Horseshoe Crabs Rescue & Research Programme

Went to Mandai Mudflats on Sunday to participate in Nature Society's Horseshoe Crabs Rescue & Research Programme (http://www.nss.org.sg/project.aspx?id=12).

This is a monthly activity where volunteers will help Nature Society to pick up the horseshoe crabs from the mudflats to allow the crabs to be measured. Once the data collected, the horseshoe crabs are released back into the mudflats.

Woke up early to reach the Mudflats by 7.30 am. Wow this was my first to the Mudflats! Even though I know about this research programme for a few years and have been wanting to join, I have never managed to go until now. Apparently according to Chenny, the volunteer liasion officer from Nature Society, the Mudflats is only exposed during low tide. Looking at the expanse of the Mudflats, it is simply amazing.

The group of volunteers yesterday included a group of primary school children who were very

enthusiastic. There was another group of corporate volunteers and a few of individual volunteers like myself.

Picking up my first horseshoe crab was easy. After that for some strange reason, I got a bit hesitant and took a while to pick up the rest. I had to dig through the mud to expose the whole horseshoe crab first instead of just pulling them out by their shells which was much faster. There were many tiny ants lookalike creatures crawling on the mud too.

The Mudflats is a very interesting place. On one stretch of it, it is covered by fine green seagrass (looks like seagrass but not certain). Is really soft the grass. Seems to me like a nice green carpet over the mud. 

There are many clams that can be collected from the rocks too. Saw some fishermen just plucking the clams from the rocks. I believed the clams would eventually end up being sold in the market.



Coming back to the horseshoe crabs, they are pretty harmless. Not like your usual crabs. They also move quite slowly. The males are actually much smaller than the females. We were supposed to pick the crabs and put them in a pail. Once the pail is full, we had to go back to the research desk to empty our pails before going out to pick some more crabs. Any mating pairs should be brought straight back to the research desk. Picking up one horseshoe crab every time was already a handful for me, thus I let others bring back the mating pairs. I would say the children were much braver. I could hear them very excited when they found mating pairs and needed to bring back the two immediately.

                                 

After about 2 hours of picking the crabs, we were almost done. After letting the researchers collate all the statistics, it was time to put back the horseshoe crabs. I must say it was really much easier to put back the horseshoe crabs onto the mudflats. This time, I managed to hold horseshoe crab in each of my hands to expedite the release. The tide was coming in as we released the horseshoe crabs. Could see the mudflats progressively being covered by the seawater.

It was really an interesting and educational experience.

Halia Restaurant @ Botanic Garden

Went to Halia Restaurant at Botanic Garden for High Tea with a couple of friends. The restaurant is idyllically situated in one of Singapore nicest garden which is a plus point. Instead of shopping malls, the scenery consists of trees and ponds.

The tea set is price at $28 ++ per person for a minimum of two. I ordered the tea set with Apple. We both had the Halia Infusion for our tea. I think it is a mix of ginger, lemongrass etc. The tea tasted quite good. The food offering was as shown below, this was what we had for about $64 after the taxes etc. I think the price is on the high side for the offerings.

After tea, we walked pass the ponds and caught 2 white swans swimming gracefully.

FireFlies

While walking along a dark road, I vaguely saw a green light ahead. My first thought was whether it was a torchlight of someone behind the trees. However the light weaved and disappeared. Then realized it was a firefly when I saw another green light floating in the air. Wow fireflies in Singapore! :) Was really a nice surprise to see fireflies.

Could still remember and humm the firefly song that was often played on air during my much younger days. Found its lyrics and kind of like it.

