Change in blog url

Hi Everybody, my blog has permanently shifted to a new url

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Thanks for reading

Max: Day 6

Bought a new toy for Max. He seems to love these little fishies. It's wierd how something so inanimate and motionless can keep him entertained. Anyway, the fish sure look cute. If he ever tires of them I'll just hang them in my car or something.

I was angry with him today. When I got home, the entire toilet was covered with black paw prints. Presumably, Max had stepped on his poo when trying to cover up and then proceeded to walk all around the toilet. I spent close to an hour scrubbing the floor and disinfecting it, then trying my darnest to make sure it's kitty-safe again. Anyway, later when my dad got back, he drew my attention to black paw prints all over the sofa.

"HOW in the world did he get out??", I wondered out loud.

Of course, my dad let him out. I could feel my temperature rising again. How is it my fault that the cat had dirtied the sofa when it was my dad who let him do it. And after it happened, why didn't he clean it before my mum got back? I felt sabotaged.

Anyway, the reason why I am blogging so much suddenly is because I am sitting here, waiting for the laundry to be done, so I can put them into the dryer. 2 and a half hours later, I will have to get up and take the cushion covers out of the dryer and put them back on the sofa again. Just so my mum wouldn't suspect a thing tomorrow morning when she goes off the work.

Remind me again, how is this my fault?

Oh right, cos I was the one who brought the cat home.

Anyway, something weird happened just now. We were playing quite rough and this little monster tried to scratch my face whenever I closed my eyes. I pretended to be really angry in an attempt to teach him that it's to scratch faces and it didn't work. Instead it seemed to instigate him to scratch me more! He was like a really insolent kid. In the end, I resorted to something Sharon taught me - I pretended that it hurt so much I started to cry. Suddenly, Max disappeared. I really had no idea where he went. I search my room, my toilet and tried calling him quietly from the dark hall. No max. That was weird. It seemed almost like he was so ashamed of making me cry that he hid himself. After a period of frantic searching, I found him. But probably only because he wanted to be found. He had poked his head out from behind a small chest of drawers.

I went to lay down beside him and he came to me, rubbed noses with me and started purring loudly. I took it as an apology and accepted it graciously. After that he became really manja and kept wanted to rub noses.

Altogether now.... AWWWWWWW

Max: Day 5 (summary)

Party went ok. There was the usual chaos and old peranakan aunties chattering about their recent escapades to various places. When I first arrived home with the food and some aunties, I was presented with a barrage of questions and problems. Fortunately for me, everything somehow sorted itslf out in the end.

After dinner, a good proportion of the family adjourned up to my place and my mum, my dad and I each entertained a third of the crowd. So the soccer fans watched tv with my dad, the aunties played mahjong with my mum and I sub-contracted my share of the entertainment to Max. He entertained the non-soccer fans and non-gamblers. Everybody loved him and he played with everyone. It didn't matter that there were so many people around. That's cool in a cat.

Max: Day 5

Feel much better today. Max also has not committed any crimes as of late. Today is going to be a big day cos we are celebrating my mum's birthday. I'm going to be running
around, picking food up from Guan Hoe Soon (reviews later) and then my aunts and then the famous kueh from Mrs. Lim. Later, everyone will be converging at the poolside pavillion at my place for dinner. Hope all goes well.

Max the Cat

It’s funny how just when you thought the long day was over, something else happens. We had just returned from the adventure of extracting the skull and organs from Diana, the dead dugong at Pulau Tekong.

let's bake a nice fluffy quiche

I got back to the lab and after a very relieving shower to rid myself of the smell of rotting flesh, I was greeted by a very excited Dionne, ranting about a kitten that Kaixin found. I was busy and didn’t think so much about it. Later on, Zeehan announced as she opened the pantry door, “KITTEN IS HERE”!!! Kaixin and Sharon from the Plant Systematics lab appear at the doorway with the cutest kitten ever. Handsome, friendly and playful, one could not help but melt. And so, we all melted. Jani, Zee and I. To cut a long story short, I took him home and named him Max.

max!

