In a cephalopod’s garden in the shade

The Beatles sang it first: I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden in the shade. He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been, in his octopus’s garden in the shade.

Sweet lyrics from one of my favourite happy songs. But now, a real tale of death defying adventure and great derring-do.

Ladies and gentlemen, direct from Lembeh Strait in exotic Manado, on the northern tip of Lost World Sulawesi Island, brought to you by intrepid filmmakers two, Shark Bait Productions presents… (drumroll)…  The Weird and Wonderful World of Octopi!

 

IT’S CRAFTY! It’s cunning! It’s got no backbone but it’s wily like no other invertebrate on the planet. The coconut octopus, or veined octopus, is so called because it’s been known to use coconut shells as hiding places, burying itself in the sand with only its eyes sticking out. And you thought only hula girls used coconut shells in clever ways.

But the two that we saw used sea shells (stolen from mermaids I’m sure). When the dive guide removed the shells from the octopus and placed them apart a short distance away, the perturbed cephalopod “walked” over to it to reclaim its property. Determined little critter, that one.

And yes, they are cute. Maybe cute in an ugly way, but cute. Not least because these ones “walk”. And it looks as though they are walking with dinner plates stuck under them. (Okay, the octopi were not that big; but the they still looked like they were walking with small plates…)

done

 

ONE OF THE WORLD’S most venomous creature in the animal kingdom! The awesome danger of the blue-ringed octopus! It may have been smaller than a golf ball, but commanded everyone keep a respectful distance still. Every time it started to swim, we backed off, which kinda explains the video’s camera movements. (“Oh shit! Panic panic panic panic back off back off reverse reverse gostan gostan!”)

The blue-ring octopus was really cool though. The dive guide first coaxed it out of the beer bottle partly buried in the muck. After it came out, it posed and postured for a while, miffed that we were interrupting its afternoon nap. It flashed its colours, swam around, threatened us as much as it could, then headed back to its bottle. It slinked back in, its tentacle sweeping the mouth of the bottle, twice, to ensure we weren’t following it. The tentacle came out again, flicked at us in a final defiant, maybe obscene, octopus gesture.

done

done

 

IT’S THE MASTER OF DISGUISE! The maestro of impersonation! The cephalopod of a thousand (or six, at least) faces!

Octopus are smart, but the mimic octopus is the epitome of intelligence in every sense of the word. Skilled in impersonating other creatures on the sea bed, they were discovered only recently in 1998. Since then, they’ve mystified scientists who speculate they may know more disguises that man has seen. I saw them on a documentary before and they were amazing. Depending on how they position their eight arms, they can imitate a banded sea snake, a flounder, a lionfish, a jellyfish, stingray or a feather star.

Scientists think the creature that the mimic octopus chooses to impersonate may depend on its circumstance. For example, if damselfishes were bugging it, it might pretend to be a banded sea snake to scare them away.

Which probably explains why the one we encountered faked being a flounder. Flounders rank low on the Lembeh Straits Creature Feature whereas banded sea snakes and lionfish would be really cool to divers.

What I’m wondering is are these impersonations are imprinted into their instinct, or if they have to be learned. Like if there were no banded sea snakes in the cove where a mimic octopus lived, would it still be able to mimic one? We’ll never know. It’ll remain one of the greatest mysteries on the planet.

Anyhoo, this was one of our first dives. It was our first video for sure, as we pretended we were National Geographic videographers. You can see, briefly, the mimic octopus we met, but not the part when it swam like a flounder. I’m posting it anyways so you can make fun of our camera skills and tell us not to quit our day jobs.

done

 

THE AMAZING! The sensational! The wunderpus! This creature of eight amazing webbed tentacles lives in the same area as the mimic octopus and is commonly mistaken for it thanks to its striking markings. And even if it doesn’t have any impersonating skills, can’t juggle or draw or tell a good joke, it’s still quite marvellous. Yay, to the wonderpus.

The one we met happened during the night dive. Night dives are a whole new ball game where you’re in an alien environment and your visibility is limited to whatever lies within that narrow beam from your handheld torch. There could be a giant squid an arm’s length away and you wouldn’t have a clue. I’ll save night dives for another post.

