Changes

Changes in routine that I like.  Change is a good thing and so far I'm beginning to detect a pattern that the amount of time measured in ~2 years has been my threshold for anything.  It had better not be a curse as well.  I am in a house-hunting situation at the moment, trying to find a new place to stay for the next year.  In doing so, I don't think I've ever spoken to so many new faces within a week before, in and out of school.  Calling homes wondering if they'll be willing to adopt me as a new housemate..


Today was Day #5 in the lab and I've been fortunate to see some amazing creatures, mostly dead.  Yesterday while sifting through a handful of sand, I came across something nut-shaped and pale brown in color.  It was actually a dead sea heart/sea almond that when alive, burrows into the sand for food and protection.  My initial thought was along the lines of "damn, how did this mangrove seed get here?!"..which was actually a very bad guess.  A sea heart is also known as an irregular urchin that's about the size of an acorn. Its mouth is located on the underside of the body and so food is scraped off the sand surface as it grazes.  I don't know whether its due to death or its frozen state that caused its spines to be brittle and coarse.   But I wasn't stung and that was all that mattered.

The girl working in front of me, who is also sifting through seagrass but for fauna, found a 5 mm pycnogonid (sea spider) under the microscope.  I was unfamiliar with the term and I kept thinking that it was a baby fish trapped in the seagrass.  Another bad guess.  Turned out to be a tiny sea spider with all of its legs intact and attached.  I was amazed..like shit now we have to worry about spiders in the sea??

...been driven by coffee lately.  I've stopped the Tea phase that I had proudly maintained for 6 weeks a while back.  Well, didn't have to wait for two years to end it.  Green tea will always be there at the back of the cupboard but as of yet, nothing delivers a good kick in the morning like the campus ice coffee.

Chasing tides

 

Sunset overlooking Moreton Bay

A bit of blogging before I begin work.

Things have been moving at a fast pace recently and I've been enjoying the ride so far.  God has been good.  It's funny (and maybe a little pitiful to you) that I am beginning to enjoy scientific work in most of my 3rd  level courses.  Two weeks ago I found myself jumping off a research boat, weeding out seagrass and placing them into bags.  A few minutes of navigating around sites with a GPS led us (Liz and I) to a the direction of a small motorized boat.  There were two people from the Dept. of Environment on board, whose names I learnt but forgot after 5 seconds.  We were standing in a few feet of water when they steered toward us.  They have been circling the area for turtles and been doing a "turtle rodeo" in the area.  I was lucky enough to see how a TR was done while my left hand was holding a lame bag of seagrass.  A TR is a way of capturing turtles in the wild, by leapfrogging directly off a boat unto the turtles in the water.  The turtle was then lifted off the water and placed in the boat for measurements and sampling.

It was cool witnessing a TR and I regret that my camera was in the boat at that time.  All I got to take was a few pictures of the boat, some very exciting seagrass underwater, and a sunset on the way back.

  

The bow of Pelagia, our boat of the day

Hanging out

It's easy to detect seagrass-- just look for dark patches in shallow water.

 

This is the natural state of Halophila spinulosa just before I came to weed them all out.  Had a close encounter with a fireworm that had been buried near the roots of the seagrass.  From the stories I heard, fireworms aren't the best things to come across in the sea.  Their spines deliver toxins that are capable of melting thru diving gloves and cannot be neutralised using vinegar or urine.  I stayed back to watch it crawl around for a while before moving off to another area.

So that's just a bit of what that has been keeping me busy the past week.  I've been left on my own to work on these samples in the lab so it's been a new experience so far.  I keep sane by going out for movies, and imagine my surprise when I watched Inglorious Bastards (can't be bothered with the other spelling) last Friday. Omg, the blatant shooting and murder in the movie is supposed to be funny?!  You watch it and tell me how it is.

The End of the Line

Back on dry land

Gbye, island paradise and gbye to that pina-colada feeling of detachment.


I'm back in school again.  My fifth and hopefully, last semester here in Brisbane.  Two years ago around the same time in July, I entered into this ridiculous time-wasting course called STAT1201.  That and Organic Chem.  God help me if I ever have to do them again.  During STAT1201 I realized a hatred for all things statistically related, which later unfortunately turned out to be really all things written in scientific journals.  Two years on, my ignorance in stats has become appalling and the frustration and  inconvenience of "picking-up-as-I-go-along" is really getting to me.  Stats has given me a slap in the face for doing so the past two years.  Well, when it comes to stats analyses, there's usually no where to run until you've either mastered the fundaMENTALs for yourself or there's a patient, external source of info to curse and cry to for help.  So this is my little declaration to all of humanity, no, to myself to get my crap together and swallow the damn stats for the academics. Bite by bite.