Fireflies only emits their brilliance for a short while just like in the lyrics "短暂的生命努力的发光". Is just like life, life does not always have fairytale ending that is reserved for story books. Treasuring and living our life well for the moment is what we can do and control.The ending depends on many external factors and will decide for itself. Hopefully despite the short brillance, we can just like the lyrics "让黑暗的世界充满希望". :)

作词:伊能静
作曲:陈秀男 陈大力

萤火虫萤火虫慢慢飞
夏夜里夏夜里风轻吹
怕黑的孩子安心睡吧
让萤火虫给你一点光
燃烧小小的身影在夜晚
为夜路的旅人照亮方向
短暂的生命努力的发光
让黑暗的世界充满希望

萤火虫萤火虫慢慢飞
我的心我的心还在追
城市的灯光明灭闪耀
还有谁会记得你燃烧光亮

*Hackers*

I am always changing passwords for my various electronics devices. Sometimes I don't know whether I should be angry or amazed. The thing is there are many hackers at home in the form of my neices and nephews. They have been quite successful at times that I am just simply amazed, amused and exasperated.

Is not that I do not want to let them use my stuffs, but they are not supposed to use them until they finish their work. Their mothers, my sisters, say they should not be using without supervision which I agree. We are not around during the daytime to supervise them.

I guess is just a matter of tries at times. Once they managed to hack into the ipad and I changed the password. The next time, my ipad content was deleted due to a default setting where the content will be erased when the number of tries for trying the password exceeded 10 or 100 times. Did not even know there is such a default seeting. I had to download all my content again and change the setting to never allow content to be erased.

Then for the laptop and computer, I set up children accounts wth parental control setting to only allow them usage at certain time slots. But my clever eldest nephew somehow managed to change the settings a number of times when my sister was logged in her administrator account and moved away from the computer for a short while.

Recently the parental control does not work at all as he manages to do something to the computer that requires him not being able to log in any of the accounts I set and use it. Wow I am also not sure how he does it. He told me he just banged on the keyboards and it worked. I tried but still it required passwords. Still scratching my head over how he did it.

Anyway I have to say my nieces and nephews are getting better at this *hacking* thing. Though of course the eldest nephew is really good at it. In fact, I feel he is talented somehow with IT stuff. Maybe it can be an area he wants to pursue.

Thai Pub @ Hotel Windsor

My thai coursemates were talking about going to one last time. In end it never materialized. This time, finally managed to get a friend who been there to bring me there last week.

It was quite an eye opener. First of all, most of the patrons there were guys. Possibly 90%. And most of the patrons were surprisingly looking like in their early 20s.

There were quite a number of Thai gals hanging around the tables. According they earned by selling drinks as well as through the garlands of flowers bought and showered on them.

The Thai gals were all eye candies, they looked very pretty, slim and young. They floated around the tables. Pouring drinks for the guys, drinking with them as well as playing finger guessing games with them. On-off a group of them were be on stage belting out Thai songs.

Surprisingly there were also a band that was made up of a middle aged auntie as well as 2 other singers. She was belting out Mandarin songs. And she was popular. She seemed to get more garlands of flowers than the young gals. Wow!

Towards the end, all the gals were standing on stage, parading and doing simple dances along with the music as they awaited their turns to receive garlands of flowers.

Hmmm... even though the whole experience was interesting for me as an observer but I am not sure for the gals as a kind of job is it really what they would have want if they have better choices. Drinking like what they do everyday must be detrimental for health. Hmmm....there must be a story behind how each of them come to be there.

Tea Cosy @ Plaza Singapura

Went with Tweet Tickle to Tea Cosy at Plaza Singapura. Is a nice cosy tea house that is quite relaxing. Tweet tickle really liked the decorations in the cafe. We ordered 1 set of the tea set to share between us. The scones and the other items were quite minature. Thus we were able to finish it easily. We paid $15 dollars each  in the end. The price was ok but the food items could be a little bigger. Overall it was a good place to catch up with friend.

Tsubohachi @ Illuma Bugis

Went to Tsubohachi with Giraffe, Kolala and Goldilocks. Illuma now has more people than last time. The revamp certainly helps.

We decided to try the restuarant. We ordered Vegetable Ramen($9), Chirashi Don Set Dinner ($17.80), Ten Don Set Dinner ($14.80) & Tsubohachi Combo ($14).

When the food came, we were all surprised at the portion. The portion was quite small and Giraffe especially reminded me to write about the portion if I am writing my blog. My ramen was ok but the rest did not seem to enjoy their food. One thing though the green tea was surprisingly not hot, just a bit warm, which I thought they could do better.