So here’s the video you’ve all been waiting for — the amazing wunderpus. Now you see it. Now you don’t.

done

 

COMMON? WE DON’T THINK SO. We saw one more octopus, but have no video (damn you, stoopid camera, damn you to 20,000 leagues). It was huge! Like a… a… the size of jack russell… with eight legs! It mimicked nothing. It had no shell or coconut armour. It wasn’t strikingly marked or webbed. But it was a master of camouflage if I ever saw one.

It happened during a wall dive and the octopus came out of his rock hole and made for the coral wall. En route, it changed colour to sandy bottom, then rocky surface (it even changed some of its skin texture, whether rough or smooth), before finally settling into a shadow under a protruding rock. I could see its blowhole still, but I had to clear my flooding mask. When I looked again a few seconds later, I couldn’t see it at all. Bravo.

 

We would be so happy, you and me, no one there to tell us what to do. I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden with you.

For muck’s sake

We went muck diving. Until about three months ago, I didn’t know there was such a thing. I always thought diving was diving. Some were near the shore, some were in open sea. Some sites are coral reefs, some are pinnacles, some are wall dives. Some places you see certain kinds of fishes. Some places have more fish, some have less. Some have more beautiful fishes than others. Some places you see big things, like bumpheads, barracuda schools, turtles. Some places you see big and rare things, like whale shark, mola mola, manta rays, hammerhead sharks. An ex-colleague made a trip to South Africa specially to dive with the great whites.

Ah, but, muck diving.

Muck diving is exactly that — diving in muck. A murky, sediment-rich environment, whether it’s muddy silt, volcanic sand, dead coral, discarded man-made junk, or other trash.

But it is precisely in these conditions that the numerous unusual, exotic and bizarre creatures love to make their homes. Hence, muck diving is big with macro photographers. Most muck diving sites are located in Southeast Asia, and for us, we went to Lembeh Strait in Manado, Indonesia.

When Jun and I first confirmed we would go to Manado to dive, I kept thinking it was in the Philippines. Turns out it’s in Indonesia, on the northern tip of Sulawesi. Since young, I was always enchanted by Sulawesi; its shape on the map was like a Samurai warrior helmet (kabuto) with the crest trailing in the wind. Since it wasn’t one of the major islands of Indonesia (like Sumatra or Java), Sulawesi, to me, had the same exotic, unexplored, mysterious lost-world quality to it as Borneo and Papua New Guinea.

Manado itself has two areas for diving. Bunaken, namely the Bunaken National Marine Park, to the north faces the Celebes Sea. But on the southern side of Manado, an hour’s drive from the airport, is Lembeh Strait, between the mainland and Lembeh Island. The area is volcanic, so the beaches and sea bed consists of black volcanic sand — Muck.

And the glorious wonderful world of muck creatures.

The roster reads like a B-grade War of the Worlds movie.

Frogfish. Stonefish. Scorpionfish. Pygmy seahorse. Rhinopias. Ringed pipefish. Winged pipefish. Ornate ghost pipefish. Morays. Banded snake eel. Blue-ringed octopus. Mimic octopus. Wunderpus. Coconut octopus. Octopus octopus. Flamboyant cuttlefish. Porcupinefish. Pufferfish. Lionfish. Longhorn cowfish. Trumpetfish. Razorfish. Mandarinfish. Banggai cardinalfish. Moorish idol. Batfish. Sea moth. Lizardfish. Stargazers. Flathead. Flounder. Cockatoo flounder. Emperor shrimp. Coleman shrimp. Harlequin shrimp. Coral banded shrimp. White banded shirt. Transparent cleaner shrimp. The spotted sweetlips. Electric clam. And of course, one of the main denizens of the muck, the innumerable nudibranches.

Some of these creatures were poisonous/venomous. Some we didn’t even know were dangerous until we came back and wiki-ed them. So many creatures.

And this isn’t including the huge variety of other reef fishes, like the damselfishes, cardinal fishes, angelfishes, parrotfishes and anemone fish. Not that they should be taken for granted.

