Crumminess....

Exams maybe over and the lab back into it's nice neat state (in time for the safety check on Monday) but still feeling a little down. Tried reformatting Delphine yesterday since she seems to keep eating up my C: memory like nobody's business, but somehow managed to mess that up... Gonna try again tomorrow after I borrow some recovery CDs (while waiting for my own ones to come in). Some how am always depressed when Delphine is not in working order. Shows how addicted I am to her...

Just ended an uber long mentors meeting, and while checking the latest news online, and found out that the Sentosa IR bid went to Genting. Don't know if I should be elated/jubilated or heartbrokened that there would soon be whalesharks in Singapore.... Here's the report.

Since this would probably be my last blog entry til Delphine has been re-formatted and back in her happy state, just wanna congratulate Li Ling and Kim Yong on their wedding this weekend~~ Photos would be up once I get Delphine up and running (hopefully this by Mon), and get to organise my online photos properly...

Click for the rambling...

Couple of interesting Hokkien spoofs...

It's quite interesting what can turn up on Youtube ^^ Click to find out!!

Hokkien Bond
Lord of Hokkien

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just one more paper to go...

The past few weeks has seen me sitting alone in lab early in the morning... Just wanted to type a quick entry before settingoff for *yet* another dive at Pulau Satumu today. Do hope that the visibility would be as good as the last time ^^ Slight currents expected though

Somehow this sem's exam period doesn't feel *quite* like exam time to me.... So unmotivated to study... Have a nasty feeling that I am gonna end up with Bs for my Biophysical and Samurai modules, and can kiss my 2nd Upper goodbye~~~ Only left with Marine Biology next Tue but most of my days from now til then have stuff on. Today's dive would be to get more practise with coral ID-ing with urchin-mummy and our very own coral grandmaster!! And diving along with us would be this Canadian dude working on zooanthids at Kuroshio, Japan. He's gonna be giving a talk tomorrow on zooanthid phylogeny ^^

Really looking forward to the day ahead, especially I will be catching Happy Feet with some of the labbies ^^ Hee~~

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60 Years of Asian Heroes

Have yet to edit my first bunch of underwater photos nicely... Probably only get that done after my exams, especially since Youtube doesn't seem to wanna let me upload my video that I managed to take of a crinoid swimming *sigh*

In the meantime, came across this TIME article on 60 Years of Asian Heroes. Guess Singapore's sole claim to fame in this kind of articles would only be our very own Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew. Not surprisingly, some Nobel laureates also got dubbed "hero", such as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi (Peace prize). The winner of this year's Nobel peace prize, Muhammad Yunus, also made it into the list. A number of Japanese also made it to the list, ranging from film directors and architects to business leaders and the creators of instant noodles and Nintendo. Real glad that Miyazaki Hayao made the cut *fangirl squeal* ^^ Here's the listing of the Japanese dudes (why no dudettes?!) who have been dubbed heroes by TIME magazine:

(1) Miyazaki Hayao (STUDIO GHIBLI)
(2) Kurosawa Akira (director of 'old school' samurai flicks)
(3) Tange Kenzo (postwar architect)
(4) Morita Akio & Ibuka Masaru (the people who gave us SONY)
(5) Ozawa Seiji (maestro)
(6) Ando Momofuku (where would we be without instant noodles?)
(7) Hanae Mori, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake & Rei Kawakubo (designers)
(8) Miyamoto Shigeru (Nintendo)
(9) Oh Sadaharu (baseball)

So that's the current affairs update for now... Gotta hit the books again!!

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Last week of semester!?

CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP!!!! It's the last week of lessons already!!! Aaargh!!!!!!! Need to organise notes and MUGMUGMUG!!! Please excuse me...Just needed a little rant-it-all-out therapeutic session before I take the plunge and finish up my samurai term paper.... It's worth 30%, and I have absolutely NO motivation whatsoever to do it properly. Guess I can kiss my 2nd Upper goodbye, and really sit down and think about whether I wanna continue with reef restoration research in Singapore (as opposed to running off to Australia/Okinawa/California to work on crinoids ot whalesharks). Can see why Wai has so much trouble sorting out options. Haha... Still have one semester and my thesis to go though. The good thing about staying with NUS (besides having funding for reef restoration stuff and TA-ship), assuming that they wanna keep me, is that there's also SPS mentoring (that would take up a chunk of my time but gets me paid)... Downside is that Prof would be away teaching in USA during my first semester of post-graduateness (if I stay on and do Master's immediately that is) Too many "ifs" floating around me head now.... Really need to concentrate on the "now" and get through this semester with minimal injuries!!!

