Guess who swung into town today. My 3rd most favourite English man. Paul is in town!

I didn't manage to take a single decent picture of him, so this picture that we took while out in the Thames last winter will have to do. I was in the UK for a short holiday and spent a fruitful time with Paul at the museum, even though it wasn't planned at all. Yes. Another supporting example of my being in the right place at the right time statement. He took me out to the Thames on two occasions for trap laying and retrieving for he had an ongoing project on the invasive hairy crab. He warned me to layer up nice and warm, for it will be very cold. I almost didn't take his advice, because I was walking along the streets with at most 3 layers of clothing and it worked really well. But because of his incessant cautions, I decided to be sensible and put on 9 layers of clothing, excluding a bright orange oil skin suit. I didn't have any protective headgear then, and Paul kindly gave me his Chilean wool cap. I can't say anything more except it was a bloody good idea that I heeded his advice.

My visit with Paul also struck home to me how blithe the English are about their cultural and intellectual heritage. What they take as a matter of fact is shrouded in awe for me, mainly because I live half the world away, and am from a former colony.

I mean, the annals of the history of Science and other endeavors are littered with English illuminaries. Where would the world be today without these people. Newton, Boyle (ok so he was Irish), Darwin, Huxley, Hooke to but name a handful. The world would be a poorer place if not for the voyages of HMS Beagle and Challenger. What about the great explorers Captain Cook, Captain Robert Falcon Scott . A walk along the busy streets of London will surely turn up something interesting, be it one of Christopher Wren's amazing buildings, a not too exciting looking piece of stone that has been there since the Romans were running around the isles. But its all just in the 'backyard' of the English.

Anyway, this long preamble is just to make a point how even Paul is nonchalant about the fact he lives in one of the greatest and intellectually most exciting cities in the world. We turned around a corner on the way to Stamford Bridge, where our little boat was waiting for us. Very very casually, he pointed to a door and said 'Oh by the way, that was where Scott lived'. !!!

During one of the Thames outings to retrieve the crab traps we had laid a few days ago, Paul had said he wanted me to come along because we were taking a long boat ride up stream to Richmond, an area I was familiar with only on paper, for that was where my hero Sir David Attenborough lived. We would then sail down river, and end up near the Tower of London. Paul told me that it would be a treat for me to see the London through its famous waterway. After all, tourists are routinely paying an arm and leg for something that I will see for free. Fair enough. So we sailed to Richmond lock, and had a leisurely lunch before preparing to sail down river. All of a sudden, Paul casually mentioned something about Sir David being in the museum at 3pm in the afternoon, book signing and all that. At this point, my ears pricked up.. what did he just say? SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH?!?! AT THE MUSEUM??!?!? And pray tell, what was I doing on a boat? I couldn't jump off fast enough; the Tower will always be there, London Bridge won't fall down anytime soon, and I would go see Sir David. I hopped off at Stamford Bridge and hotfooted it all the way to the museum in South Kensington, still dressed in my bright orange oilskin suit. It must have been an amusing side to behold. But I wouldn't know. It didn't occur to me then that I should take a picture of me all swollen with 9 layers of clothing AND a ridiculously orange suit. I must have looked like a giant traffic cone. It was worth it though. :D :D :D

Yay!

I also had a once in a life time opportunity to pass through the hallowed doorway of the Linnean Society.

I passed through this door

To be honest.. I never dreamed that I would be doing anything like this, but it was also Paul who casually mentioned (do you see a trend already) that there would be a debate there one evening while I was there, and would I be interested to go. I think that was a forgone conclusion! Of course I did. It was a debate for or against the Phylocode and Linnean Binomial System by its original proponents (for the phylocode of course) and the fiercest defenders of the Linnean system. I was lucky to be there that night. I have honestly never been in the presence mental olympicists such as those sitting on the podium. I felt very privileged to be there and also be in the business of discovering and naming animals.

My invitation card!

Best of all, I was in the same room as Darwin when he presented his joint paper with Wallace on the origin of species by natural selection! I think that is a great moment for any student of Zoology, especially a scientist as junior as I am. The picture on the empty room was taken after the debate had ended and everyone was upstairs in the library having tea and biscuits. I didn't think it was a good idea to take my camera into the room during the debate proper. I might have come from the boondocks, but I didn't want to embarrress my host!