I was harassed by a black and white anemone fish. I was swimming by its turf when it came at me. I looked at it, it took offense, and swam aggressively closer. I looked away and it backed off a little but when I looked back and raised my pointer at it, it interpreted it as en garde and charged at me again. This went on a few times. One point as it swam away, I swear it turned its tail to me and shat. Charmed.

Anyway, they may not be dangerous like sharks are dangerous, but I’d imagine they could bite a hole in my wetsuit if they wanted to. Some of these fishes have teeth. Some of these fishes eat coral.

There was also one time when I was “standing” and just admiring the Mandarinfish when I felt something nipping my fin. I looked down and saw some anemone fish swimming around it.

(There was some good news though. The triggerfish here are not as aggressive as the triggerfish in Malaysia. Still, while I saw some minding their own business as we swam near it, even over it, I did see some patrolling in the distance keeping a watchful eye over our group as we passed. As one of the divers said, if you’ve dived in Malaysia, you’re triggerfish trained.)

Speaking of Mandarinfish, they were one of the highlights of diving in Lembeh.

Every day at sunset, the Mandarinfish will gather and do a courtship dance.

Measuring 6cm or so, they’re not very big. The female is larger than the male, but both have the most spectacular colours and body patterns.

They’ll swim around the labyrinth of coral until they find one another. The male will sidle up to the female and together, both very still, they’ll let their bodies float upwards in a gentle spiral out of the safety of the coral. I’m not sure if they spawn. It doesn’t seem so. They just do the courtship dance over and over again, which is incredibly pretty. So balletic. Poetic.

It’s amazing to be watching them. We’re all gathered around this cluster of coral and because it’s dusk, it’s dark. So we’re shining our torches at these tiny fishes, invading their most intimate moment with an invasion of blinding light simply for our own gratification. As mesmerised as I was, I almost felt bad for being there.

Muck diving is amazing. There are too many anecdotes. I can ramble on for pages just on shrimp alone. How pretty they were. How tiny. How cute they pulse as they swim around a anemone. Or how one would hitch a ride on a sea cucumber. Or nudibranch. How delicate. How transparent, which made focus difficult for cameras, even in macro mode.

Oh. We lucked out. Managed to borrow an underwater camera housing from Y, which fit my Ixus 400. Unfortunately my digicam, or rather its battery, is on its last legs and after a few shots with flash, the camera dies. Still it was better than nothing. Even if our point-and-shoot in its plastic housing floating in the camera box looked like a Fisher Price toy next to the other divers’ cameras connected to strobe and extra macro lens and such.

I’m also still sorting through our pictures. (Pictures here are from website of resort we stayed at.) We even shot some underwater video (woo-hoo). There are over 450 photos. This may take a while. (Or less, coz I think coz 80% of them are blur. Hee.)

I want my muffin

You know how you see something you’ve not seen for ages, and you remember it as being bigger? Not so for needles.

I went for a health examination today, and the needle the nurse used looked like a small tube, one down from a tiny pipe. I remember needles for blood tests being thinner. Ow.

I also don’t recall them needing so much blood for a test (again, my memory shrinking things in my head). Didn’t it used to be half, or at most three quarters, of a syringe? The nurse took a whole tube. And I didn’t even get a cookie or juice. (Yes, that’s telling of how my mind works — Here, take an organ, just give me my muffin. Heh.) If I wasn’t so weak now, I’d hit somebody.

Okay, I’ll stop whinging now.

Dance with me

My current turn-up-the-volume-and-dance-in-my-bedroom-where-no-one-can-see-except-the-dog song.

Duffy – Mercy

Eight golds no wet dream

And Michael Phelps has won the eight gold medals he set out to win in Beijing. He’s the greatest Olympian in history. He’s exceeded the record set by Mark Spitz in 1972 for most golds won in one Games. He’s won the million dollar reward from Speedo, an offer that was made during Athens 2004 (where Phelps won six golds and two bronzes), and that still stands for the Beijing Games. (Though, seriously, that reward’s going to be just the tip of the endorsement iceberg.)