EDIT: Before I forget again, saw my first cuttlefish in Singapore waters while diving near the breakwaters at SJI yesterday!!! Pity the crapped up vis but it was still pretty amazing!!!

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CNA provided a source of amusement and worry....

This article and video provided some source of worry in lab yesterday. (Other than the fact that none of us in lab followed the news over the weekend that is...)

70 divers help clean parts of seabed at Pulau Hantu
(here's the video with the interviews...)

The first thing that came to everybody's mind when we read/heard "We used to find a lot of construction materials, long poles, metal bars and rods." was there goes all over experimental racks!! Especially when the video showed them bringing up the some nets, AND OUR LOOSE ANGLE IRONS!!! Prof was chiding us for like having all sorts of structures all over our severely stressed reefs, and that we sould expect this kind of stuff to happen. Oh well. The good thing to note is that: (1) the navy dude used PAST TENSE when he mentioned the metal bars and stuff, probably meaning that they didn't take up many on Sat, (2) they seem to be collecting the unsecured loose bits around, (3) Singapore visibility would probably have prevented them from finding ALL our racks, and (4) personally I highly doubt if they brought lift bags and stuff to bring up the many many heavy structures we have (though them being the navy may mean they DON'T need them) and the POC/urchin-mama thinks that they should have enough sense to leave what seems to be experiments in process alone (but then to most people, those structures would just look like some weird stuff in the sea!!). We would find out after POC/urchin-mama and faviid go there today. *darn* If only I did not have this last assignment to do... would love to go and see what Hantu is like now...

Experimental gripes aside, it IS rather heartening that other fellow Singaporean divers are trying to make a difference/raise awareness of the plight of our local seas by doing this kind of clean-ups once in a while. Good job to those 70 of you!! (though we would like that our racks are left alone ^^) Hantu IS one of the very few places left in Singapore that recreational divers go to for their courses and stuff, and braving the silty waters in a clean-up attempt is really good of them but what about the trash on all our other reefs?

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Thanks Abby~~~

Sir David Attenborough was in Singapore to film some parts of "Life in Cold Blood" at Sungei Buloh. recently!!! *goes into fangirl mode* Didn't get the chance to meet him in person, though Wai and Abby did. Some photos and stuff on Wai's blog, HERE. Anyways, Abby was nice enough to make this photo of us mucking around in the mangroves with Sir Attenborough ^^


Definitely makes up for not being able to meet him... Should make good use of my Kinokuniya membership card and grab "Life on Air" or the Blue Planet book one of theses days....

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It's that time of the semester again...

Somehow this semester, all my 3 modules all don't have any mid-semester tests/quizzes but have tonnes of papers and projects to do, and since I have yet to start on ANY of them... Just can't seem to get out of this procrastination rut... Gonna stay staying over in lab like at least once a week in an attempt to get stuff started, and staying over with a fellow labbie tonight.. Thus marks my lab residing weeks... Pretty amazing that there are 4 of us still in lab at nearly 9 at night, with 2 other coral labbies staying late to do work too... Haha.. Dinner was the usual lab hodge-podge of food, and other than less traffic, it DOES seem like lab during the day...

Oh wells, better get started on stuff and not waste this time that I am scrapping out to do work... All those assignments and stuff I need to prepare for my project as well... Will ramble on some more if and when I cannot sleep....

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It's been a while since I last did any quizzes...

You Have a Phlegmatic Temperament

Mild mannered and laid back, you take life at a slow pace. You are very consistent - both in emotions and actions. You tend to absorb set backs easily. You are cool and collected. It is difficult to offend you. You can remain composed and unemotional. You are a great friend and lover. You don't demand much of others. While you are quiet, you have a subtle wit that your friends know well. At your worst, you are lazy and unwilling to work at anything. You often get stuck in a rut, without aspirations or dreams. You can get too dependent on others, setting yourself up for abandonment.

What Temperment Are You?

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first of two fieldtrips this semester...

Only having 2 official fieldtrips for 2 different modules this semester. Today's trip was to Underwater World. Difficult to be enthusiastic about it since I have been going down REALLY regularly the past 2 weeks, all just to look at my P. damicornis babies~~~ Anyways, the only "highlights" of the trip was the commentary by our respective TAs (funny how ours could remember all the scientific names of the fish and rays and sharks and wat-nots but have the common names slip his mind...), as well as the group competition on filling up the quiz (that turned out to be mainly weird marine biology non-related stuff....) Glad to say that Sponge Bob managed to complete it first!!! Porifera rules!!!

