Updated!!

With this newly found freedom, my promised blog entries are up!!! Kinda cheated by backdating them to the original events but, hey! The photos are there with *hopefully* relevant comments.

Here are the links to them but if you wanna leave andy comments whasoever, please leave them here since it's unlikely that I would actually check the comments on those posts...Enjoy!!

Coral spawning in Singapore
Hantu blog 3rd anniversary dives

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厨 Kuriya @ Raffles City

Had dinner woceht at this Japanese restaurant last night. Kinda a mini-celebration to make the end of undergrad exams forevermore!! Firstly, it's one of the more decent Japanese places in Singapore. Kinda pricey and I had to resist from doing mental conversions as to how much the meal would cost back in Japan... The chorus of "Irrashaimase" as we walked in was like CORRECT for once (compared to all those Jap-wannabe places that DON'T get the terminology or pronounciation correct)The waitress who showed us our seat was pretty competent, even introducing us to today's fresh catch-of-the-day, that included some river crabs that looked all too cute to be eaten!!

When presented with the menu, we were pondering on all the various things that could be tried. And based on what we had in the end, the place definitely warrants future trips!! Me having my Ricoh with me, went trigger happy (mind you, this is the first time I actually took photos of my meal in Singapore!! Previously, only did that in Japan since the presentation was all so nice!!)


This was what woceht had. It's some healthy diet soba thing that had medium-rare egg, ladies fingers, natto, seaweed on the soba.. Rather nice, and as she puts it, rather slimy too~~


This was what I had. Karasumi ochazuke. Basically rice with grilled/barbecued roe, with the option of pouring soba tea on the rice. Silly me forgot to try just the soba tea with the rice and promptly mixed in the wasabi in with everything. So all I could make of my meal was wasabi. Silly, rite?

After which, it was dessert time!!! I ordered the house special. Grilled vanilla ice cream. How did it taste? Imagine roasted mashmallows, then imagine the insides being replaced with nice vanilla icecream~~~


Woceht ordered mochi instead. Here's the view from the side of the imposing blob of red beans....

And of course, the less mposing imaged of thei nice chewy mochi~~~


Yep, so that was our mini-adventure of the day. Nice change from our usual JP haunt. Nice atmosphere to chitchat at the place as well. Wanna go there again soon... Once my pocket recovers a little first ^^

Oh, and here's woceht's take on dinner~~

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Earth Day 2007

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ReefWALK

Today's tide was rather low, and we were able to venture out quite a bit. Also saw tonnes of tiny mobile creatures but thankfully Peizee brought her trusty container ^^ Didn't bring cammie's underwater housing so had to refrain from dunking her into the water. Venturing out beyond the rock bund, applecow spotted this so-not-shy octopus just under a soft coral. This one was rather large, and is the largest I have seen in Singapore ^^ Well, considering the rest were really really small juveniles...


Nearby, a Goniopora head was partially sticking out of the water, giving a rather good juxtaposition on how different a hard coral CAN look like in and out of water. When it's fully submerged, the polyps are fully extended,looking pretty much like little daisies waving about in the sea.
There was also another nicely convoluted Tubinaria around the area. Really glad we had a chance to peep round the rock bund. Haven't really been able to do that the last few walks.


Of course our friends the anemones were out as usual. Don't remember taking any shots of the branching anemones previously, so here's a couple that we saw today. These aren't as pretty or brightly colored like some of the carpet anemones that were also around but they are still anemones all the same!!


The small little tidepools seem to have trapped a number of critters today. First spotted was this common squid. It was nearly black and hardly moving, looked pretty much like a harmless twig at first glance. Closer inspection saw through this camouflage, and after being placed in the tub, it promptly changed to this light yellow-brown.


In another pool, this fire clam appeared to be a peacock anemone, with it's long beautiful tentacles and all. What a shock it gave our guides when they saw it moving!! It's a bivalve, just like the clams we eat, but this one seems to like keeping it's shells ajar when other clams prefer to shut theirs up. It was even "swimming" by propulsion by closing and opening its shells...



Credits go to woceht for spotting this small upside down jellyfish. Seems to be the season for them since they have been sighted rather regularly on other intertidal walks. This little fella was in a really really shallow pool of mud, gently pulsating. I wonder how many of us stepped on it without knowing it was there...The pool of water it was in was really really really shallow, and all that could be noticed was a rather flat pulsating blob in the mud...


There was also a striped catfish sighting that I was too slow to catch on cammie, though spotting this juvenile rabbitfish at the base of a coral head made up for it!! Despite the entire group crowding around it, it just stayed very very still as we all took turns snapping away at it. B even commented that its tail may have been stuck...


And as always, we had our little sales booth set up for everybody (including the guides!!) to buy souvenirs. ^^ Good thing the rain held off despite lightning flashes while we were on our way to Kusu.