There were a few close ones, though. Like the Men’s 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay, the race where anchor Jason Lezak chased the French guy and finished first by 0.08 seconds.

And the Men’s 100m Butterfly, where Phelps finishes by a fingertip. To the naked eye (see the video), it seems like Milorad Cavic touched the wall first. But as the commentator said, touchpads don’t lie. Phelps finishes one one-hundredth of a second ahead to win the gold. Maybe not cutting your fingernails paid off. I think it was a bit of luck too. Luck and timing. Phelp’s stroke was propelling him in while Cavic had just finished a stroke and was kind of “gliding” to the wall. Sports Illustrated.com has a really cool frame-by-frame sequence that you can check out to slowly appreciate precisely how close that finish really was.

The Men’s 200m Butterfly, Phelps had what he called a wardrobe malfunction — trouble with his goggles — but still shaved 0.03 seconds off his own World Record.

Then there are the glorious victories. Like the eat-my-wake, the make-the-World-Record-Olympic-Record-any-freakin’-record-look-like-kid’s-stuff race, the Men’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay.

Here are some nice pictures to attempt to do justice to those moments. I’m still amazed how his arms don’t come together in front at the start of each stroke for Butterfly. We were talking about this over brunch on Sunday, and someone said the same thing — it was probably a “waste of time and effort” for the hands to be together. Similarly, I saw that the men’s hands were spread open for Freestyle, whereas when I was in school, we were taught that our fingers ought to be closed to make the stroke more effective. (Speaking of which, I can’t remember for Freestyle whether your swimming arm ought to be straight or bent. Anyone?) Then again, when your hand’s the size of a twelve-year-old, any increased paddling surface area would help, unlike these professionals, whose hands are probably the size of a dinner plate.

And while still on the topic of common people who don’t exercise regularly speculating about the science of swimming, it seems that Michael Phelps’s body is perfectly built to swim. His 6′4″ physique is somewhat unique, or different, at least. The proportion of his upper body to lower body (he has the upper body of a 6′8″ person, but his lower body seems to be of someone who is only 5″10″), the span of his arms (which is that of someone who’s 6′7″), his double-jointed ankles which kick faster, his constitution which produces less lactic acid than others, thus allowing him to recover faster, even his Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder which makes him seem infatigiable sometimes — they all contribute to greater strength and speed in the water. That, and probably years and years of an unrelenting training schedule.

As Carol said, in other words, he’s a freak. To which I added, yes, but a freak who can swim really really fast. (Trivia: Phelps has size 14 feet, Ian Thorpe, the Thorpedo, the other swimming wonder, has size 17 feet.) (Mmm… Ian Thorpe…)

Anyhoo, to learn more about Phelps’s body (that’s such an advertising copy line), read the whole article here.

A date with Xander

I finally met Xander. He’s cute, dressed in a light blue ensemble with a car on it (boys will be boys). He’s not much of a conversationalist though. And when he does talk, he’s speaking a foreign language, but somehow makes more sense than some of the people I’ve met at work.

It was a mellow Sunday afternoon. The showers cooled the scorching weather we’ve been experiencing all week a little, so we just chilled. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we found we had a lot in common. We didn’t need to say anything to know what was on each other’s minds (answer: food). Other times we’re just stared out the window and watched the world go by. And then Xander peed on me.

Yes, he peed on me. I don’t know how, coz his playsuit was dry and he was wearing diapers. But somehow he managed to find a strategic gap and timed his execution well. He must have wanted to go quite badly coz now relieved, he laughed as Ray and Karina fussed, looking for how he could pee without wetting himself, but finding no signs of dampness on his playsuit. Sharpshooter, I guess.

Still, it was nice to meet Xander at last. I helped come up with his name, but missed his first month celebration as I was away. He’s charismatic, sitting in his bouncer like a towkay (a Chinese businessman boss-type). The Hokkiens will say he’s got “say”, an imposing presence. Which is true, he’s got this King of the Hill look. He’s also inherited he’s dad’s crooked smirk (which Sling totally agrees when I sent her the pic).