Before I go, here's a picture I took in the library of the Linnean Society, furtively taken, using a camera phone. I am a biologist! Paul will be here for a few weeks, hopping between Thailand and Singapore. We might get around to discussing some future projects for me to pursue in the museum in the near future. Who knows? It just might happen.

I bought myself a moleskine reporter notepad today, using my birthday gift vouchers. I also bought Richard Dawkins' latest book, after much deliberation. It was a tough call between that, or Murakami's or Bill Bryson's latest efforts. In the end, the boffinish bespectacled entity in me won. The blind-as-a-bat girl with a weakness for geeky books put her foot down and made me choose Dick over good old Bill and Haruki. Maybe next time. Bill is always fun. As a matter of fact, I have a good number of his books by my bed for a spot of light reading before I turn in for the night. Next time I'll go shop for books without the nerdy girl. I also lingered by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's corner in the store, but moved on because I know I will get my hands on it in a few month's time. So many books, so little time.

I've kept notebooks and journals but always inadvertantly stop at some point. I have a million insignificant thoughts run through my head everyday, but I find it such a hassle to open up my B5 size journal to write a random sentence in it. My 30 cents little jotterbook got tossed around, crumpled and decided to make a break for it one day. Then I look back and realise that I can't remember a single thing. This one's just the nice size for jotting notes and random whimsical thoughts that come into my head once in a while. I remember I had a really good train of thought yesterday while trudging along the jungle trail of Gunung Belumut, but it escapes me now.

Today I spoke with Lham about the Ballad of the Lonely Broccoli. I saw the Lonely Broccoli at Carrefour a few days ago. Applecore, Wai and I picked it up because it was sitting all alone amongst six empty styrofoam trays. We were feeling sorry for it. I even had an ode to the lonely broccoli in my head at that time, but no longer remember it now. We were there, hoping to catch a glimpse of Captain Carrefour, but he wasn't there (apparently, he only appears during weekends) applecow was bitterly disappointed. I'll leave it to her to tell you about it, if she can get over the unhappy episode to want to write about it. The poor dear. I hope her weekend wasn't ruined because of that.

So yes. A little nondescript notepad to jot down stupid angsty thoughts that aren't publishable. Things like My Inner Thoughts and Feelings condensed in a sentence. Life, The Universe and Everything Else. And songs about unloved vegetables.

So the emails have been sent, forms filled and faxed. It looks more and more of a certainty that I will be in Europe in December.

I was only joking in a previous post. Parisian firemen will be safe. I'm not interested. A tells me that he can't believe how easy things are for me, that good things just happen to me. If there is a phrase I can put on my epitaph right now, it will be:-

'She was always in the right place at the right time'

Tadah. I pulled the rabbit out of the hat. That is all there is. No magic.

I wanted to share the news with you today. But there was no one. Just a void. And the aching realization that sometimes we are all that we have, that we can be surrounded and loved by friends but still feel that something is amiss. That there is a fuzzy distinction between caring too much and caring too little. What difference does it make? Oh yes.. one way will make you feel better than the other. I wonder which.

I read today that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy. Makes sense. I don't want to go down that path though.

*****************
Dinner conversations with biologists [abridged]

R: Man, I hate bittergourd. Its one of my least favorite vegetable.
TGWTTIHS: Well technically it is a fruit. Its not my favourite, but its good for me, so I just eat it.
M: I don't like bittergourd either.
R: So what are your 3 favourite vegetables?

We deliberated and concluded that we could do better with a least favourite veg list (for the record, I don't like 3-in-1 frozen veg. I like peas, carrots and corn, but not together in one mouthful!, I also do not like olives and artichokes). M and R have bittergourd high on their lists M likes Brassica spp... I'm not that crazy about legumes, how we all dislike the hard green peas in cocktail nuts and R and I like the little orange pillow shaped crackers..blah blah blah.. conversation forwarded to fruits..

R: So what's your favorite fruit?
TGWTTIHS: No particular favourite, but we can do favourite drupes, pomes and berries. My favourite drupe is a mango.
M: Don't forget your favourite aggregate fruit too.
R: AAah.. I don't want to carry on with this conversation anymore!

I can't remember what kind of fruit a coconut is. I remember having a deep and meaningful discussion with Applecow about it in Phuket.

I'm not sure if we make good dinner company/conversationalists.

Seeing that I "missed" my birthday last year, this year's festivities seem to more than make up for it. Well.. not strictly true. I had a great birthday present last year. 21 day cruise and Chesterfield Island hopping. But I digress...

