I headed for the Night Safari at 8:15. After swiping my metro card, I descended to the small but busy platform. Colored lines and arrows covered the ground, slotting commuters into position. A thick glass barrier separated the platform and tracks, purposely discouraging suicide while unintentionally providing a mirror. After checking my tan, I looked up to the display for arrival times. I noticed that trains arrived every three minutes. Then I noticed I was the only one looking at the times. Singaporeans, it seemed, just trusted their metro; they didn’t need to check; they knew the next subway was on its way. And, sure enough, soon enough, a subway glided in, parting its sliding doors, and I shuffled in along with a line full of phone-staring commuters.

During the trip, I drank from a bottle of cold tea, then a lady informed me there was no drinking allowed on the trains. I could be fined, she whispered. Really? I thought. Korea had some subway rules, like “don’t eat smelly food” and “don’t speak too loudly”, but the punishment meant being yelled at by a grandma—I’d never heard of someone getting fined for mores.

I felt a surge of anxiety. I didn’t want to get fined. I hid my bottle in my pocket. I scanned the roof for cameras. I tried to spot undercover cops. Looking at faces, I saw zero signs of discomfort or tension; everyone seemed to accept these hyper-organized, hyper-regulated, no-hydrating-allowed conditions. On the surface, the Singapore metro crowd looked like every other big city metro crowd: tired bodies on smartphones. But, I thought, there had to be differences under the surface. People here must think differently! Their souls must grow in a different mold!

In order to find out, I started phone peaking.

My subject was next to me: a man, around 50, in black dress pants and a loose fitting, tucked in grey shit. He held a support handle with his left hand and his phone in his right, far enough from his body that I could clearly see that he was Facebook scrolling. On his feed, I searched for Singaporean culture but found only what I’d already observed: despite Malay being the national language, everything was in English, including this man’s social media. As he continued to use his phone, I became less interested in culture and more riveted by the subject himself, specifically the way he scrolled.

His scrolling was savage. His fingers were uncivilized. They moved too slowly, too gently, as if they didn’t know that 90% of his feed was useless content spat out by a greedy algorithm. His thumb stopped too often. It was as if everything on his feed was important, as if each photo was of his daughter’s new boyfriend, as if each video was footage of his house getting robbed, as if each status was a handwritten break-up letter. Watching him scroll through Facebook was like watching a grown man learn to walk: uncomfortable yet fascinating. I would’ve stopped spying if he was looking at pictures of people I didn’t know, but he wasn’t.

Instead, his feed was filled with dating-related content. He paused his contemplative thumb on a text-based image (red background, white letters) that said, “DATE SOMEONE THAT DESERVES YOU”. I looked at his face for a reaction, a hint to why he was staring at this sentence, but I only saw the flash of his screen shining in his eyes. I turned back to his phone and as each second passed, and his thumb stayed stagnant, I lost trust in my understanding of this presumed platitude: DATE SOMEONE THAT DESERVES YOU. There must be something to contemplate here, I thought. This man must be getting insight from this sentence. “DATE SOMEONE THAT DESERVES YOU,” I chanted over and over in my head, like a monk, trying to descend into the unexplored depth of the saying, searching for the enlightenment I must’ve missed. A mental reel of every woman I’d ever dated sped by. Did they deserve me? What if they saw this post? Did I deserve them? What do we deserve? What does deserve eve—

Then he scrolled down. He stopped at the next post. It was a picture of a hot girl taking a selfie, and, at the bottom, it said, “WHAT DIFFERENT GUYS DO WHEN A GIRL POSTS A PICTURE.” The Nice Guy: comments that she looks pretty, which she ignores. The Jock: replies with his own shirtless selfie, which she ignores. The Sweet Guy: sends her a DM about her being beautiful, which she likes, then ignores. The Guy She Ends Up Dating: simply likes her post, but then she directly messages him, “Heyyy”.

After seeing that, I looked away and felt desolate. The fact this content received over 1000 likes was depressing news for this man and all men. I tried not to judge the man on his feed. And when I peaked back at the man’s face, he was as much of a stranger as he’d been 10 minutes ago. The man’s face seemed to exist in a perpetual state of unknowingness, and, as I looked around, so did every other face.

I always people-watched on subways because a commuter is the perfect stranger to invent a backstory to. They offer little personality prompts: a Mickey Mouse phone case, a self-help novel, a beat up Nascar hat, etc. And these possessions act like writing prompts: her daughter bought her this case from a Christmas trip to Disneyland, she’s finding a post-divorce identity, his family went to Indiana in the summer, etc. While you conjure up tales, the subjects sit still, as if they were being painted.

However, I never actually finished any of these people-watching narratives. There was always a distraction; the immediate future always spoiled my imagination. On trips to work, it was thoughts about lesson plans and essay marking. On the way home, it was groceries and cleaning.