That said, he was also very considerate. He napped while his parents prepared brunch for Jet and Nicole and I, and woke up in time for the guests play with him, which suited his parents fine coz Xander, for a four month old, doesn’t like to sit and likes to stand (kind of stand). He also enjoys looking at the passing cars so maybe his parents could consider a harness with bungee by the window, like a hanging plant, and let him bounce and watch the world pass. (That’s cool, I want one of those for my place next time, to hang next to the hammock.)

Anyhoo, Ray and Karina make a mean French toast with fresh summer peaches and apricot with cream cheese stuffing (it was supposed to be strawberries but they substituted it with apricot). Jet, former pastry chef turned copywriter, helped. They also made truffle scrambled egg with kindof truffles, souvenir from Italy, and baked portobello mushrooms, tomatoes and sausages. We definitely ate too much. But it was the weekend, so it’s okay. Hah.

A song for the spirit

It’s been a year since 881. Here’s the song that got even me singing in Hokkien.

Wu Jiahui – One Half

Open the gates to Hell

Excerpt from Dante’s Inferno? Black Sabbath lyric? Hardly. It’s the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival (中元节 zhōngyuánjié).

Two Fridays ago marked the first day of the seventh lunar month and according to Buddhist, Taoist and other Chinese religions, the Gates of Hell are opened for thirty days, allowing the dead to walk among the living.

During this period, Chinese families avoid moving house, weddings and other big events since the ghosts are said to dominate events. Festivities will hit a peak tonight (and this weekend too probably) during the full moon on the fifteenth.

To pacify the visiting spirits and appease them so they will not wreak havoc during this month, the living make offerings of food and burn paper effigies in the belief that these burned items would becomes gifts in the afterworld which the spirits can use. Traditionally, Hell Money, a form of joss paper and afterlife monetary offering, as well as effigies of homes, servants, cars and other daily items, are burned.

But in recent years, to keep up with times, worshippers can purchase paper maché presents of more modern appliances and luxuries, such as credit cards, designer handbags, plasma TVs, DVD players and karaoke machines, mp3 players, fans and air-conditioning (useful to have when you’re in Hell), just to name a few. There are even cruises to nowhere that you can give to your dearly departed. The gifts seem to be limited only by your imagination.

Sumptuous feasts are also prepared and dedicated to them by business associates. At these events, auspicious items like bicycles (I’m tempted to say spirits like to cycle, but really I’m guessing this stems from that fact that China has more bicycles per family than anywhere else in the world so it became an object of great import), pineapples (for good luck), rice, and charcoal (known as “black gold”) which are associated with wealth to the Chinese are stacked on gold-tinted plates and elaborately wrapped in red ribbons and auctioned off to the highest bidder. These items would bring him/her better luck.

The most unique event during the Hungry Ghost Festival has got to be the ”getai” (歌台 gētái).

In neighbourhoods across the country, street operas and live getai stage performances are set up stage to entertain the living and the dead in the belief that if the spirits, who would normally be up to mischief, are entertained, distracted or happy, they would cause less trouble for the living during their time on earth

The getais are a colourful spectacle. Raucous and flashy with outdated coloured spotlights and sound equipment. Loud singing, think sanctioned karaoke in a public car park, with performers clad in costumes that look like they were hit by a shotgun spitting out sequins. The songs are more likely than not in Hokkien, a dialect that’s often considered crude as blue-collar workers and army boys use it most, especially to express their feelings towards fellow human beings.

The younger generation may consider getais kitsch, yet they have a growing cult following and are actually making a comeback. You know how the gaudy styles of the 1980s are so bad they’re making a comeback. It’s like that.

The getai revival was also fuelled by the popular 2007 movie 881, a musical/comedy/drama by Royston Tan, a fictional tale about the life of two getai performers. Delve into joy and heartache and the celebration of life told through Hokkien songs. The costumes in the musical numbers alone make the movie worth watching.

For a less colourful documentary-style explanation of the Hungry Ghost celebrations, here’s another clip.

