Singapore lies 1.5 degrees from the equator and has a tropical rainforest climate with temperatures that constantly linger around 30 degrees Celcius. Naturally, bugs love this place.
I’ve taken for granted the fact that I don’t really encounter bugs on a daily basis back in Evanston because in Singapore, bugs are everywhere. From armies of ants on the sidewalk to clumsy moths that eagerly fly onto my face while I’m walking, I’m constantly reminded of the fact that despite the big shiny buildings and large paved roads that may fool you otherwise, Singapore is still the center of the tropics.
At my dorm, which is right in front of a dense patch of trees, fumigation is a daily necessity. During the day, opening my windows when it gets too hot is risky because bugs could invade my room, but the heat is worse so I’ve embraced the bugs in exchange for fresh blows of air. Thankfully, I’ve yet to get bitten by any bugs. But those who haven’t been so lucky have been forced to develop a habit of wearing insect repellents whenever they go somewhere that has a decent amount of trees.
The bugs kinda add to the foreignness of it all. Back home, I’ve never had to worry about bugs as long as I cleaned my room of leftover food and candy wrappers. I’ve also never been chased by a fly before and until that one moment here when I did get chased by a fly, I didn’t even knew that flies could chase people around. Even now as I’m writing this post there’s a small bug that keeps flying back and forth in front of me, but as with many other things in Singapore, I’ve learned to get used to it.
This is the point where I would put a picture of my cockroach neighbor but since that might be an unpleasant view, here’s a picture of a cat I met in a cat cafe instead.
