Discovery

I really like coming home in the early afternoon where you can feel the hustle and bustle around you without having to join in the hurried crowd. Stopping at the Ubi Ave 2 bus stop today, I don't know what made me walk off the pavement across the uneven grass patch to peer into the canal. I didn't even realise what I did until I did it.

To my surprise and delight, I saw hundreds of fishes in different shapes and sizes swimming merrily in a trough of water probably less than 15cm deep! I expected to see a dried up canal bed and not a canal teeming with aquatic life! I spotted tiny black and silver ones, larger silver ones with black strips and the eye-catching black ones with a splash of red on their tails. Like every nature deprived Singaporean, I was amazed to see so many living things thriving in a common place drainage canal that is almost dried up!

Debating whether to continue observing and look like a weirdo in front of the full traffic and lunch crowd, I decided to heck the stares and admire my unexpected discovery. The funny thing was when I looked up again, I saw a few people staring down too (totally herd instinct) and overheard a lady commenting that fish shop owners should come and fish for free.

Anyway canals are fascinating and very underrated habitats. The huge canal outside BTC between Bukit Timah and Dunearn Road is visited by egrets in Dec when the canal bed transforms into a swampy mess. The canal along Zion Road have crabs living in muddy little holes while the drains outside Zouk used to have fishes. I guess my grandparents instilled in me this weird habit of looking into canals when they brought me "canal watching" back then.