’s a photo as I biked from downtown Singapore to the airport (let’s call that a 50 km round trip in excruciatingly-hot and humid conditions along the coast). This woman was the only person in the water having fun. The only one. She was paddle boarding before immense fleets of fuel tankers. Singapore is almost entirely reliant on what we call liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is just natural gas that has been compressed by lowering its temperature drastically and packing it into vessels. When it reaches Singapore, it’s stored in tanks and then used in combined cycle gas turbines to make electricity.

If anyone decided to stop sending natural gas to Singapore, the country would die. It has no other options at the moment. Behind the paddle boarder, the ships were lined up, hundreds of them trying to drop their loads, a logjam flotilla caused by the ongoing issues at the Strait of Hormuz. The world is just like Singapore, depleting fast. But I bet she didn’t pay any attention to those massive boats. She was too busy staying upright.

My hotel is right near Lau Pa Sat, a type of food court that has more different types of food than I can count. I’m addicted to it. Satay and wontons and dumplings and noodles and curries, the smell of smoke from the charcoal bbq’s, way too many tourists but the food is exquisite.

I biked along the Singapore River. It’s an amazingly bike-friendly city, with bike paths well-marked everywhere. When the rain came, I hid under a shelter with a number of families. One woman kept ducking her grandchild into the rain, and the little girl screamed in pleasure. It was so humid, but there’s no bugs. The River eventually turned into the Alexandra Canal, and then the Canal… it ended. It vanished. They buried the rest of the watercourse. It’s under the city, in concrete culverts and concourses that you can’t see. We do this in the western world too. We concrete-ify our waterways and duck them under cities so that we can develop. The trend now is to bring them back, to naturalize the flow. Singapore is so concentrated that I’m not sure it will be easy to do that.

Everyone goes to the Bay, and the Gardens on the Bay… majestic fake trees lit-up like permanent Christmas, with walkways between them at a dizzying height. There’s a ship on top of a hotel. There are dragon boats in the water. A lion-lizard spitting water back into the ocean.

At one point on my long bike ride, exhausted and overheated, I stopped next to a tree and stared at a beach. Touched the water. You have to touch the water. Then I sat on a bench and started to fade, like I didn’t exist, like this place didn’t exist. Like we’re a miracle or an accident, as though we’re alone but we can’t possibly be. They dumped a bunch of unidentified aerial phenomena footage they other day, and everyone’s talking about aliens, but there’s no aliens in those videos. It’s all very likely explainable. It’ll be fine. We’re alone, and it’s okay. We still make miracles. And we make messes.

I stopped for a while in this shelter. It was on the way. Built by people. Built by us.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. In the breaks, I get a bit of writing done. The thoughts come when I’m biking, especially when I’ve stretched the ride out way longer than I should have, and I’m hurting. Focuses the thoughts. Everything else goes away and you’re wake-dreaming. Paddle boarding on a vibe. There were people curled up under the underpasses, getting out of the sun, having a picnic in the shade.

I rented the bike. I made sure I got a bike helmet, because something might actually be going on in here. A tiny bit of heatstroke can reset you, but I wouldn’t advise too much of it.

It’s a pretty place but I wouldn’t live here. It’s not free… but what is? If the aliens are here, why? Did someone tell them they had to visit, or are they exploring? Is coming to our world the equivalent of me biking around a foreign country? Trying to understand it all and why it exists, and in the meantime, finding a kernel of creativity here and there? I bet that’s it. If they do show up, that’s what they’re going to tell us. They’re out to see what other cultures are like, and possibly to remind us that all human beings, no matter our language or race or afflictions, are in the same boat. One tiny planet that we abuse regularly because we don’t know any better, most people trying to do their best, successes and failures cuddling under the sheets making offspring; fabricating ideas that lead to stories, and faraway places where we find ourselves, and lose it all. I believe in you, and I may not even exist.

I’m going to sneak this post out at a terrible hour. It’s subterfuge and espionage on my part. It’s undercover. I just don’t want to be too upright, man. I have places to go, and words to write now that I’ve got a -86oF coffee and some butter tteok. All is well. I hope it is with you, too.