Max meowed in the car on the way to the vet and halfway through the ride home. He was pretty silent the rest of the way, I think he fell asleep. When we reached home, he seemed to settle in quite ok. Unfortunately his first pee was not in his litter box. It was on my T-shirt while I was showering. His second pee was worse. It was on my comforter at 3 in the morning. While I was asleep and after jumping all over my body (head included) all through the night. I happened to be sleeping in the hall that night and thought he’d know how to find his way to the toilet since the doors were left open. Anyway, I woke up at 3am after feeling something splash on my face. Lucky for me, I’m a pretty light sleeper. I had vague memories of being trampled upon and hearing the thud thud thud of Max using my body as a springboard to get to the other end of the sofa (my sofa is quite large).

Anyway, because of that, I banished max to the toilet where he did a poop and I cleaned it up. And he slept there the rest of the night.

Max: Day 3

Urgh. I felt so ill. Was shivering over dinner. It was a cool night - perfect for steamboat. And that's what Brudda Love and I had. It was a pretty nice al fresco place in amk. The food wasn't that great but I didn't really have an appetite so not much of a loss for me. I grew colder as the night wore on and despite the warm fire next to me, I was still so cold I just drank soup to keep warm. By the time I got home I was bundled up in Brudda Love's rainjacket and I put some toe-socks on for good measure. My temperature was rising, I could feel it, so I just introduced BL to max and let them get acquainted while popped some panadol and took a nap.

Not even an hour later, Max had peed on my comforter. Different comforter this time. Lucky I the fever had subsided and I was well enough to clean it off.

ReefFriends survey dive

Last Sunday I took part in the BWV ReefFriends survey dive at Pulau Semakau. We had two boats and Jeff and I were the scientific officers for our boat. Just after we finished laying the shallow transects for the survey, we chanced upon a bubu (fish trap). It was on the reefslope and didn't have any buoys or lines attached to it. According to the Blue Tempeh, it is likely to be abandoned, or it would have been difficult to relocate and retrieve anyway.

As Jeff and I circled it, I saw something appear and quickly disappear within it. The visibility that day was pretty bad so I couldn't quite make out what it was. But after hanging around for a while, I realised it was a big cuttlefish!

HELLO!

Did I ever mention how much I love cuttlefish? Not as food, of course... Anyway. We circled the trap looking for the door and cuttlefish followed us from within. When we found the door and opened it, it came out immediately and hung around us for quite a while. This is it just after emerging through the door.

It was about 30cm long (with tentacles)

Check out the patterns on its body. It's exactly the same algae-covered, hexagonal patterns as the trap! How delightfully clever! My mum couldn't believe it and insisted that it stayed inside so long that the algae had grown on its body. In actual fact, the cuttlefish is able to change not only the colour, but also the texture of its skin. Amazing!

Inside the trap there was also a red-egg reef crab. But that one needed to be cajoled out the door (actually more like gentle prodding).

Big crab!

TURTLES!!!

Turtle hatchlings spotted at east coast park!

shouted siva when he called last night. I had just stuffed myself with goodies from my aunts and was just embarking on some after dinner activity when I received that fateful call from siva. He said he'd call me back when he gets more info, so I wait.

The next call comes, "Turtle hatchlings! no, not your kind of turtle. Sea turtles! hawksbills! HUNDREDS of them!" That's when Jani, Zee and I decided to up and head to ECP to the excited chants of "turtle! turtle!"

We were late! The others (RMBR, NSS, NParks, Tse-Lynn from BWV and some other members of the public) had already finished picking all the straying turtles!

the turtle rescue brigade

A peek inside the pail that when in our car. Guess who chose the pail.

Oh well... we joined the convoy and headed for the release site.

There at Changi Beach (according to Siva, we had to look for the darkest beach in Singapore and that was it. So anyway, once we were there, we switched off all our lights and sent some people to stand at the water's edge to shine some lights. Turtle hatchlings navigate their way out to the see by heading towards moonlight and its reflection off the water surface. But in a busy city-state like Singapore, we have ambient lighting all day long and it's difficult to find a place that is really that dark.

Light's off

Anyway, the line up of torches along the water's edge seemed to work as the turtles scurried from our buckets and into the water.