Six down, two to go

The American swimmers made Olympic history again two days ago by smashing the Men’s 4 x 200 Freestyle. The way they were swimming, the way they were leading the others by over a body length (the body length of short person, if not a tall person), the way their strokes were just hitting the water — it was just a pleasure to watch. They made the moving green line indicating the World Record look like the computer projection had a lag.

Also a joy to watch: Phelps swimming the 200m Butterfly. He won the gold, his fourth. I like it when the camera shows the underwater shot for swimmers doing Butterfly; Butterfly is a cool stroke and the way the swimmers move is just so fluid. I’m sure this is a topic for the sports scientists — I, lowly blogger, just watches for, well, for the eye candy — but some swimmers’ hands are closer together in front. But Phelps’ arms are just stretched straight outwards (sometimes not even straight in front but opened a bit wider) as his strokes begin, or so they seem when I’m watching. Perhaps it’s coz his shoulders are the width of a tank, and it’ll just be inefficient and a waste of time and simply no point for his hands to be any closer together.

Despite the win, he didn’t seem to happy about his victory when the race ended. Seems his goggles were flooded, a bad thing since he may not be able to judge the distance for his turns.

Anyhoo, it was still a happy ending. And I’m losing track of the events, but with his latest gold for the Men’s 200m Individual Medley yesterday, he’s not just already the greatest Olympian in history, he’s one short of equalling Mark Spitz’s record for seven golds in one Game (Munich 1972), and two shy of his target of eight golds in Beijing. Woo-hoo!

Journey to the East

A Gorillaz (Jamie Hewlett, Director, and Damon Albarn, Music Composer and Producer) take on the Chinese legend of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong (孙悟空 sūn wúkōng) and the Journey to the West, in time for the Beijing Olympics, all thanks to BBC Sport.

One of the most beloved characters in Chinese Mythology, Sun Wukong possesses supernatural strength and speed. He’s a skilled fighter, having bested the best generals of heaven, including the Four Heavenly Kings and Erlang Shen. He can transform into animals and objects, is well versed with the 72 transformations, and each of the 84,000 hairs has magical properties, including being able to form a clone of himself. However, what makes him most famous is his antics. He was notoriously mischievous and incorrigibly rebellious. He repeatedly defied the Jade Emperor and the gods in heaven, even declaring himself “Great Sage, Equal of Heaven”. He stole the Empress Xi Wangmu’s (西王母 xīwángmǔ) “Peaches of Immortality”, Laozi’s (老子 lǎozǐ) ”Pills of Longevity” and the royal wine of the Jade Emperor himself.

Wukong was only subdued after losing a bet to Buddha, whereupon he was imprisoned under a mountain for five centuries before the bodhisattva Guanyin freed him. His freedom came in exchange for Wukong’s protection of the pilgrim Xuanzhang (玄奘 xuánzàng) as he made his journey to the west to India to obtain sacred texts.

Now, if someone will do Bart Simpson as Nezha (哪吒 nézhā), that would be fun to watch.

I’ll follow Death Cab for Cutie into the dark

Don’t ask me how a song with the first line, Love of mine, someday you will die, can be a love song.

But it is. And a beautiful one. Perhaps it’s the combination of words that follow after. The ones that go: But I’ll be close behind. I’ll follow you into the dark. Not to mention the other lyrics: No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white. Just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark. If heaven and hell decide that they are both satisfied, illuminate the “no’s” on their vacancy signs. If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I’ll follow you into the dark.

Awww…

Another band with lots other loud, good, fast and upbeat songs, but their most played, most nighttime radio dedications to “that girl at the bus stop holding the green folder”, most secretly-practised-in-the-confines-of-a-teenager’s-bedroom-with-their-guitar-bought-with-saved-up-allowance, most sung along by the audience, is their signature ballad.

Death Cab for Cutie – I Will Follow You Into The Dark

There was lots of indie rock, though, that got the entire hall on their feet throughout the concert.

