Post-Psych..

Psych test ended early in the morning on Friday, leaving us with pretty much the rest of the day for some R&R? =)

So we popped down to Vivo to catch Wall.E! =) Imagine our surprise to see the rest of the PSY pple like Nat's group in the theatre when we walked in..

Oh yeah i loved Wall.E. Uber-cutesy.. =P Ok so there have been cuter Pixar animations before, but the whole concept behind Wall.E was equally lovable.. The Straits Times' Life section review did quite a just review of the movie, so i shalln't comment too much anymore. Looking forward to future Pixar features.. =)

Uneventful post-movie lunch at the White Dog Cafe at Vivo with the rest, followed by a trip home to freshen up before the night's programme..

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Friday night's the gala opening of Puccini's Turandot at the Esplanade!

and yes, yours truly is going to watch Turandot! =) Ok, so poor me couldn't afford a seat with a fantastic view, so we ended up sitting somewhere in the upper circles, but still, had a pretty decent view of the stage and actors/actresses..

Since the opera's in Italian, we had to follow the opera with the English and Chinese subtitles flashing on the screen at the side.. It was a tad irritating cos you had to look at the stage and flick your attention to the screen at times, but oh well..

The characters were quite well fleshed out, given the limited scope of the opera, but I think my favourite characters have got to be the 3 court officials - Ping, Pang and Pong! They were simply hilarious and added so much life to the opera. They had such good chemistry together and were brilliant in their delivery..

The set wasn't as elaborate as the other musicals that i watched in America, but the costumes were elaborate in detail and simply beautiful! =)

Running at 3 hours with 2 intermissions, I thought it was a refreshing change from Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera.

Supper at Glutton's Bay before heading home.. Enjoyable evening! =)

The one on a poor tree & a movie theatre

Yesterday's Sunday Times ran 2 interesting articles.

The first, on the opening of the viaduct linking Bartley/Braddell Road to Lornie Road. Was quite excited by the whole thing cos i take that route daily to NUS/NUH, and was kinda looking forward to it this morning when I drove to school.

It was a pleasant drive up the new flyover, until the lane merger started and there was a mini-traffic snarl. But I suppose its nothing compared to the traffic snarl and traffic lights if I had taken the usual route through MacRitchie. Time saving? Approx 4 minutes (yep, the papers got it right on that one)

The return journey home the opposite way was a lot more pleasant though. The new flyover linking Lornie to Braddell was pleasantly void of cars even at rush hour of 7pm. I got a bit thrown off initially by the signage of "Toa Payoh, CTE" initially, cos I was expecting smth like "Bartley", but nevertheless, still managed to get on the right road, so shouldn't be a problem i guess.. =P

Pity such a beautiful and old tree had to be chopped down for this whole flyover.

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Secondly, there was the article ranking local cinemas in terms of the smell factor. Wasn't too surprised when Lido came out tops for the wrong reasons.

I remember my post sometime back in October 2007 when I lampooned the Lido theatre in a post about Lust. Caution. which I had watched there. (refer post) Guess some things haven't changed.

Lazy weekend..

A lazy weekend this week.. Been feeling rather tired all throughout the week. Sleep deprived from last Sunday's nature jaunt? Maybe.

Or maybe its the subject? =p Currently doing Psych at NUH this week and the next, before Dermatology for the following 2 weeks after.. Am kinda looking forwards to Surg SIP in mid-September..

Nope, nothing fantastically exciting on this front for this weekend. Enjoy the photos/videos from last week's nature jaunt post. Here's 1 more video.. I apologize for its shakiness, cos I think i was too excited seeing the critter, that i was moving too much.. =P

Gotta catch up on my zzz's this weekend.. *yawn*

Action-Packed Weekend (2) - Pulau Semakau Intertidal Walk

Sunday
Yes, so the day continues from yesterday at 3am in the morning.. -_-"

So after prying my eyes open after 3 hours of shut-eye, its time to drive down to Marina South pier where we were going to catch the ferry ride to Pulau Semakau.

Alright, some history here..

Pulau Semakau is Singapore's off-shore island landfill. Created by joining up 2 islands - Pulau Semakau and Pulau Sakeng, by the creation of a 7km rock wall perimeter, it seals the surrounding sea in between to create space for a landfill.



The enclosed sea is divided into many cells, and each cell is drained of water and filled with incinerated ash, then flattened and forms a landfill. Monitoring of the integrity of the landfill is done 2 folds - the health of the secondary mangroves planted around the island, and via water sampling from monitoring wells.

Anyway, so that's some general knowledge.. =) On to the exciting parts!

Pulau Semakau is home to quite a rich diversity of marine life. The intertidal area refers to the area of sealand that is exposed during low tide. And its this area that's we're gonna explore today! =)

After a 45minute boat ride from the pier, we arrived at the NEA station at Pulau Semakau. A 2km walk down the road towards the coastline, followed by a 5minute dash through some forests - dash, cos we wanted to avoid the blood sucking mosquitoes - and we're at the coast! =)

Well, by now its only 5am, and its still pitch black! (cos the sun only rises at erm 6.45am?). So there we were, treading carefully on the sand with our torches, trying hard not to step on any wildlife while navigating the sand and sea..

Yes it might be dark, but the marine life explorations has just started! They really are EVERYWHERE, if you know how to look for them..


See anything here?