And since the UWS tickets also came with entrance to the Dolphin Lagoon, went over with YL to take a look at out very own Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins aka pink dolphins due to the curious coloration that occurs in only the adults. The juveniles are still normal dolphin grey. Compared to the image projected by many other aquariums/marine theme parks, the dolphins here are in a sandy lagoon (as natural as any other lagoon in Sentosa that are more-or-less manmade) instead of in some pseudo-tank. It's still an enclosure, just a more "natural" looking one (kinda like how our zoo structures their habitats). Nice to see that, and relatively encouraging. The size of the enclosure and the sandiness of it's shores. Won't mind working there short-term or on a temp basis. Work there for long, sure heart break one. (Please excuse my Singlish~~) The dolphins respond to all those cues from the trainers, and I just can't help but wonder how their feelings are actually like when signaled to do those tricks.... There's also the observation that there weren't any full adults there (at least we didn't manage to spot any), so we wonder if any of the dolphins are rehabilitated back into the wild... Seeing dolphins in the wild is so much more rewarding that seeing them do parlor tricks for the amusement of tourists.... Will just have to try my luck at dolphin spotting when we go diving tomorrow instead~~

Hmm.. Would be interesting to try and find out WHY this indo-pacific humpback dolphins are PINK!! Such a shocking coloration, especially when most uniquely colored animals have some sort of toxin or poison in them.... Usually camouflage plays a larger role in the coloration of a species... Perhaps this is due to the lack of natural predators, so they just lose their pigments and the pink is from the blood? *shrugs*

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it's been 3 weeks?!

Oh dear, just realised that I have gone blog-less for 3 weeks!! Hmm... What has happened since the last entry is that I have gone to Tioman (for my nav course), done tonnes of work dives in SG (though I somehow managed to escape doing any at all this week in spite of it being mid-term break), lost and found a dive slate at Kusu, and promptly lost my handphone (on the same day as finding the slate!!!).....

On top of all this, this week has been spent travelling to Sentosa EVERYDAY, to go Underwater World to count my Pocillopora damicornis larvae~~~ Been counting near to a thousand of them daily for the past 2 days... Now all the people working on corals have unofficial titles thanks to Angie.... Coral taxonomist (DW), Coral ecologist (HX), Coral conservationists (Angie, Wai), Coral master (Karenne), silt guy (Eugene 1)... And me? I'm the coral nanny... Feel like asking for a testimonial if I every decide to work in an aquarium (looking after me little ones, the fragments at the level3 aquarium, Angie's little soles, and occasionally, PY's crabbies....) In a way, it's a good thing that I don't have any pets of my own. Definitely won't have any time (or energy) to look after them...


Would be undergoing OJT on the upcoming ReefWalk on 8 Oct (Sun). Do sign up and join me!! For more details and to sign up, go to http://www.bluewatervolunteers.org/ ^_^

Also, the Sunday after that, 15 Oct, the Hantu bloggers are having another dive trip. It's SGD80. Go to the Hantu Blog at http://www.pulauhantu.org/ for more details and to signup!!

Yep, yep... Oh, one last thing. The latest issue of FiNS is out!! =^-^=

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beware of stingray!!

This may be a little late, but I still don't know if I should feel amused, bemused, or saddened about this entire incident. Steve Irwin has had his fair share of close encounters with all sorts of dangerous animals, especially crocodiles, and he met his (untimely?) end at the sting of a ray... He HAS been accused of going too close to animals while filming his documentaries, but I guess all those other animals didn't have any toxin on them to inject him with, plus I really wonder how they managed to get him on to the boat since divers are NOT supposed to ascent too fast or risk DCS... Though honestly, it's a bit of a joke to die of stingray toxin since they are rather shy creatures, and generally not known to be superbly poisonous. However, since he was filming for "Ocean's Deadliest" the ray he encountered was probably one of the few that had toxic stings? Plus the fact that he was unfortunate enough to be stabbed right in the heart (another indication of him being WAY too close)... Oh well, guess it's a mix of largely bad luck and a bit of too much foolhardiness... Wonder if he ever felt that he was invincible with all his experience in handling dangerous wildlife...