I found this book called "Biostatistics: The bare essentials" by Norman and Streiner in the library this afternoon.  I've chosen this book because it was humorous.  There.  Hopefully it'll wind up teaching me a thing or two about stats. The authors mentioned this apt condition faced by many stats-challenged people called "photonumerophobia" which is the fear that one's fear of numbers will come to light...haha!  Happened too many times actually.

I did also locate a spot in the library that I could potentially like.  3rd floor near the toilets and the stairwell.  No computers around, just a smooth, long, wall-facing table.  The only sound that escapes into this space is the blasted hand dryers coming from the toilets, giving an annoying sign of human presence every now and then. 

Dispatches from the reef

The reef.  The big blue.  Here I am on One Tree Island, on Day 4, trying to get my pictures up on the blog just before I leave in a few more days.  Life is great out here.  I am about 100 km off the coast of Australia and the lecturers do a great job of warning us not to swim as the tide sweeps out, because if we do ever get caught, we're en route to Fiji.  

 Day 2 snorkelling at the "gutter" region of the island.  No fins allowed because the tide was strong enough to take us for a ride, and also it was too shallow to paddle.

My big "sigh" moment in paradise.  It's really been a holiday.

A lone ctenophore

Sunset with the Linkia vessel in the f/g

 

Facing Nemo

Xmas tree worms living on coral

The rear end of a sea cucumber.  They're common in the reefs here but the bigger ones are usually found in deeper water.

 Coral polyps

Cushion stars!!  They look like big blocks of star-shaped bread ready to be baked.

Fish, fish everywhere..They swim close to the coral and hide inside whenever they detect a shadow or movement.  So hard to get good closeups of them.

And my last pic, just to make you all jealous.. haha

NOT thinking about life in Brisbane at all.

My heater is my best friend this winter.  Today's weather is rainy with the sky constipated with clouds. It's in a muted shade of grey/white which means doing laundry is out of the question for today and maybe for the rest of this week.  

Last week I walked into a "new" bookstore in the city.  It's new to me because I seldom walk past it, and even then I've only seen their window displays of architecture and design books.  I thought those books were all they carried anyway.  Deanna, you'd love this place.  And so last week was the first time I had discovered this place and I left wishing I had money in my pockets to exchange for those travel books, Moleskines and select fiction.  I absorbed my bubble tea and the warmth of the tiny shop.  Maybe their air-con wasn't working but it's winter anyway.  Now I can happily forget about Borders and their irritating displays of everything from that Twilight movie.

A bit about life right now:

Am currently working on essays for the upcoming trip to One Tree Island.  Looking forward to that more than to sit home reading about pre-settlement behavior of larval fish.  There's a book I want to read, called Collapse by Jared Diamond that I don't have the time for.  New stuff that from last week's rounding in the city:  a white trench coat, a flashlight, Tevas, and a haircut.  All are useful for the trip, except for the first item which will only see the inside of my cupboard for now.

On Sabbath we had lunch at the park and I met an Aussie girl who loves spicy food.  It got so windy and cold later that I stood up and wrapped myself with my picnic mat.  So much for that white coat.


Things that I have been enjoying right now:  The Big Bang Theory-- a comedy about 4 nerds and their hot neighbor, 80s music from Flashdance, the Smithsonian magazine and videos about megafishes.  I think Zeb Hogan has the best job in the world.

I wonder if you've ever laid down on wet grass and watched the clear night sky.  For a moment as your mind takes in the infinite expanse of space you forget yourself.  You fail to find a spot from where you would stand as your mind jumps from star to star.  You move along in your space tunnel like a bubble or a formless blob with eyes.  What's behind you, do you know?  

By this time tomorrow I'll be finished with the semester.  Home free, baby. 
The end will be glorious.  

You don't just walk away when the tap is dripping and likewise, when the dishes are piled up on the rack, MOVE them to the cupboard.  I think we have a system in the kitchen that only one of us in the house seems to understand.

I got back an assignment today and the grade wasn't very good...and gosh, every page was scribbled, not written, with comments.  Feedback is okay but make it legible for goodness sakes. Otherwise how can you as the professor communicate criticism in the first place?  So all in all, it was a bad paper with bad comments and zero after-sales service.  Anyway it's all been done now. That paper is sitting quietly next to my heater drying itself from the rain.  Maybe the warped page would straighten some of the writing out for me.

