When people ask me to go watch fireworks, I always say, “Siao lah. Never see before is it?”

I will never trouble myself to travel somewhere just to see some stupid sparks in the sky, especially since I know that 20,000 other people will be there fighting for the best spots to stand at and wait for hours.

But when fireworks are brought to me, in a manner of speaking, I can’t keep my eyes away.

Fireworks make such sluts of us.

On National Day evening, which was last night, when half the nation was out being stampeded by the other half of the nation in the name of patriotism, I was hiding in the comfort and safety of Cindy’s apartment.

Cindy and Paul had kindly invited us over for dinner, solving our dilemma of wanting to meet for dinner but not wanting to be stampeded by patriotic Singaporeans.

The apartment had a great view and we were actually able to catch some of the fireworks display from the balcony.

Nice.

Of course, one can’t fully enjoy a fireworks performance if one is busy snapping photos throughout, hoping some of the shots will turn out good. But that’s one of the job hazards a blogger has to get used to.

Then again, no one wants to see crappy fireworks photos taken with my gimpy camera because the entire nation of people have already seen the real thing for themselves, anyway.

So I’m going to show you something else, instead.

Smoke!

Shortly after the first pattern exploded in the sky, smoke started forming.

It thickened progressively and hung in the sky like a widow refusing to move on with her life and find another man.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best analogy in the world but it kinda just popped in my mind.

Very soon, the smoke blocked our precious view of the fireworks.

My friends and I booed at the smoke, which, of course, was unmoved by our impassioned jeers.

A few minutes after the fireworks started, it stopped.

A thick cloud of smoke streaked across the skyline.

It got thicker by the second and refused to dissipate.

I don’t know what the view was like for those with front row seats at Marina Bay. I hope the smoke didn’t disturb their show.

For us in the apartment, when the fireworks came again, it looked like this.

Excuse the bad focus. My hands were shaking with excitement.

Not really.

I just wasn’t able to get a good shot because there were only a few sparks this round.

All I got managed to get a good shot of was the smoke.

We decided to go back to the living room to watch TV.

Periodically, over the next hour, I went outside to check on the smoke situation. Here’s my stills version of a time-lapse.

The entire sky was totally smoked out after about half an hour.

It took about an hour for it to clear considerably.

Oh, well, at least it was something different to watch.

Did you have a good National Day?