My sis had a visiting friend over the weekend, and my family invited her to join us for dinner at Clarke Quay. We passed by the river cruise ticketing box, and Mom thought that it would be rather exciting to take a river taxi down the Singapore River, and so we did, on the DUCK [...]
Posts from ‘February, 2010’
The butterfly of freedom
From Edward Monkton:
Trivial lessons
Today I did something on a public light bus that probably made the observer-passengers and the driver think, “she’s so stupid”. But inside me, I was laughing. I was happy, for I had learnt something.
CNY in fog
View from my window this morning:
Quite typical up here.
It’s a mild winter – feeling like the upper 10s instead of a 11°C, yet the locals are all wrapped up like they’re training for an Arctic expedition. Something that amuses me greatly, every time.
* * * * *
“???,” he tells me. But how can [...]
The great snake stink
My hands smell a combination of rotting flesh and latex gloves, hours after exhuming a sludge of a month-long-buried Oriental whip snake to pick out its skeleton: its skull pieces, much of the vertebrae, and some ribs have been retrieved with some assistance from a colleague (she had previous experience in sorting caterpillar frass, which [...]
On vanity III: Judging
Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
Moths: before and after
Just a collection of what I’ve managed to rear in recent times:
Pericallia ricini (Family Arctiidae / tiger moths):
Eggs
2nd instar larvae
4th instar larva
Adult
Metanastria hyrtaca (Family Lasiocampidae / lappet moths):
Early instars
Later instars
Adult
Adult
Perina nuda (Family Lymantriidae / tussock moths):
Pre-pupal stage
Pupa
Newly-eclosed adult male
Adult male
Enpinanga borneensis (Family Sphingidae / hawk or Sphinx moths):
Final instar, pre-pupal stage
Adult which unfortunately eclosed while [...]
The mantid Diego II
Driven by curiosity and the urge to test the hypothesis that the smaller, similarly brown-mottled but black forlegged mantid was indeed the male of Diego’s species (ok, driven by the sheer excitement of having little Diegos to complete the whole cycle as well), we found and collected one of these, and in a social entomological [...]
Upper Seletar
With long and graspy legs, nasty jaw-like mandibles and modified appendages through which they inject their prey with venom, these house centipedes look like the epitome of all that’s evil and dangerous in the wilderness at night.
Yet they do no more harm to humans than the average spider – if they do bite at all. [...]
Riders
The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.
What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
We can just see the infant up astride,
His small fist buried in the bushy hide.
There [...]