Hello

Just gave this blog a face lift and lost all my widgets. Whatlah blogger you..so not clever one! This afternoon I decided to delete my multiply blog.  In my case it's pointless keeping two blogs when one is enough to keep me going.  That multiply blog has withstood my neglect since 2004, back in those post-high school days when every trip out of the house was an adventure.  I've written only a bunch of entries, most of them silly and completely inane now that I've gone through them.  Those have gone down the bin except for a few photographs that I've managed to salvage. 

So here it is, my funky looking blog with those birds up there having a conversation. Will need to rebuild those widgets while there's time to waste.  Stay tuned!

Overheard

Yesterday while lining up for food at the after-church picnic, I overheard this conversation between a guest and a friend.

"So is she your daughter?"

To which our guest replied in an offended way, "Can't you tell from her stunning looks?"

*creak creak creak.. children playing in the background* I didn't hear a word from my friend, our guest or her daughter either.

---
Overheard elsewhere:

"I knew he knew me. He knew I knew him. We both know we knew each other."
A guy relating a story to his friend at a sidewalk bench in uni.

"Is generic okay?"
A pharmacist asked when a student handed over a prescription at the counter.

"Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see there's a fire in the cinema. I am not going to sell anymore tickets so would you please make your way downstairs now."
A ticket attendant who was politely trying to shoo customers away from a burning cinema.
What was i doing there? Lining up for tickets and like everyone else, hoping that the fire was small enough to be ignored. Apparently not.

Pics from camp

Sabbath afternoon, near a dried up stream by the road side.

A surprise on the top-left corner

Dinner time with a ukulele. Jack Johnson, play for me!

Hitchhiker

Sunday morning, at the lake before we all started to kayak. Yes, those are lifejackets!

That's me holding a can of passionfruit drink that I do not like.

Somerset lake, in the background, is a 10 minute walk from the campsite. The cabins are built on the edge of the hill..presumably to make space for the huge pool!

The female bunks

Everybody rushed over to the veranda when Tony was kidnapped and thrown into the pool. Poor guy, it was freezing that night!

Tony is the boy in blue pretending to be a warrior with a snooker stick.

Battleship with Joel. I won at the end.

Back to nature, as promised!

Retreat

I've been waiting for this. The time to gratefully step into the presence of nature. Aaaahh.. I am looking forward to the church family camp this weekend. I've been there last year and it was great. It was more of camping Hilton-style with cabins, desserts and a snooker table (cleverly hidden) in the lounge area. There's also a pool, a few trails, ball courts and a nice lake, also known as Somerset dam. A retreat, if you will, courtesy of our church.

I was asked to present the Children's story there and I said no, partly because I really didn't want to think about any more work, and also because I have got no stories in mind for the kids and adults alike.

Right now I am packing. I think I'm bringing too many clothes..this is just for the weekend lah for goodness sakes. But hey, if there's space..why not right? So these are what I've decided to take: 2 shirts, 2 tank tops (to layer), 2 shorts, shoes, a pillow, bedsheet, a bulky (but a real lifesaver) jacket, and a towel. I shouldn't take jeans...right? But what if it's cold?? Maybe I'll just wrap the sheet around myself and find a bonfire to sit next to..

__________________________________________________________________
I shall bombard you now with some unexciting newsbites over the last few weeks. Stories that are worth telling and some you can roll your eyes at..

• I can now emphatize with people whose laptops crashed at a very critical moment in their lives. I am not exaggerating because it was during my busiest time of the semester when it happened. The crucial lesson: back up your work every 2 seconds, no matter what!!

• As a result, I've come to depend on the facilities of the UQ Biological Sciences Library for almost a week. Honestly, for the amount of fees that they charge us, it's only justifiable that everything should be taken advantage of..at our own risk. Everything like the workers (hehe), laptop loans, late hours, and power plugs. I can't say I'll be doing that more frequent now that I have my laptop back but I'll try. Also because work gets done quicker.

• It has been 3 weeks since I had coffee. This would have been impossible last year. Just decided the change to tea was good.

