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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Revving up the engine...

Whoppee!!! Finally got my poster printed ^^ Think it's too wordy but considering that Prof didn't vett it or anything... The edges of the words are a little pixelated, unlike those that were printed at the DBS office but the pictures in those are super dotty... Give and take I guess but at least it's out!!! Now that my writing engine has finally gotten started, I need to whack out a full thesis draft for Prof by Friday or esle forgo the chance of joining urchin_kaka, woceht, DW, applecow, k, and the other labbies who would be going coral spawning next weekend. That and prepare for poster presentation on Tue. Do hope there're no major boo-boos on my poster, and that I know my experimental design and stats well! Extra thanks to woceht for doing some basic discussion on stats online on Wed, and DW for spending half the morning explaining GMAV and stats and stuff to me last Friday. Really helped me alot!!! *hugs to both you angels*

And when I got home, my parents had gotten me more memory whild doing the weekly groceries!! *bwahaha* Am now the proud owner of 512mb, 1gig, 2gig SD cards and 54mb, 256mb, 1gig thumb drives *grins from ear-to-ear* Good thing both my digicams use SD cards, and now there's more than enough memory to split between Caplio and Ixus!! More thumbies to make my work more transportable too!! My Prestigo 100gig external HDD can stay at home and be the backup drive for everything, and my three thumbs can handle the active projects! *yay*

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braindead...

Okies, so maybe I shouldn't have gone for the Hantu 3rd anniversary dives on sunday but it did give me my first night diving experience in our local waters!! ^^ Same thing as with after AOW, no photos or updates of photos since I am sneaking this entry in despite having the humongous T-H-E-S-I-S hanging over my head. Oops, did I just say "hanging"? More like urgently pressing down on my shoulders, giving me all sorts of aches all around~~ Been pushing all non-urgent matters (meaning EVERYTHING) to after thesis submission, meaning I am technically off the hook after 11 Apr, 10am but need to do catching up on everything else!!

Before I go on an unstoppable rampage, I wanna say a BIG THANK YOU to the Debby and her team of volunteers for bringing us out and about Hantu ^^ Especially my guide Gina and buddy, Chay Hoon!! Real pity about your cam's batteries but it sure was enjoyable diving with you guys!! Saw tonnes of juvenile goatfish, gobies, crabs (during the night dive), crinoids, icon seastars, cuttlefish, rays.... Missed out on the seahorse since I lost G and CH at that time... Also, taking photos during night dives sure is challenging in Singapore. All the silt that showed up in the photos!! *yes, promise that the photos who slowly but surely appear after 11th Apr* Not to forget the interesting bunch of people who were also onboard while we chitchatted, dived, and strolled on Hantu with ^^ Jimmy, Som, Han Peng, Geraldine, Marcel etc. Hope to see ya guys on more dives in the future!!!

On to the explanation on why I am braindead. Another reason why I shouldn't have gone on the dives on Sunday is that I was actually having a bad tummy the few days before. Was thankfully ok by Saturday but after Sunday, seems like I am on the verge of coming down with flu *again* Probably contributed to why I KO-ed for at least half a day on Monday instead of being able to stay up late on Sunday to finish up my poster. It's still not done since I am still struggling with the stats!! Bane of my life!!! But I cannot admit defeat!!! Not if I wanna continue doing research... *groans* Woceht has been real patient helping decipher the tangle that I am in about attempting multivariate analysis, thanks girl!!

*drats* Need to grab a quick bite before the SPS seminar... Aargh. Why am I a specialist mentor doing Honors intensive period?!

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Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

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Hantu 3rd anniversary dives~~

Am cheating a little since this post is coming up a month late... Hehz... Am finally free to sort through the photos and pick some nicer ones out to be posted here. Still need some time to sort out all photos properly to put in my online albums though. Below are some of the things we saw, definitely have a whole bunch more but those are all going into the albums!!! Not surprising that we saw quite a number of nudibranchs since I was with Gina and ChayHoon, expert nudi spotters~~

The echinoderms...tubular feet organisms

First iconic seastar I have seen in Singapore, as well as first seastar I haven seen while diving!! All those knobblies and commons seastars I have come across were all during intertidal walks....

First cushion star while diving in Singapore!!! Color looks off since I had to take it with flash using the IXUS underwater mode... Manual with customised white balance works the best, but when I need to use the flash....

Fishies....Never really felt up to the challenge of taking fish photos in Singapore's murk... Generally end up rather obscure it definitely was a day to "seas the moment"!!

Common copperbanded butterfly fish that we actually have on our stamps.. Usually seen in two and difficult to take since they seemingly disappear with a quick turn.

Butt view of one of the larger gobies around our shores. This fella seemed to be hunting amongst the holes, and it's rather fast, so shots are generally but views.... [EDIT] Checked with K and this goby is known as the barred high fin goby aka beautiful goby.