I'm not big on planning, and didn't exactly have plans fixed ahead. On the day itself, I was completely shattered from a day full from teaching. And which birthday girl buys her own cake anyway!??!?! Pfffft. Alright... I do. We had a very nice Pear flan. I burst into Applecow's lab and shouted "A... phlegm!!!!" A and LG couldn't come to the lab on time and I had to deliver their flans to them.

I contemplated having a quiet night in, but decided against it. Asked A out and he told me, "well.. you better make sure you'll be having fun cos if its just going to be you being miserable and me having to listen to you, then no thanks.. I'll be busy."

It turned out all right after all. I didn't blub. A, B, M and I had dinner at the cze char place in Holland Road. R couldn't make it cos he had to go play football. Harrrumph! It was funny cos M and I were discussing possible dinner venues on the bus back from practical and we made several mentions alluding to 'the corner coffeeshop at Holland'. As it turned out.. there are at least four corner coffeeshops! We've got to come up with a better system! We had dinner at 'the coffeeshop with the duck stall". Dinner was great. Food was good and the beer was flowing. After dinner, we adjourned to Haagen Daz for dessert. The boys were doing a great job at being silly, asking for free ice cream samples and at one point I thought we were going to get thrown out. When it was my turn to have my order taken, I opted for melon on cone, and I beseeched the ice cream girl to please, please ca she give me the biggest single scoop of ice cream she can stuff into the cone without losing her job. I didn't think she'd take me seriously, but she did! Woah! In the end I had the biggest 'single scoop' cone. I think my cone was even taller than A's who asked for a double scoop! Yay... free ice-cream!

We then went next door to Wala's where the Unpredictable (or are they the Untouchables?) had a gig that night. As usual, tables were thin on the ground but we managed to get one by the side. R joined us at this point and the evening passed with nary an unhappy moment, except for the last song the band played for their set which made me put my hands up in the air thinking "Ok. i don't need this.. I'm getting out of here." I think I spotted RUOK sitting right in front of the band.. but I wasn't sure then. Now I know it probably was, cos the monkey informed me that he had indeed been at Wala's that night. Well.. I'll say hi next time. I'm just very bad at recognising people when I'm out and about.


**********
I had dinner with a motley crue of friends on Friday. A menagerie! There were a duck, a monkey and a ham. He wasn't lonely yesterday!

We checked out Magma, a new German bistro/coffeeshouse place along Bukit Pasoh Road. Again, Friday was a bad day for me. Sucked in by the Vortex of Teaching, and I didn't come back from Changi Beach till 6ish. A quick check through my inbox and I was off home. I did contemplate bursting in on them at 7.30, with salt sprayed hair and field T shirt and bermudas, but good sense prevailed and I told MrBudak that I had to go home and scrub up before. Magma is but a 5 minute stroll away from my place anyway! I'm glad I did. Being bloggers, they were all camera happy and snappy. Looking presentable is alot better than showing up looking like a castaway.

The wonders of soft ambient lighting and photoshop

Food at Magma was decent. I'm not familiar with hearty German food, but MrB is, and according to him, the food dished out by the Chef (who incidentally bears an uncanny semblence to Rene from 'Allo 'Allo) was pretty good. Alot more is left to be desired for service though. The waitresses were altogether inexperienced and clueless. We requested for a carving knife and one of them did not know what a carving knife was (*gasp*). Ditto the same response when we asked her if we could doggie bag the rest of our Pork knuckle. But it was fun, and I had this fab beer touted as anti-aging beer.

Kickstarting my career as a Beer Auntie. Coming to a coffeeshop near you.

I'm not sure if it works.. but it was tasty; much tastier than the green and red beer the rest ordered!

After our satisfying dinner, We hoofed it to Tea Chapter hoping to round up the evening with soothing chinese tea and cheesy chinese board games. Alas. They were just about to shut for the day when we arrived. More beer? Naaaaah. I wanted a nice tea to wash dinner down with. Some dessert would be nice too. In a flash of inspiration, we made our way to Smith street and ate Ah Balling! The sweetness of the rice balls and ginger/peanut soup was the perfect foil to our hearty dinner. And we washed it down with good ol diao yu, teh peng and teh-o. Monkey even latched on to a stray wifi signal so she could blog on the spot!!! (hahaha... lame sial!)

