lekowala!

Leea’s born today. She’s named after the genus Leea which is found in South and Southeast Asia. It means delicate in Hebrew..

In preparation for the Army half-marathon - the Singapore Bay Run on Sunday, 24 August 2008. Registration ends 30th June.

http://www.mapmyrun.com

This is a 6km route. For the longer runs, I make 4 more loops round Punggol Park to complete 10km.

Here’s a little summary from the final fieldtrip to sentosa for the biophilia programme (24th May 2008). The students have been great to work with thanks to their initiative and level of enthusiasm. (hmmm but why haven’t they contributed to this blog?!?). Fellow colleagues that came for the fieldtrips made the programme successful in its own way.

We’ve been lucky with the tides this year and all the saturdays low tides were around 9 am so we could schedule those saturday fieldtrips.

For me again, there were new things to see (as with every fieldtrip to this spot) and this school of catfish was one. It was a tight ball and they were swimming around each other and moving as a school.

I chanced upon another school of smaller catfish later and demonstrated to the students the fountain effect of how a school of fish move away from an incoming predator. See embedded video. Here, I wade towards the school of fish and through the school. Note how the school doesn’t swim away but split into 2 and swim around me by first swimming away and doing a flanking turn to the outside and around me and regrouping behind me. That’s apparently optimal evasion tactics from a predator… cool. I got the chance to gather the students to demonstrate this in situ, something I had learnt from Prof Munroe in Animal Behaviour class when I was in year 2 or 3 when I was an undergraduate. Those are just some of the biodiversity lessons that I never forgot. It was nice to demonstrate this to a bunch of students who may not take any Biodiversity modules as undergraduates. In fact its hard to imagine that with the ever changing syllabus to molecular biology that students will ever learn this.

Here’s a mermaid’s purse or more informatively, the egg that is laid by a shark, stingray and attached to seawead. The eggcase is usually washed to shore after the baby shark emerges. There are plenty of this around at the sentosa beach.

And finally, a picture of students working at the site. Its nice to see that they have learnt much from this experience. It has been a fulfilling programme and one that the teachers and I have found exciting, refreshing and something we looked forward to. Its definitely a different pedagogy, the open classroom. Some students have remarked that they enjoyed the freedom to explore and craft their own projects. Will post some reflections below as they are nice (I have omitted some parts)

~”The most memorable part of Biophilia will definitely be the day on the beach when for the first time in my life I watched 2 ‘blue-blooded’ horseshoe crabs mate. I was really surprised to be able to find such amazing creatures in Singapore, because all along I saw Singapore as a place with minimal biodiversity. This programme has thus taught me not to underestimate the biodiversity of creatures in Singapore.”~

~I really enjoyed every single session of the Biophilia programme as I was working with what I enjoy and am interested in most. The fieldtrips really heightened my interest towards marine organisms and I really learnt a lot about Singapore’s shores during the trips. I have also started to fully appreciate Singapore’s biodiversity after seeing such a huge variety of organisms living on such a small stretch of beach. I used to think that Singapore does not have any sea anemones or coral reefs but I realized was very much mistaken after seeing the beautiful sea anemones on the Sentosa beach. I’m glad to know that there are such programmes to let me learn more about Singapore’s biodiversity as I feel that our biodiversity is just as important as the developments in our country. Our biodiversity is part of our environment as well as our heritage so we should treasure it as well and not cast it aside as something less important. If I have a chance I would want to go for this programme again and I hope that it will be for a longer period of time as I feel that the time period this time is too short.~

~From the fieldtrip I attended, the experience and new discoveries I made gave me a great sense of achievement. I think it is wonderful that I have had this opportunity to observe and even touch some of the organisms we found. Wading in the water and sometimes mud in search of fish, crab and whatever else we could find was truly a great experience. I am glad to have been selected to participate in this program. I never realized that the area behind underwater world had so many cool organisms despite all the times I have been to Sentosa. The thought that that little ecosystem will most likely be destroyed in the future with the ongoing construction around that area is rather depressing. As unlikely as it is, I hope that the short video that my group has produced throughout this program will achieve its purpose in increasing the awareness about the ecological value of that area, and perhaps more might learn to value this more than the monetary profits it could bring. ~

Otterman and friends at the NTU bike rally. Wish I was there but I think my week has been too packed already.

After sundown, it was Joshua’s turn to run at the Cold Storage race for kids. Parents have to run along. Here he is in action. Brother Matt and Mum were there to give support.

Before the race, lining up. Little brother Matt patiently supporting ge ge throughout the race.

Josh with the nice running strides he has. I was running alongside trying to catch up with mr speedracer.

The medal!