• Also tried rock climbing outdoors for the 1st time! It wasn't a very successful climb but I am happy that the random decision to follow friends turned out to be quite an experience. While we were walking there, we were stopped by 2 elders from the Mormon church who wanted to share with us. I didn't find it surprising that the Sabbath became a point of contention once my friend had mentioned we were Adventists. There wasn't much that I could contribute to the conversation let alone highlight the scriptures behind it. Yet it was enlightening to listen to the views other denominations have towards the day of rest God made for everyone.
  

• Finally, just to share something from TED.com. If you have 22 mins to spare, watch this on endangered cultures and languages, by Wade Davis. And because I am fascinated with the exploration of marine life, this by David Gallo is a must-watch.
  

The rain is back after having stopped long enough for clothes to dry. The news stated that the drought is now over, which means that dam levels are up from 16% this time last year, to more than 70% now thanks to the continuous rainfall. In other words, the state received more than half its annual rainfall in a single day.

Okay I will need your prayers for good weather! Enjoy your weekend.

A Sunday morning

Hello good-looking!
A bird-of-paradise just a few feet from my window.

I rarely get out of bed before 12 on Sundays. Today is just revolutionary. I've been up for 2 hours, got breakfast, surfed Facebook to my heart's content, commented on pics (all that kepoh stuff) and chatted with Maha and Johnny on MSN.

There are papers to be read, a talk and a proposal outline to be written out. And I'm busy blogging away.

My housemate is listening to Every Valley, another one has a movie on and both of them are trying to bake something in the kitchen. Today my laptop stays silent.

Out in the field

I was today's scribe.
Photo by Shahmen

Been trying to load images but the image thingy is not cooperating. Anyway, today's field trip went surprisingly well. Went with the marine ecology class to Wellington Point, a small peninsula that juts out into Moreton Bay. Had one false start because we were confused on the whereabouts to even begin our sampling.

But we learnt as we went along and finally got our steps figured out. It turned out that all the datasheets we had prepared beforehand (& the copies I made) were useless, the GPS units and compasses we had requested were also useless, the rough guide we had originally planned to follow (& that I understood) was out of the window. So basically things didn't go according to plan from the very beginning.. and I got confused as hell.

Thankfully this other guy who was in my group had a vague idea on what was supposed to happen. I guess in situations like this, you just have to stick with someone else who knows what's going on and let them be the boss of things. So when it finally worked out, I was left to be the scribe, the other guys carried the measuring tape and paced around to find our random plots in the ground.

It's all very complicated to even to attempt a verbal explanation on the methods. Don't want to think about the writing part yet. Yess..the image thingy is working now! Okay more photos to show off..

A bug that I plucked off the tutor's shirt. It had a very nice blue-green color that the camera couldn't capture.

A close-up of a crab with two purple claws. The biggest one we found was about that size.
Photo by Shahmen

Done for tonight and I feel very blessed. Happy Sabbath :-)

While you were sleeping

Was watching that movie earlier.

What a contrast this week has been compared to the last.

Throughout week 1 of my "holidays", I had been nagging at myself over the lack of any accomplished work. If you had taken a look at my schedule you'd be freaking out. And I have been because of the workload and time that's slipping away. Progress was at a crawling pace. It's like I need a bigger threat to put me back in place. To keep me running and checking things off the list. Then again, is it normal to be like that? Maybe I've settled into the laid-back mode of the holidays and I've allowed my motivation to disappear.

Okay so that was last week. You could say I was ready for something different.

So at week 2, things were brighter. Got to work at my landlord's farm on Monday and today, and that means $. Then, on Tuesday I took a nice trip out of the city for some fishing with my classmates. It definitely brought me out of that crappy haze I've put myself in.

A change in scenery, fresh air, water and clear skies. It is always NICE to step out and be still with nature for a while. Nature then rewarded the group with a nice catch...

A beautiful and rare Aussie lungfish that is easily 50 years old. It's supposedly a living fossil that represents the transition between fishes and land dwelling animals because of its lobed fins and internal lung structures. Because of its protected status it had to be released upon capture..but not after a few photos and a bit of fondling from the rest of us.

When we let it go, it started to swim off in the wrong direction and was getting too close towards the shore. Our tutor yelled out, "Maybe it's evolving!"

That catfish looked so harmless but it stings!

Alright, time to get to bed and to recharge for the next day. Another field trip awaits at 12pm tomorrow. This time I will have exercise patience with the group. There's 11 of us and only 5 showed up for a discussion before the trip. Let's hope everyone knows what to do..

Hungry?

Experiment, experiment...