Thanks to Mr B and the leaf monkey and lonelyham for taking me out hor! I had loads of fun. Tea Chapter next time! Or Prince of Wales? They do a great pint for very little $$$! My kind of place. hahahaha.

****
And that's not the end... the birthday treats continue.. I'm taking a rest today. There's still more to come tomorrow! yay.!

Lock up your firemen, Paris,

for I will be in town before you know it!

Oh yeah! And off to Newcastle too!

Yay!

It seemed like a good idea at the time

We had a vision, Ming and I. Since our birthdays are about two weeks apart, we were going to do something for our friends together. It would be our last chance to do something for our birthdays because who knows where all of us will be next October. Out came the grand plans; how about island camping! That sounds like a great idea! Think campfires!! Beach! Waves!! Moon!! Salty sea breezes!!! Guitar strumming sing-a-longs!!!! Marshmallows! That's a grand idea! St John's? Sisters'? Well.. a quick check on ferry times blew our idea to pieces. Bleah. Back to the drawing board.

Never mind! What about renting a chalet for the weekend? Nice ones in Sentosa! We had visions of the day at the beach and partying at KM8 when night falls. It was a splendid idea but we left it too late and on the online booking website, saw the chalet we were eyeing slip out of our very own mouseclicks. Aaaargh.Within five minutes of deliberation. It was gone, just like that. Bitch.

So that's how it came to be that we ended up at Pit Six, West Coast Park. With a (boarded up) sea view. Of course we can still see the water front. If we stood on the pit and craned our necks, that is. Well.. it was either that or in campus. We are loser grad students, but hey.. it was a birthday celebration, so no way was it going to be held in the lab. Too depressing.

We counted the number of friends we had and found (much to our surprise) that we had more than ten! Within a week, friends were asked if they had anything on that weekend because we know they are busy people, but if they happen to be caught with nothing on, could we perhaps interest them into attending our modest BBQ (we tried to be as posh as we could be when pronouncing the phrase, West Coast Park BBQ Pit 6. I think that helped a little. HA!) We hounded people to bring stuff to the party, scrounged around for useful things in our lab pantries, and made sure there was enough booze for all (this one very important!). At one time, we thought we had to feed thirty people! BUt the numbers dropped to (a more manageable) 16 in the days running up to D day.

Following JK's recommendation, we decided to shop for meats at a wholesaler. It was in this really ulu location in Jurong, surrounded by warehouses and factories. Armed with directions from a bus guide, we set off from Fong Seng bright and early in the morning after our nasi lemak and prata breakfasts. R was roped in to be the coolie. He had no choice! Lol. We took 2 buses and alighted in the middle of the industrial estate. It was quite an adventure, really, because none of us have been to the arse end of Singapore before. Their faith in my topological skills were renewed when I successful led them to the promised land of cheap frozen meats with nothing but a mental map and a styrofoam box. Actually, it was a bit of a fluke. I kinda knew where it was, but had no idea how to get there. We three intrepid biologists then decided to cut through a park connector and turned right to the nearest road but not without the harrowing experience of side-stepping a dead fish [M: (pointing to fish) Eeugh!! R: Eeeeeks!!!! Me: Aaaaargh!!!!]

Oooh the adventure.

As we turned round the corner, there it was! Right in front of us! Like a gleaming palace cutting through the (PSI 85) haze! I don't know about the other two, but I sure felt like I was Indiana Jones stumbling across a golden treasure.



No pictures of our shopping location, but here's one of R carting our bootie back to B's. In that little box was SGD80 worth of meat! Sausages, lamb chops, steak, chicken wings. It was extremely good value. The same amount of meat would have set us back by at least twice the price at the local supermarket. It was worth going through the wilderness of Jurong for it! Check out the smug look on Ming's face! :D

After that, it was off to Sheng Shiong, the crazy supermarket. R and I jostled in there for about 45 minutes and emerged triumphant with our greens. Preparation was done at B's and Applecow kindly drove by to pick us up. We were late. It was stated in our invites that the fire starts at 5, but we didn't think anyone would take us seriously. Evidently, someone did. DL showed up to find an empty pit. We were running on Filpino time! So that makes us early still. Heh.

More pictures.. we didn't have that many to begin with. I think the photogs gave up when it got too dark and the food was being served! Survival of the fittest, and who better to demonstrate that than a bunch of biologists. You snooze, you lose. 'Nuff said.