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All in one~~~

Wah~~~ I have just managed to finish oogling at the the most recent shuffle, macbook, mac mini, etc. and now THIS!!!

Presenting the iPhone ^^

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Last stretch!!!!

In the midst of printing my thesis and preparing for a group presentation later. Can't believe that a year's worth or work, struggling with uncooperative POC, multi-factor ANOVA etc. is coming to an end. Even my SPS responsibilities would be done once I mark the kids' tutorials and pass KL the marks on Monday... Guess life as an undergraduate officially ends on 25 Apr after my Tropical Conservation exam, and a month or so after that, woceht would be flying off to USA for 2 years!! Don't know what I would be doing once I graduate but am hoping to come to an agreement with the Italians to work on their fieldwork here.

To backtrack a bit, coral spawning on Saturday was simply amazing!! And despite being able to go and help for only one day, I apparently picked the day with the best spawning!!! *bwahaha* Spawning photos would be up soon, especially since I didn't manage to take many photos due to the silty night dive and the lack of a super-macro function. The vis was pretty good at 5m but silty waters aren't exactly the best conditions to use flash...

On a side note, added Clustrmap to the blog and I have blog visitors from Africa?! Is there actually anybody I know there? Interesting...

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Sex in the sea

Coral mass spawning in Singapore!!! So exciting!!! The lab folks and Nparks people were out at Pulau Satumu aka Raffles Lighthouse 6-8 Apr. Managed to hop onto the boat yesterday for my first ever first-hand witnessing of corals spawning!!! Must find ways to get myeself on the boat again next year~~

Anyways, K gave us a quite briefing during the week, along with photos for us clueless spawning virgins, so we would know when to tag the corals when they were on the verge of releasing all those gametes into the water column.

And of course, this being my first time, did try to take photos. Only managed to take *some* nice ones (mainly goniastrea since they took like FOREVER to set and then release) Galaxea shot came out TOTALLY blurred since cammie couldn't decide on where to focus with those sperm-egg packs and all those uber long tentacly tentacles everywhere...


Getting ready for the big event....

Still setting...and setting...with tentacles slightly out...

Is this cool or what?! Almost the entire head is getting ready~~~


And off it goes!! In drips and draps....

Cute pink little packages. Mr stork definitely dives and visits underwater too~~~ Spawn coral spawn!!!


Not forgetting other denizens of the reef that are up and about at night~~ Whoppee~~~ Sure was an eye-opener for me!!!

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The end is in sight!!!

Count down to thesis dateline... 4 days to go. Managed to cough up a complete draft!! It still needs quite a bit of work but IT'S OUT!! Taking a "break" from reading it by grading 71 presentations *groan* and going for night spawning at RAffles today!!! *bounces* (Here to read woceht's experience yesterday ) Then back home super late, *attempt* to go for easter service tomorrow morning, then back to the paper mill... In the meantime, sent my semi-wrecked train to a couple of friends for comments and stuff... Need to remember to print the hardcopies out for k and urchin_kaka to help me edit~~

*phew* just need to survive thesis, trop con project and sps commitments til end of next week, then would just be left with one exam ^^ Heehee~~~ Can't really be bothered about grades at this point in time but just wanna graduate with a decent score.. So after 25 April would be FREE!!!! Free to go through my backlog of photos... Just remembered that I have yet to organise my 4 weeks worth of photos when I went to Japan last year....

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International Year of the Reef 2008

In honor of the International Year of the Reef in 2008, Reef Check is requesting you to sign our Declaration of Reef Rights shown below. We would like to present the Declaration along with a list of one million names to all coral reef country governments in January 2009. The purpose of this pledge is to highlight the high value of coral reefs and to encourage all people and governments to support coral reef conservation. After reading the pledge please fill out the form below and encourage your friends to sign up. You must include your full name, country and an email – but if you want to be kept informed about progress on the Declaration and coral reefs, please fill out the complete form. Thank you for supporting coral reefs.

Dr. Gregor Hodgson, Executive Director
Reef Check Foundation

Click here to sign the International Declaration of Reef Rights

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YASHA

OK, despite the previous post, took the rest of Sat off from work and did a bit of catching up on dramas ^^ Found this interesting Jdrama, YASHA, starring Itou Hideaki (male lead in the Umizaru series) and Abe Hiroshi (male lead in the TRICK series). It aired in 2000 and has a rather interesting suspense-thriller styled storyline involving genetic modification/cloning, viral outbreaks. Despite having mild homosexual undertones (that CAN be interpreted as "best buddies", really worth watching. What's it with Japanese dramas that they are able to pack a a punch in like 11 episodes? Comparatively, the recent SG dramas seem to keep getting longer and longer.... Just dragging on the plot...

Okies... used up my break time... back to drafting drafting drafting...

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