Into the water

Once turtle hatchlings reach the water, it seems that they use the direction of the waves to lead them out to sea. Orientating themselves so that they swim directly into the oncoming waves ensure that they get further away from the beach.

Swimming into the waves

It seems like a successful operation to get these turtles a headstart. I hope they survive. Hawksbill turtles are endangered and Under CITES, it's illegal to import, export turtle products, kill, capture or harass them.

What an exciting week it's been. With dugong sightings at Chek Jawa, dolphin carcass washed up at Marina South, (read about all that here) and now this. It gets me all teary eyed just thinking about how understated our local marine life is. Hope all this appears in the papers. The rest of Singapore deserves to know about this. Like Jani mentions in her blog about dolphins, there are so many people like her hairdresser who just can fathom dolphins in Singapore. Let alone turtles and dugongs.

************************************************************************
Jani' other sighting of a Hawksbill at Pulau Hantu.

Me? A bird mommy??

The day started with Mingko messaging me that she'd found another baby bird. I went over to take a look and the poor fella was so tiny. An olive-backed sunbird, says Sodhi. Yeah. I thought so too. It looks like a female one but when I checked the book, all juveniles look like the adult females.

Mingko seemed to be doing ok but apparently the rest of the people in her lab got irritated by its persistent chirping. I then volunteered to help her mother it until Janice arrives tomorrow to take over.

This means that I got to take this slob of a bird home. All it does is eat and sleep. Every 5 minutes or so it wakes up and start chirping. Only to fall back asleep after taking a drop of sugar water. Wonder if I'll get any sleep tonight.

Ok, here's a recipe for nectar recommended by some bird website.

2 cups water
1/2 cup white sugar
20 squeezed mealworm innards
1 tsp mockingbird feed
1 tblsp Esbilac
a pinch of VET-NUTRI

Anyone has any idea where to get mockingbird feed, Esbilac or VET-NUTRI from?

HEEEELLLPPPP....

I am such a wuss....

I am feeling sooo tired and sleeping having just spend the entire morning and the better half of the afternoon cleaning out the fieldstore. I'm also feeling like such a wuss because the rest who helped (Jani, Wai, Danwei, Michelle, Juanhui, Linghan, Peiya, Huiwen, Eugene, Tommy and Lat) did as much, or maybe more work than me. Maybe I'm just getting old. I'm feeling soo sleepy and drained and the cleaning polar bear is smirking at me for being such a wimp.

Maybe it's cos I wasn't feeling well to begin with. Been having a bad cough lately and I haven't had a good sleep in nights. It's a bit uncomfortable sleeping on the floor I dunno how japanese people do it, and some nights I cough so much I can't really get to sleep.

ZZZzzzzz...... tonight I can have my bed back. But only for one night because my aunt will be coming back to stay tomorrow night.

When people grow old....

they become so vulnerable.

My eldest aunt has just been diagnosed with cancer. This is the aunt who was just in the hospital about a month back undergoing an assortment of tests because because she fainted at home. She is extremely weak and frail. Like the sort you'd think might break if you accidently elbow her in the side. During each visit I tried my best make things easier for her. Things like washing the cup for her dentures. It takes at most a minute for me to do it, while she would take 2 minutes getting out of bed, 3 minutes looking for her shoes and aligning them so that she could easily slip into them when she got off the bed, another 5 minutes or so to shuffle to the basin and probably another 10 minutes to get back to the bed. During each visit I'd also bring her to the toilet and help her onto the seat. She'd look so terribly grateful for all these small things cos she's embarressed to trouble the nurses to do these for her.

It just breaks my heart each time. I'd get angry with myself for not visiting her often. Same goes for my grandmas (both of them) and all the other old folks. I guess one good thing is that most of the old folks visit each other. Those who are still fit will take it upon themselves to deliver food to the immobile, or just accompany them cos it can get so lonely at home. But for how long can this go on?