Anemonefish!! First time I am seeing them outside of Kusu ^^ These are false clowns since they lack the black band between the white and orange bands. The larger one wasn't exactly very welcoming when the 3 of us were just taking shot after shot after shot of them and their host anemone...

And on to corals!!!

Closeup of a mushroom coral. Unlike other hard corals, this group of corals are actually free living, meaning they are MEANT to be loose and "mobile". Love this closeup since you can see pretty colored bandings near the mouth ^^

This one is a super asymmetrical mushroom coral. You can see that the top side is HUGE and the bottom kinda small in comparison. Wonder what happened to make it become this way? Maybe it got broken in half before and the smaller half is some osrt of re-growth?

Real beauty, ain't this? Anchor-head coral, also known as Euphyllia. This hard coral hsa it's tentacles out 24/7, making ID-ing pretty easy, even during the day!!

Not exactly sure which coral this is. Can tell that it's an octocoral, and it's rather pretty since they look like a mini-meadow of flowers on the substrate....

Crabbies~~~

Kinda did a quick collage of the crabs we saw... The bulk of them during the night dive, with some rather shy crabs making a quick appearance from cracks and crevices during the day...

Cuttlefish~~~

Finally managed to catch a full grown cuttlefish in Singapore on my cammie~~~ The super friendly small one we were "playing" with some time back doesn't count!! Bwahaha...Cuttlefish!!! Buibui!!

Stingrays~~

All of these are our common blue spotted stingrays but to see ray after ray after ray, all so nicely staying on the substrate and posing for us (while eyeballing us carefully) was just amazing!!!

Flatworm~~

Yar, I know this is the super common flatworm that we just keep on seeing both in the sea and in the intertidal areas. But this one was looking at me head-on!! So my photoshooting skills aren't great.. It was looking at me nicely and I still got it a little blurred up~~ Grr... But it took of off and swwam almost immediately leh...

Sluggies~~ ^^

Too many nudibranchs to post individually, so collage time!!! All so chio!!Some were just a cm in length and I still wonder how I managed to get the blue and green one in focus...

More slugs~~These are sea hares. Tiny and cute and green!!!

Yep. So who says that our seas are devoid of life? Hantu may be heavily dived but it's STILL teeming with life!! And really, kudos to Debby and her Hantu bloggers team for dutifully showing our reefs to divers every month!! Hope to dive with you guys soon~~

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北极星的眼泪 [张栋梁]

像断了线 消失人海里面
我的眼终于失去 你的脸
再等一会 奢望流星会出现
愿 如果真的实现
爱能不能永远
明天 或许来不及变
但曾经走过的昨天 越来越远
北极星的眼泪 说不出的想念
原来我们活在 两个世界
北极星的眼泪 你哭红的双眼
被淋湿的诺言 淹没在心里面
我抬头看着 爱不见

再等一会 奢望流星会出现
愿 如果真的实现
爱能不能永远
明天 或许来不及变
但曾经走过的昨天 越来越远
北极星的眼泪 说不出的想念
原来我们活在 两个世界
北极星的眼泪 你哭红的双眼
被淋湿的诺言 淹没在心里面
我抬头看着 爱不见
当对的人 等不到对的时间
就在放开手的瞬间 爱撕成两边

北极星的眼泪 说不出的想念
原来我们活在 两个世界
北极星的眼泪 你哭红的双眼
被淋湿的诺言 淹没在心里面
我抬头看着 爱不见
整个宇宙都 流眼泪

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What happened to rationality?

Human handling of polar bear stirs flap

This article raised a number of questions with regards to zoos and human meddling in the lives of animals. Just because Knut's mum abandoned her two cubs, doesn't mean that she would have done so in the wild, and definitely doesn't justify outright murder of a polar bear cub!! Yes, an abandoned cub in the wild would mean near to sure death but it still isn't definite, and aren't polar bears supposed to be protected? They definitely are endangered animals. Maybe making the cub dependent on humans isn't exactly the best thing to do but taking the other extreme of just killing it off ain't right either. What happened to methods of remediation? How about using puppets or roleplaying etc. to attempt to teach Knut how to fend for himself, so that he could be re-introduced into the wild? Wouldn't that make more sense, even from an animal rights point of view?

Really, the bizarre things humans think of protesting about. If the only solutions we can come up with when faced with problems with regards to animal protection are only the two extremes, we probably would end up doing more harm than any good at all. How then can we be responsible caretakers of this earth of ours? How then can we face the inevitable climate change (or crisis) and continue to protect our lives, livelihoods, and biodiversity?

[EDIT]
And here's yet another piece of disheartening news about another group of mammals, our ceteceans. This period is depressing enough with my thesis looming over my head and all the mentoring duties I have cramped in the next 2 weeks, and I definitely could do without such disheartening news...