Went to a Death Cab for Cutie concert last night at the Esplanade Concert Hall. It was weird (disconcerting?) because the concert hall is really classy and elegant, in addition to being acoustically sound (maybe the soundest acoustically in Asia even). So it’s not your usual indie rock concert location.

Still, it was a memorable concert. The crowd, though kinda restrained by the rows of seats, stood the entire time from the moment the band walked on stage to after they walked off from the encore to the screams and applause of the everyone, while the last strains of Transatlanticism echoed off in our heads.

The Atlantic was born today and I’ll tell you how. The clouds above opened up and let it out. I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere when the water filled every hole. And thousands upon thousands made an ocean, making islands where no island should go.

Those people were overjoyed; they took their boats. I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat. The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more. The distance is quite simple much too far for me to row.

I like Death Cab for Cutie. I’m not their biggest fan, but they’ve got some songs that rate quite high on my playlist count. And they’ve got nice lyrics. (Reminds me of another Pacific Northwest band, The Decemberists, from Portland, whose lyrics write as prose.)

I remember when the days were long, and the nights when the living room was on the lawn… Anything but the blatant proof was your lips touching mine in the photobooth.

Death Cab for Cutie – Photobooth

But what, or who, rather, everybody liked was the guitarist. Sure, lead singer Ben Gibbard is the voice and the brains behind the band. But guitarist Chris Walla has that whole geek thing going for him. Light blue shirt, green cardigan, skinny black jeans and leather pointy shoes. The way he looked, the way he danced — Jun, K, Kim and I were gushing for a good forty-five minutes after the concert ended. (All photos courtesy of Kim.)

Then we all went to look for Eam at his new workplace, some famous restaurant-club chichi thing from Amsterdam. And chilled. And chatted. And spaced out. Happy, but a little mellow too, now that there’s a new song stuck in my head. (Listened to it all day today; it makes me a little sad…)

If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I’ll follow you into the dark.

Amazing grace

A lean, supple figure that moves fluidly with lightness and grace. Ponytails and a pixie frame belie pure strength and control. Perfect form, perfect balance. I think gymnasts have the perfect bodies. All the more breathtaking when one compares them to one’s own movements, which have all the grace of a baby elephant learning to walk, one who can’t even walk on unobstructed flat ground of open space without tripping let alone balance on a beam 10 centimetres (4 inches) wide.

Here, Nastia Liukin from USA from last year’s World Championships.

Today, China made history by winning its first ever Olympic gold in the Team event of the Women’s Gymnastics. There were head-to-head with the Americans who gained slightly more points in the Balance Beam but lost ground in the next rotation. Romania won the bronze, beating a surprised Russia.

A day of magic at the Water Cube

Ooh. Action over performance. Did you see the Men’s 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay? Did you? Did you?! (How could you not?!)

The US team Michael Phelps, Garret Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones and Jason Lezak obliterated with a capital O the Men’s 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay World Record, which they set to begin with, by almost 4 seconds. More accurately, 0.01 shy of 4 seconds. Four seconds! (One Mississippi… Two Mississippi…)

At the first 100, the Australians were in the lead. As they reached the 200m mark, the Americans had taken the lead, while the French were in second. After the third leg of the race, French had taken the lead from the Americans, but in the last leg, anchor Jason Lezak literally ran down Alain Bernard of France in the final few metres to out-touch him at the wall and win the gold for the Americans by 0.08 seconds. There’s an old Nike print ad that says: You don’t win silver. You lose gold.

I was watching the repeat telecast on the evening’s highlights and I found myself holding my breath. If you watch a telecast with the green line representing the current World Record, you’ll see it trailing way behind in the wake of the top three swimmers. To be there in the audience to hear Phelp’s victorious roar in all its primal glory — that would be one unforgettable Olympic moment.

It’s also noteworthy that the other teams in the top five, the French, Australians, Italians and Swedes, all broke the standing World Record/Olympic Record of 3:12.23 set by the Americans during the heats on Sunday. Faster and stronger, indeed.