I see all of them getting older and older. At family gatherings, the usual topic would be who went for what operation, which part of the body hurts or which extended family member or friend just got diagnosed with a terminal illness or worse, passed away. It's so morbid. My aunty Ruth, who stays in England, loves getting out and doing things. She's upbeat and loves to say "come one then, let's do it. life is short", which sounds pretty morbid to me anyway.

so anyway. I'm just upset that everyone is getting old. And it looks like I might be around the longest. I'm borne of the youngest offspring of both my parents' famlies, and I'm the youngest of all my cousins.

The advent of a flu

Ack. I have finally fallen prey to the evil flu bug. Hung around Zee and Safia at ADEX over the weekend and though they were both ill, I courted the flu bug by sharing drinks and meals with them. Yes, yes, I deserve to be in this miserable state I'm in, but I must state for the record, I did put up a pretty good fight.

The day after ADEX ended, I felt myself having some tell-tale symptoms. I had developed a sore throat and was plagued by a temperature in the evening that kept rising during the night. Thankfully the fever was gone by day break and I thought I had escaped the infection. Continued to get good rest and drink plenty of fluids the next few days and all seemed fine.

My downfall came yesterday when I had an immense craving for chicken curry and sambal prawn (my period must be coming soon). That was when I decided to COOK. Chicken curry is fairly simple with the Prima mixes. Just add chicken and potatoes, the box says. I learnt some tricks from my mum, the modern peranakan who does not scoff at premixes, but still desires superior tasting food. So I went through the extra step of boiling potatos first and peeling them and adding them to the curry later on, so that the potatoes will be soft. I also put in some cut onions to make the whole curry more tasty. TWO boxes of curry premix I used...

Sambal prawn... should have been simple enough. I thought I had all the ingredients, I had this recipe for sambal belimbing tucked away in my memory because the girl with the thorn in her side had previously asked me to ask my aunt for it. Onions, red chilli, dried chilli, belachan - I had all those! But when I was starting to blend all the spices together for the rempah, my mum poked her head into the kitchen and remarked casually, "you have no buah keras" (candlenuts). CANDLENUTS?? no one told me about them, candlenuts... So I innocently ask her, "Can't I cook the dish without the candlenuts?"

"NO.", she replied curtly. So I stupidly asked her what it would taste like without the candlenuts. "not nice lor.", was her reply. She looked at me like I was a lost cause. The prawns, the onions, the chillies... shall all go to waste because this Sambal Prawn dish simply could not be cooked.

Maybe she took pity on me, maybe she didn't want a mountain of prawns to go to waste. Maybe she figured that since I was not going to feed an army of peranakan aunties, it wouldn't really matter anyway. She proceeded to look through the fridge for anything that could be a candlenut substitute. In the end, I used sugar-coated macadamias. A gift from Weisong when he came back from a holiday.

Note: I later learnt in a Straits Chinese cookbook that almonds make good substitutes for candlenuts. Nonyas don't usually buy large quantities of candlenuts for storage because they don't keep very well.

So anyway, I realise, the tiring part about cooking is not the actual cooking itself. It's the cleaning up. My mum is nuts (no pun intended). While I in the midst of my cooking frenzy, she started washing my utensils and crockery and dried them and put them back into the cupboard. And when I needed a bowl or spoon, I had to take them out of the cupboard again! Now, I know she was only trying to help clear the mess but it's just a waste of time isn't it? The efficiency nazi in me just wanted to burst but figured that at her age, I should just leave her be.

I've also been trained well in cleaning the kitchen, so every time I cook, be it something smelly and oil-producing like frying rempah, or simply boiling some instant noodles, I have to wipe down the entire kitchen, stove, walls, cabinets included and mop the floor. All garbage has to be disposed of and the sinks have to be scrubbed, washed and dried and everything has to go back where to they came from. So it was really the cleaning up that kills. Wish I had one of those alfresco backyard kitchens, then I'd just use a hose and spray the whole thing down.

No need to mop the floor either.

STB guides online

I totally didn't know such a website existed. It's interesting, you can look up any licensed (or even de-licensed) guide on this site.

What would I do without whaley

Left him at home today so he could catch up on some sleep (just because I'm not getting enough sleep doesn't mean he has to suffer with me right). And the whole day was so awful!

Having him around makes my days seem a whole lot more bearable.