Plight of River Dolphins

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Just because I haven't done this for a while...

3 things that scare me:
Falling from a height
Total darkness
Marilyn Manson

3 people who make me laugh:
Just pick any 3 of my friends ^^

3 things I love:
Books
Nature
Sun

3 things I hate:
Pickles
Green peppers
Fickle-mindedness

3 things I don't understand:
Physics
Macromedia Flash
People

3 things on my desk (in lab):
Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide
The Statistical Sleuth
FiNS magazines

3 things I'm doing now:
Playing KoL
Chatting online
Typing this

3 things I wanna do before I die:
Visit random places in Japan
Visit random places in UK
See whaleshark in the wild

3 things I can do:
Dive but not drive
Swim but not cycle
Play the piano but not a guitar

3 things you should listen to:
Common sense
Your conscience
The sea

3 things you should never listen to:
Offkey singing
Jolin Tsai
Ambiguity

3 things I'd like to learn (haven't started yet):
Driving
Cycling
Korean

3 favorite food:
Udon
Laksa
Cha soba

3 beverages I drink regularly:
Water
Orange juice
Vitasoy

3 TV shows/books I watched/read as a kid:
Thundercats
Enid Blyton
Captain Planet

=======================================================

And thus I complete today's quota of randomly useless stuff to do ^^

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To Dayang and back...

Whoopee!!! Had my quick weekend break to do AOW before resigning myself to the mercy of the paper mill. Thanks everyone for a relaxing and enjoyable weekend. Despite not being able to find that elusive whale shark, we sure did see many many fishies (too many triggers for my liking, many bumpheads), many cuttlefish, many crabs, cushion stars etc. Not to mention learning a new fin stroke and being an extra in rescue training as well. Sorry to disappoint but really have too many readings and projects and stuff to do so no intensive photo blogging but I promise to have the photos up in my albums once semester ends!!!

Now... do I really wanna go do rescue as well?

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Ghost Rider

Glad I managed to catch this movie with woc. ^^ Interesting that I never knew that this Marvel character even existed til earlier this year when I had my movie spree in Jan and saw the trailer. The special effects are so cool!!! Pretty decent acting though not much suspense in the plotline (didn't help that we had a "helpful" father-son duo behind us giving a running commentary in chinese...) Also have a new actor to swoon over. Matt Long who plays the 17 year old Jonhy Blaze. With the special effects literally burning up the tarmac, Ghost Rider is DEFINITELY worth a watch in the cinema (unlike Epic Movie that looks amusing but prob worth just watching at home on a tv set). As I already mentioned, no suspense here. Pretty much the usual good triumphs over evil, love conquers all kinda storyline. (Watcha expect? It IS based on a comic series!!) Interesting how the FIRE element seems to be able to overpower EARTH, WIND, and even WATER. Thought it was kinda like scissors-paper-stone where earth and fire basically don't do much to each other, wind strengthens fire, and water kills fire? Yet another interesting thought that popped up at the end of the movie: #01 top perk of being a Ghost Rider - green transport since cool bike (oops, meant "trusty steed") runs on a renewal resource, brimstone fire from hell. (Just imagine trying to use petrol with all those flames. Asking for an explosion to happen!! Or maybe that's why EVERYTHING's on fire - petrol leakage *grinz*)

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Happy Chinese New Year!!

Too many things happening one after another, thus the neglected blog.... Finished all my ReefFriends training dives (now for OJT-ing), first draft for my thesis intro has been submitted and shot down by Prof, application for the MBARI summer internship has been sent, preparing for the last round of spawning from my POC *keeps fingers crossed* The visibility in Singapore has definitely gotten better and I promise to have new photos in my Yahoo albums by the end of next week. Will also try and solve the problem with my Youtube account that some how compresses ALL my videos to like 4 seconds worth of footage :(

Really need to increase my productivity rate since our mid-semester break is half eaten up by the CNY celebrations/holidays, and there's my AOW and the Hantu bloggers anniversary dives in Mar. Not to mention whipping my thesis into shape and finishing our tropical conservation project by the end of Mar as well. Would get to know the results of my summer internship application by mid-Mar, so there's that to stress over. After finding out that there's another summer field studies thing that I also wanna go for, I don't know if I would be happy if I get to go California. Nowhere near completing the exploration of SEA diversity and stuff!! *How?* For all my ranting, might not even get into either summer prog since they only have like 10 vacancies each... Oh well, if you see me with like no hair in April, you'll nknow why. ^^

Anyways, here's wishing everybody a happy (and relaxing) Chinese New Year and mid-semester break as we usher in the year of the pig!!! Also to good weather on the 19th for our ReefWalk at Kusu ^^ SO nervous. First time guiding!!

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