Now that I was on vacation and the future was blank and distraction-free, I came to understand my past people-watching habits as escapism. In the midst of my routine weeks, I had yearned for the anonymous, something I didn’t understand, something full of possibility, something that might inject meaning into my boring commute. But now that I was in a place I’d never been, surrounded by people I didn’t know, I no longer cared about inventing characters. I didn’t need to. My brain was fully satiated by the task of understanding my immediate surroundings.

I met Steve at the station. Steve was British and we’d met on the scooter tour. We’d both heard the Night Safari was worth checking out from friends. So, in classic backpacking fashion, we skipped the usual vetting process and made plans to go together the next night.

After a cheap, air-conditioned shuttle, we arrived at the Night Safari entrance. Inspired by the name “NIGHT SAFARI”, I’d initially thought that we’d be getting in Jeeps and wandering across some rough terrain. I’d put on my running shoes because I thought we were getting into the wild. But upon seeing the massive parking lot, childishly animated signs, and actual children scurrying around well-dressed parents, I quickly realized that this wasn’t the great outdoors. The Night Safari was just the Singapore Zoo opened at night.

The place was closer to Disney than Kruger National Park. The wildest thing about it were the food stall prices. Four bucks for water. Six for popcorn. Steve coughed up 9 for a scoop of Ben and Jerry’s. We thought of grabbing a beer, but a Heineken, the cheapest option, was 20.

Furthermore, you couldn’t even walk around freely. It was not a landscape where exciting things happened randomly. The Night Safari was a well-organized collection of shows and tours. To experience it, you had to be at certain places at certain times. Luckily, the zoo was staffed to the brim, and one advised us to start with the fire show, as it was starting in 10 minutes.

Steve and I stood in front of a small stage filled with plastic rocks. Dramatic strings commenced. Then a preset announcement.  Because it was too windy, the young performers would not be using fire torches. Instead, they came out with electronics. They twisted around fluorescent rods, swung flashing nunchucks, and juggled tiny disco balls. The music went from ambient to up-beat techno, and I felt as if I was watching Jedi’s at a rave.

Next we went to an outdoor auditorium for Creatures of the Night. Families squeezed together on the stone slabs. Eyes on young kids darted around, trying to locate where the ominously advertised “creatures” would emerge. On the hour, the stage lights went on and a string section emerged from the speakers (it seemed to be a law that every performance in Singapore commenced with strings). The music faded upon the entry of an up-beat MC in a beige zookeeper uniform. She gave a welcome speech with the calculated enthusiasm one develops after countless repetition. She said hello in 10 different languages. She told people to turn off the flash on their cameras in 5.

Creatures of the Night was a coordinated animal parade. First, a raccoon waddled across the stage. Second, a fishing cat skulked on the back branches. Third, an owl arrived on a portable perch, and after the MC told us how quietly it flew, it silently swooped around the crowd. Fourth, a hyena came out and grabbed a branch. Fifth, a majestic female leopard refused to jump at a stick. Sixth, a couple volunteers held a python. Seventh, the raccoon who’d started the show returned and knocked over three trash bins. The show ended with three otters trotting out and placing the littered cans, bottles, and cardboard in the appropriate bins. I thought of my sister and smiled. She loves otters and is always sending me videos of the mothers swimming with their babies on their bellies, adorably cleaning their hair with their surprisingly dexterous hands. The show ended after the MC told everyone to recycle, save animals, and protect the environment.

Our last stop was the Night Safari. We got into a souped up golf cart called a “discovery bug”. As the vehicle rolled ahead, I listened to competing audio accompaniments. One was by the zoo itself. It came out of the buggy roof. The other came from a lady behind me. When the buggie told me to look at the sun bear, the lady claimed it was fake– an animatron. She thought the same of the rhinos. When the speaker told us to look to the right at the elephant, the lady first said, “It seems excited to see me!”, referencing its large genitalia. After cackling to her own joke, she complained that this zoo was nothing compared to the actual safaris in Africa. She reached her annoying apex when she let off a series of deer inspired puns. “Hang on for deer life!” “How deer you!” “My deer belly is getting big from too many six-packs!” “Be deer or be square!”

After wishing Steve safe travels, the lady’s voice was in my head as I subwayed back alone. I hoped I never ended up like that lady: unappreciative and lame. Then I thought about how lucky I was that that lady wasn’t my mom.

I was done, I decided, with major tourist attractions. I had no desire to pay for the rest of Singapore’s prescribed sites. I didn’t need to drink at the top of the Marina Bay Sands. I didn’t need to go to Disney World. I was going to do what I wanted to do with my time off—without shame, without FOMO, without fear of the “optics”.

So, I downloaded Bumble.