(Meanwhile Siva and friends are out at the NTU bike rally… I wonder if their butts are aching now).

it was a fun night running with my colleagues. We had signed up as teams for the Sundown marathon. My first marathon (oh well, if you consider 10.5 km). But it was fun as the crowd at Changi cheered us on. We got hungry running back cos of the barbecues that were going on there.

I am tempted to run either the half or full marathon cos after the 10 km finishing line, we wished there was another 5 or 10 more km as we were on runners high by then. I know one of our friends was running the 84 km ultramarathon… Apparently he gets ex-students and friends to pass him food like prata along the way.

Anyway, finished the race in about an hour and felt really good after that.

Quite a few years ago when I was in University (year 1), I attended a talk by a priest who said.. heaven begins now, and he quoted some words from John in the new testament..

Fast forward many years to just 3 years ago, Br Broughton describes how he told students that they experience heaven as they meet up in a fast food restaurant and have fun and laughter over a meal, enjoy the company of close friends, and all worries and anxieties dissipate as they conjure up heaven.

A couple of days ago I was facilitator for a group of students on their 4 day camp. The 1st day’s campsite was pretty near the beach and after setting up the tents and having dinner, it was just 7.30 pm. The nightsky was beautiful; there was no light pollution at all and the stars just dotted the nightsky. In the morning when I awoke, the cool and fresh air filled my lungs - a long lost feeling from fieldtrips to Malaysia.

The memories of dragonboating, wakatobi, rafting and mangrove planting will remain… but the heaven conjured by the youth in those 4 days come remind me of those insights by the holy men. Why wait till we die? Heaven is here…

The Assisi hospice charity fun day was a great way to spend the Sunday. So the kakis rounded up some used stuff such as bags, books and clothes to sell at the fun fair. We had ensured that the stuff coming in from friends and all were of good quality stuff so quite a few things were branded actually. And I had “let go” of some of my books as well that would have just collected dust on my shelf anyway.. They were nice books.. Like my Aung Sang Su Kyi book which I bought for 47 bucks and went for about $5 or was it $2? Well that depended on our mood. At the end of the day, Ivan was giving free collectibles or bags with each book sold.

Here’s Ivan demonstrating the read the book and then when people are around just tell them “5 for 1 dollar” move. it worked! Such business acumen!

Besides that, we baked cookies and Amy and Thomas made their homemade bread for the kaya toast section. I woke up at 6.30 to make some coffee (Sumatra Mandheing) to support the kaya toast sale.

Su Yin on the left sorting out clothes with Ivan. Clothes were hard to sell but the Polo Ralph Laurens, AIX and Timberland shirts from Charles disappeared soon enough from the displays.

Peck Wai and Oi Yee would have added to the already fun atmosphere but the stuff they parted with were valuable. Not to mention Oi Yee’s Gucci bags! Ah material things!

The day before we had gone to drop off stuff at the stall and realised that we didn’t have decor and a name… but as Ivan pointed out, that won’t really matter to the crowd who would mill around and have more fun sifting through the mess. Which is true as I found out when they rummaged through the boxes of bags which we had planned to arrange nicely on the table; so we dumped the bags into a big box and left it on the floor…. soon, women came and were busily going through the items..amazing.

Books were another great performer… it was nice to see people going through the books and we had our Rambling Librarian to artfully arrange the books. I was impressed at how he had done it in about 20 mins… He had a personable way with people and they took to him… it must be his height ..ha!

Otterman checking out the books

Otherman - a satisfied customer and fellow stall organiser blogs about the day

It was a busy day ferrying the family to the stall and back. But luckily the rest were manning the stations busily so I could bring the kids and wife to the stall. Jen had donated quite a few books and quite a lot of her own bags and helped me organise collections the past month.

What’s a funfair without the candy floss.

My sis, Natalie looking rather pooped out after spending 830 to 5 pm on the opposite end of the retail therapy.

Pix of the day goes to the lovely couple of Thomas and Amy who with much resilience and hard selling, got all the cookies and Kaya toast sold off.

This lady has the honor of being the first ever person to buy the Seastars album. She got her photo taken with us and also another free album to distribute. What a great person! 2 more came to buy our album so Ivan and I may be seriously thinking about launching our commercial album….

At the end of the day… a job well enjoyed and done with a couple of books, bags and clothes left.

Well, the hospice managed to raise over $550,000 according to the CNA news. So I guess our little stall added to that. Well done kakis!

Last year, the hospice saw over 1,000 patients – an increase of nearly 200 from 2006. This year, it expects to spend over S$6 million on improving its programmes.

A third of that amount will be covered by government grants and revenue, but the remainder of S$4 million will have to be met through donations