So I was feeling a little bit adventurous this afternoon. I decided to try out this Braised Tofu recipe along with a Honeydew Sago one that I saw on tastespotting.com. Go to that site if you're into food porn, every page is guaranteed to make you salivate. Tastespotting.com will lead you to a lot of good cooking sites and one of them that I found was simple enough to follow was the House of Annie.

I modified Annie's Braised Tofu sauce by adding my mother's "shooger and a little bit of oyster sauce" concoction into it. Aaaand here's the outcome...

Can or not you think? I think can lah since there's none left already! Hehe.. As you can see the tofu isn't quite as drenched with sauce as I wanted it to be. I should've added more water..so next time, follow instructions! There are spring onions, ginger, garlic and 500 g of sliced tofu.

My after-dinner magic that I'm proud to reveal for the first time because it was a success:

Honeydew sago: Best served chilled..ahh!

My housemate who was cooking banana pancakes next to me thought I was making green soup for dinner.

Flipping back

13th of April, 2006:

"When you write your 1st draft, you write it with your heart."
-- a quote from 'Finding Forrester', a movie I watched at DJ's place that evening. It was the only quote I could remember from that movie and I don't know why I thought it was important at that time.  Shannon, Sara, Toshi and I had just returned from a trip to Phuket and Krabi.

13th of April, 2007:

Became part of the crowd and joined the madness of Songkran in Bangkok. Was evading water guns in the streets of Khao San during the day and found myself discussing number theories and probabilities by night. My very first time celebrating Songkran in Bangkok and hopefully not the last!

Woke up early the next day to leave for Hanoi with Shannon and Sondang.

Met up with the Chamber Choir people in Singapore at the end of the trip.

13th of April, 2008:

Brisbane, on Easter break. Watched Under the Tuscan Sun and I remember how Frances, the lead character describes a Tuscan day on a postcard to her mum:

"It's market day in Cortona. The piazza is an ongoing party and everyone is invited. Cliches converge at this navel of the world-- you almost want to laugh. But you can't help feeling that Italians know more about having fun than we do. I eat a hot grape from the market and the violet sweetness breaks open in my mouth. It even smells purple. I wish I could stay here longer, but the bell of the companile reminds me of time. 'Ding-dang-dong' the bell says, instead of 'Ding-dong'. I wish you were here."

13th of April, 2009:

A different kind of Songkran here-- rain :-) Condusive weather for sleeping and nostalgia.. But enough of that, I need to get some work done! 

Do pray for the situation in Bangkok.  It's not looking good at the moment.

In the mood to write

Am sitting in bed with the heater blowing away at my feet.

And we're supposedly in the middle of autumn..what's wrong with the world ? And if autumn is like this, then I dread the coming winter months. Might dig out the sweaters and jackets earlier this year. But then again whether I like it or not, July is going to bring some long cold winter nights while the rest of the world sweats away in the summer.

Maybe it's a good idea to put on a scarf tomorrow for church.

Happy Sabbath!

It's me again

Hey there. I making yet another re-entry to the Blogosphere, the inconsistency is not all too surprising now is it? Well it's about time to update you all about stuff that's being going on since coming back to Brisbane to study..like TWO months ago.

For the current events: Today's the start of a long two-week break from school. It's Good Friday and the whole of Australia is on a no-shopping, egg-hunting mood for Easter. My neighbours, the loud and out-of-control girls who live across the road are surprisingly quiet and inactive..that's because no one's at home.

No grand plans to spend the holidays, except to finish up assignments and some work on the side. I must admit I'm feeling comfortable with my isolation/house arrest now. Maybe it's the rain and dark clouds, I'm not sure. Whatever it is, it's nice to not deal with the outside world for now. Third year is strangely more exciting and work keeps me on my toes. I'm taking marine ecology, fish biology and marine parasitology this semester. In between that I've been watching season 2 episodes Ugly Betty, trying new sago recipes and rereading an Archie comic. (I bought so many in Penang and only had space for ONE to bring back..sad)

It IS quiet and I shouldn't be lamenting about it since I've got to study anyway. But I still feel like I'm missing out on a lot like, ahem the Songkran chaos I would be enjoying if I had been in say, Thailand. Am I feeling miserably nostalgic about past holidays? Yes and I can't help it..

Well the break is a good time to catch up on things and certainly one of it is THIS blog. Hopefully in the next few days, the ramblings would continue.

Now I'm in the mood to complete my fish lab reports. Have a wonderful Easter for those of you who are celebrating. Tata for now