There are 3 sea stars (aka star fishes) in the picture! 1 on the left, 2 on the right. And if you look really closely, there's an imprint of a star somewhere in the middle! that's another sea star which has burrowed into the sand!

Anyway, those were small sea stars.. Catch a load of this!

Knobbly sea star! It was abt 40cm in span..


Is this.. a boulder?

Nope! Its also another beautiful sea star!

This is the bottom of the "boulder" from above! A cushion star! You know its a sea star by the star pattern on its bottom..

Ok ok, so you're seeing stars.. Here's a video treat!
That's a sea slug!




Here are some photos when its brighter! The intertidal area is a flat piece of land, and you really have to look into the small intertidal pools for the marine life!

More wildlife!

Sea slug? Rocks?

Its a volute! A kind of sea snail.. The snail shell is obvious.. But those things below the shell? They are the snail eggs! =)


Crabs! That's a male fiddle crab with its BIG unilateral claw! the female fiddle crabs have same size claws..

Another video to whet your appetite! That's a hairy crab! Haha, you have to wait a bit, cos the crab was as sensitive as a mimosa, so i was literally waiting there with the video running..
(P.S. sorry abt the lack of video here.. i can't seem to post the photobucket app here, so you'll just have to click the link if you wanna see it)

What's this? A humongous sea slug?


Nope! Its a sea cucumber!


And there isn't just marine wildlife! Beloved mangrove trees!

And there were just simply many many more wildlife abound.. I'd prob overload my blog if i put more photos here.. Haha.. So can check out FB over the next 1-2days for more photos..

We finally walked back through the forest close to 9am when the tide finally came in and flooded the intertidal land area.. NEA then brought us on a quick tour of the island's landfill faclities, and a short video presentation..

And before we knew it, it was time for our ferry ride back to Singapore mainland..

Although brief, its been a wonderful morning exploration of the intertidal marine life! The volunteer guides were knowledgable and friendly, the weather was great, and the marine life - simply fantastic!

(Kinda reminded of my old Geography teacher, Mrs Ong WL, when I saw the mangrove trees, and the intertidal area.. Hehe..)

Action-Packed Weekend (1) - ECP PCN Redux

Phew, what a tiring weekend. I tink i'm officially sleep-deprived.

Jam-packed weekend as the title suggests!

Saturday
Against my better judgement, I found myself back at East Coast Park on a Saturday morning this time, ready to take on the 42km East Coast Park Park Connectors Network (refer to previous blog post on ECP PCN here), barely 8 months after the previous expedition.

This time though, with Kahyee, Jessica, Aishu & Chris, and the 'powerful /insane' Susan who has gone twice already.. =P

Managed to borrow Sam and Jessica's bikes to help defray costs.. =P Hhmmm, Jessica's bikes were rather challenging - 1 had a super hard seat, whereas the other had faulty gears so that it had a super high resistance no matter how hard u pedalled, which promptly led me to dub them the "painful butt" and the "resistance bike".


Trying to fix the "resistance bike", to no avail..
Rotated the 2 bikes around to try to minimize the extra work needed, but somehow, my quads were still rather sore..

Otherwise, everything was pretty smooth sailing this time round cos Susan and I knew the route fairly well by memory, until it started to rain!! -_-"

The weather was anything but cooperative this time round, and caught us out so badly that we were forced to take cover at Tampines MRT station, and later on somewhere along Pasir Ris Road after Downtown East. But otherwise, the weather was pleasantly cool for most of the ride.

Still managed to find time to photo-whore around the usual places.. =P


Bedok Reservoir!


Sun Plaza Park in Tampines!


Catching the departing and landing flights along the coastal park connector that ran on and on for 7.9km..

I tink everyone survived pretty ok, given some of the "challenges" that were thrown at us.. Though the rain delay was quite significant, and resulted in me rushing off (and unfortunately being rather late) to meet a good friend who was flying back to the States soon..

Finally managed to reach home after 11.30pm, only for a short rest before tomorrow's programme..

A Nation Celebrates..

Happy 43rd Birthday, Singapore! =)

End of Medicine SIP..

And so, Medicine SIP ended on a balmy Friday afternoon at CGH.

It was actually getting peaceful in the ward somehow the last few days, maybe due to the surprisingly lower number of new admissions, or maybe due to us getting better at our jobs? But mini-chaos erupted yesterday afternoon when the MOs rotated, and the number of new admissions just flooded us in the afternoon, and the number of changes that needed to be done for my cubicle's patients just ballooned.

All in all, Medicine SIP has been a really enjoyable experience!

I do feel, if not a little, more proficient in my procedural skills now; and other practical stuff that a HO does. A casual asking around reveals quite a mixed bag of feelings. Some were glad that SIP is ending, cos they were getting "bored" with the daily routine, while others ended SIP looking forward to HO life in the future..

Well, i certainly enjoyed my time here in CGH. The team doctors were generally wonderful to work with, the nurses were quite helpful and quite funny, and the company couldn't have been better. =) Even the calls were enjoyable.. Haha..

Post-SIP, Chris, Kahyee, Jessica and I adjourned over to East Coast Park to celebrate the end of SIP by a fantastic seafood dinner at Jumbo! Yum yum! Black pepper crab, chilli crab, cereal prawns, sambal kangkong.. What a wonderful way to end off SIP! =)