[A Magical Evening]
1. I have just come back from a short vacation in Johore. We took a boat from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Sebana Cove where we had excellent seafood for lunch and dinner at Sungei Rengit, visited an ostrich farm (run by an ex-RSAF C-130 pilot) and sailed in a small boat into a mangrove-lined tributary of the Johore River to see fireflies in the early evening.

2. It was a magical evening. With no moon, the fireflies made the mangrove forest look like Christmas trees. When our boat came alongside, the fireflies were all around us. We collected about ten of them and put them into a plastic bag. They were not difficult to catch. (But how the legendary Chinese scholar was able to collect enough to study at night by their light, I don't know.) Up above, the clear sky sparkled with stars. Throughout our excursion, the Southern Cross stood sentinel. When we looked down, we thought we saw fireflies underwater. But they were not insects but countless dots of phosphorescent plankton. It was as if they and the fireflies were in competition with each other and with the stars overhead.

3. Living in a brightly-lit city, we lose our sense of the night. Only an hour away by boat, we entered another universe that night at Sebana Cove.

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