So the world mourns the loss of one charismatic wildlife documentary presenter. May not always agree with how he conducts/stages he exploits and stuff but he HAS brought nature to millions of couch potatoes and has contributed to the spreading of wildlife awareness... And so the world learns that stingrays CAN kill.... What a thought to remember as we go diving in the Singapore murk tomorrow...

Steve Irwin killed by stingray
'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin killed by stingray on Great Barrier Reef
Australian 'crocodile hunter' Steve Irwin killed by stingray

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Shower of blessings~~~

Since Sat, things have been great!!! Did our LIT training dives at Hantu on Sat, and hitting the sea after one month sure was great for all 5 of us from lab. SUre, the water is not the usual clear, blue that most divers would be used to, but it was rather interesting exploring a part of Singapore's reefs! Many happenings (yesh, me dive buddy would have LOADS to tell you!), rather trying trying to ID fish in the half-murk, though there were a couple of cool stuff spotted. Like this CUTE bumpy nudibranch with a main turqoise coloring, and a guppy at the guppy hole with it's partner shrimp digging away (probably didn't see me due to the muck!) Can just go on and on but since the more technical points are in my divelog, and the longwinded-non-technical points are in my diary (yes, it's still exists), shall not ramble on any more here...

Then there's Mon, Delphine is revived and back, safely in my arms too!! Though I probably should re-format her real soon (not this week since I have just too many things to do...). Just so happy to have her back, then can hide in room and do work and play and all the things I do with her~~~ Oh, and HY got her call that she got into SPF on Mon as well!!! *jumps for joy*

And to top this all off, THE DIVING SUSPENSION HAS BEEN LIFTED!!!!! Meaning the cloud of gloom can be finally lifted off of lab~~ *bounces* And since Wai and I don't need to meet Martin on Thu anymore, I can go join the rest of the labbies for diving on Thu~~~ And I would be going off with HX to Tioman on Fri for our navigation course. Pls, there's pizza for dinner tonight!! Life just can't get any better, can it?

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so gonna miss you....

In the midst of all the paperwork and medical checkups and trying hard to get the lab un-landlocked, Delphine decided to AWOL on me today... And since she needs to go for a checkup at the service centre, I would be laptop-less for a week~~~ *cries* Rather trying for me since it's like term-time AND my laptop is for work AND play, I wonder if how I am gonna survive this... The service centre better get it all done within the week, man!! Thankfully UROPS taught me to backup stuff, so the super important stuff like my Honors readings are on me thumb ^^ Main problem I would be facing (other than a lack of entertainment) would be not being able to charge my shuffle..... Guess this would be a good time to do my textbook muggings and pack my room....

The medical checkup today was OK, since it was basically checking the normal vitals and like reflexes etc., plus the filling up of a questionaire. Now all that's left is the HUMOGOUS sorting out of safety porotocols etc to make OSHE happy... The basic guidelines are up but seems to be insufficient... Oh well. My part in this mess is to sort out the basic First Aid Kit for both the lab and for the field...

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To ward away those back to school blues....

Here's something boliao for everybody to try ^^

[Do NOT push the red button].

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And so the semester begins....

Have had a total of one lecture this week, since the GE2018 lecturer is on MC, and I had to miss Marine Bio due to the compulsory medical examination we had, and I still need to go down to UHWC again tomorrow morning for urine test No. 2 since some protein was found this morning... Week was normal, except for the fact that we probably cannot dive for quite a while... even if we get the green light by next week, it now depends on how many of the *ancient* regulators and BCDs have been serviced/replaced... And just when I thought there was at least the LIT training dive to look forward to (and the sea to return to), just heard news that we *might* hafta postpone it!!! *sigh*

That's when I turn to blogs like Tony Wu's to cheer me up ^^ So fun!!! Wanna be at Tonga and see humpback mother and calf pairs too~~~ Not exactly at the pinacle of chirpiness but at least there's something to smile about for now.... Just wanna be able to hurry up and do trial dives in Singapore and recce possible nursery sites~~~

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Finally a morale booster!!

After goodness-knows how many semesters of seeing my CAP continuously go down the slippery slope of oblivion, it finally rises!!! *bwahaha* Yet another wonderful advantage of taking 4263, it's a CAP booster!! What more can you ask for in a module? You get to hang out/chill out for a week at Tioman, have tonnes of fun "exploring" habitats, NO exam, and get nice grades!! Wish there were more of these modules to take since I still need to YANK up my CAP if I wanna do my Master's in NUS without needing to work for a few years... But looking at this module's result, it doesn't seem THAT hopeless after all ^^ Just hope that my choice of modules this semester are good, and that I hit a few more As....