There were so much food! Duc made a very nice pomelo salad, DL came with Thai papaya salad. Ming made a kickass potato salad too! Very international. And LG came with 5 bags of chips as promised. Large, as it was stated in our email. It was all going swimmingly.



Here's a picture of some of the food. It was great! My personal favourite were the lambchops. They were really really good. And one of the first items to go. Kudos to B for marinating them! The orange wings were done tikka masala style and brown wings were done in let's-dump-in-condiments-and-ginger.. hmm.. needs-a-little-sugar style. The style of agaration.

We didn't have that much leftovers but the fried tempeh, (who is in newcastle now) was sorely missed. We would have polished all the food off with no problems if she were here!

We played poker, drank, talked and ate ice cream after that. It was a good way to chill out. The hard bit was cleaning up and hauling our cooler boxes back home!

Back at Ming's when the both of us lugged the cooler back, we looked at each other and heaved a collective sigh of relief. It was over! We managed to pull it off!

Her parting shot before I ran off to get the last bus was:

"Phew.. that was fun.. but let's not do it again." Hear Hear.

Thanks to everyone for showing up! Without you guys, we would have no friends, at least in NUS anyway. I hope you guys had fun too!

After 16 years.. I finally get to see how Particle Man looks like. I always imagined Particle Man to be dressed in green though.. not turquoise. Hello Triangle Man and Person Man!

Sweet!


From threadless.com. Doing the things a particle can - design by Matt Palmer

Yep

Our boat
Originally uploaded by island_girl.

Backdated photos from 2004 are up.

Sigh. I can do with a nice beach and crystal blue waters right now. Oh.. and get that tan back.

I woke up today to find the flat empty. My parents, who are due to leave for Perth, must have left for the airport without telling me! So I wandered around the living room and decided to ring mom. Just to check if they've boarded the plane and wish them bon voyage.

Somehow I couldn't dial her number. It would be wrong, or I'd miss something. I wasn't even altogether sure what her number was. 9834....? Wait.. that's my number! Well... her number is stored in my mobile phonebook so I'd ring her from the mobile.

My phone was on my bed, so back I went to my room and called her from it. After a few rings, she answered.

"Hello?"

"Ma, are you and Pa at the airport now? Why didn't you wake me up to say bye before you go?"

As soon as I uttered this, the door to my room opened, and there was mom. I was snuggled in bed, under the duvet, except I was on the phone, having a conversation with my mother.

So I guess.. I can add this to my repertoire of sleep tricks. On top of sleep talking, sleep walking (sometimes) I can now add 'incorporation of other props' to make my dreams more exciting. I don't even know how I managed to find my mom's number in the directory instead of some other person's .... I don't think my eyes were open.

Funny. Another amazing human trick.

Wow.. i feel special.. sorta

Surfing into popaghandi's old music Thursday post today was a sign.

This week's theme: Songs about being alright.

And it sure looks like it was written just for me although I know it isn't. Well.. having the same initials is good enough.

So now we know why someone has been shopping....

Long long time ago

How time flies. Before I know it, October's already here and 2006 is going to pass me by.

This time last year, at this very exact moment, I believe I was at Changi Airport, waiting to board my plane. Making my way to New Caledonia, where I spent 3 weeks on a little boat adrift in the South Pacific. I blogged a whole lot about that, but my archives are kinda screwed, so I don't know if you can access them. I don't know how to fix it.

Seeing that all is quiet and I have not been up to much lately, I have decided to upload pictures of past field trips. This set is from the Philippines, circa January 2005. Perhaps blog about it in the distant future. I did do a quickie post when I returned, but today while looking through the pictures, I realised that my memories are fast fading. Aliguay, Siquijor, Dapitan, Dipolog.. it all seems a blur. And which leg was it that we had 30 seconds to run from one ferry to another while carrying a huge rucksack each plus field equipment? I remember thinking at that one point that it was all very Amazing Race-ish. I think we went from Siquijor to Dapitan via Dumaguete and Tagbilaran in less than 5 hours! All because we ran that last 30 seconds. They had already lifted up the gangway, the ship was about to sail. But we beat it! Gangway came down again while we huffed and puffed up, much to the amusement of our fellow travellers. All we lacked then was a camera crew.

And that 2 hour sampan ride to Aliguay. It was nice.

Well.. back to work. I'll spin my yarn another time.