More photos have been uploaded to my Yahoo! albums, and here's a LONG overdue photo of my openwater group with Martin, our instructor and Pris and Mark our assistant instructors ^^ Just click for the full view!!

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Week of Ups and Downs...

What a week it has been... Was gearing up (literally and figuratively) for diving in Singapore tomorrow, but it is not to be~~ The whole lab is landlocked with a temporary suspension of all diving activities organised by lab, thanks to a case of DCS (decompression sickness aka bends for the un-initialised) so nobody gets to dive for a while... Prof is trying his best to get this removed since just about nearly EVERYBODY in lab needs to dive (in varying degrees that is) Poor Wai was kinda walking around looking rather depressed and worried (and a little stressed) today since she was banking on tomorrow's session at Raffles' to finish what she could not do on Tues... Do hope that all this gets sorted out soon. Not fun having everybody (including Prof) stressed and low morale...

And on to the "ups"... Got my basic gear (minus the wetsuit, since I am borrowing Jani's in the meantime...) on National Day eve~~~ *bounces* Spent just about all the leftovers of my 'ang pow' money on it, so poor Martin had to count the rather many notes.... *toothy grins* Also had quite a bit of fun copying some of the Chek Jawa cartoons that Ria did onto my mesh bag ^^ Now just need to sit back and hope to hear good news soon~~~ With the gear shopping, it feels like Absolute is turning into my third "home" (after my actual home and lab), at least for this month... Went last week to check out gear, this tues to collect gear, earlier today with HX, and next tues to try out a wetsuit that Martin managed to scout out. Funny how he called me on my handphone just as HX and I realised that he was not back at the shop... And I definitely would be in the shop at least once next month since HX and I are planning to do Underwater Navigation whilst saving up for Advance in Dec....

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LIT training course 01

Why am I blogging when I have like less than 3h to finish up my fish survey report, print it out and get to NUS to hand it in?! Just goes to show how much of report writing I can suffer from before I need a break.... The fish report is like a third done (thankfully the nightmarish freshwater one is all wrapped up!!), no time to recheck my graphs... Just gonna put them in like that and hope I don't die too badly.... And why am I in such dire states? All due to LIT training that we had last night, resulting in me reaching home at 10.40pm and two reports to finish....

Karenne's doing the first few sessions, and learnt of quite a few more survey methods briefly last night at the NParks Biodiversity Centre @ Peirce Rd. Not the most accessible place but still not too ulu... There's another session tonight, same place, same time, to continue on the LIT codes and stuff. Thank goodness I still remember a little of what Zee went through with us last year since I would be near to dead tired by then... So basically for this course, it's NIE, NParks and MBL people all being trained together to do reef surveys, and our first training dive is on the 19th... So there's like 4 days of diving for me this month!! Don't know if I should jump for joy or not.... Should stop my rant here... Need to finish my report....

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As the break fades away....

I really should be working on my report(s) for 4263 but just had to have an entry on this rather good book I came across in the library last week ^^

Was hunting around for some books on swimming when I came across the section with dive books. There was the usual array of books on dive sites all around the world, as well as books for beginners. And it was here that I found Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World by Tim Ecott. (No, it's not a book on tips on improving buoyancy!!) Initially, I thought it was just gonna be a series of dive anecdotes by the author, but it turns out to be this and more! It makes real good light reading material, and starts off with a little history about diving, and how the equipment started off prior to Jacques Cousteau's aqualung; a bit on how sponges were harvested and processed into their usable products; how the cause of bends was found out with more understanding of human physiology; divers pushing depth limits, resulting in the dicovery of nitrogen narcosis.... Have only read half of it, and am enjoying every bit of it. As far as I can tell, even the details on holothurians (the humble sea cucumbers) and sharks and physiology stuff is rather accurate. This is one author who HAS done his background reading. Definitely a good, informative book on mankind's fascination with the deep blue ^^ Do hunt it down in the library when you can!! The Dewey decimal code is 797.23 ECO-[REC].

And for those who are interested, here's the Amazon link to it:

p/s. On a sidenote, am getting my basic dive gear!! Too bad the Atomic Split Fins cost near to 200 after discount, so would be getting Tusa Imprex fins instead..... Now, back to my reports...

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