You have to watch the race…

On to the slightly more subdued, but no less beautiful, afternoon’s event of the Men’s Synchronised 10m Platform diving, the Chinese are two for two, picking up their second diving gold. Lin Yue (林跃) and Huo Liang (火亮) (that’s a cool name, it means Bright Fire), both clones, and the reigning world champions, wowed and rewarded the home crowd by performing six solid dives, earning a final score of 468.18. 18 points ahead of second place.

The Russians, also clones (somehow with the men’s competition, the divers all do pretty much resemble one another in build and appearance), were originally in second place until a bad fifth dive resulted in them losing the silver to the German clones. (Really, the compatriots all look like one another.)

Seriously, though, the skill displayed was poetry in motion. I couldn’t describe it well enough. Not in a thousand, million, words.

Kudos to Kitajima Kosuke of Japan for breaking the Men’s 100m Breaststroke World Record. (Okay, where there are no Chinese participants, I root for any Asian. Kick those colonialists’ asses, correction, arses, back to whence they came from. Heehee.)

On the homefront, our hopes were pinned on Tao Li, our finalist in the Women’s 100m Butterfly. Her time for the heats has not only broken the Asian Record, it was the fourth fastest in the heat. Alas, she came in fifth in the final. But she’s still our superstar — she is the first swimmer EVER to make it to any Olympic swimming final in history. So after all our Jocelyn Yeos, Ang Peng Siongs and David Lims, our first Olympic finalist is the powerpacked chilli padi Tao Li. She’s the fifth fastest woman in the world. You go, girl.

I’m high and happy from the videos and pictures (and something funny my friend said about dogs). I’m trying to go to sleep but I can’t stop smiling.

Diving into gold

Guo Jingjing (郭晶晶) and Wu Minxia (吴敏霞) of China took the first golds in diving on Sunday, for the Women’s Synchronised 3m Springboard. Their back leap in the second round scored three perfect tens.

With the win, the Chinese duo retained the title they were defending from Athens. Their final score of score 343.50 beat Russia’s silver medallists’ 323.61 by twenty points. Did I mention twenty points? The Germans won the bronze.

It was a performance harking back to the glory days of Fu Mingxia.

If you’ve never heard of Fu Mingxia (伏明霞), you are 1) not from China, and 2) not Chinese. Fu Mingxia was the wonderchild of diving. I don’t care where you are in the world, but if you are Chinese, you would have watched that 13-year-old jump off that 10m platform, execute her flips and somersaults with surgical precision before hitting the water and practically no splash.

She won her first World Champion title in 1991 at the age of 12, the youngest world champion ever in any sport. She won her first Olympic gold at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, the 10m platform. She was 13. (Her young age prompted the international governing body to set the rule for the minimum age for divers to participate in the Olympic, World Championship or World Cup at 14.)

(To be fair, she wasn’t the first young diver/Olympic Medallist. Marjorie Gestring was 13yrs 9mths when she won the springboard gold in 1936, and Inge Sorenson was 12 when she won the 200m breaststroke at the same games.)

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Fu Mingxia, 17, won the 10m platform gold and the 3m springboard gold. In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, she won the gold in 3m springboard, but lost the synchronised 3m springboard (with Guo JingJing) gold to the Russians. (Dammit.)

Anyway, good luck to the Chinese. They are on home ground. All around the world, also, we’re rooting for them. It seems the natural thing to do. Granted our forefathers apparently fled the mainland for one reason or another, somehow some things transcend political and ideological differences. Like when Sling’s dad, Malaysian Chinese, followed every newscast of the first Chinese astronaut in space. (Me, I’m just disappointed he said he couldn’t see the one man-made structure supposedly visible from space… you could say at least he was honest; I blame the air pollution.)

I was just having tea with FZ who was making fun of the other synchronised diving teams, that the Chinese team doesn’t just dive as one, they look like twins, same build, same look, same ponytails, unlike teams where, for instance, Toothpick Girl gets partnered with Thunder Thighs. (It’s easier for the Chinese, I guess — we all look the same anyway.)

China rocks. The diving events and gymnastics, that’s what I’ll be watching. Oh, and Liu Xiang (刘翔). If you’ve not heard of Liu Xiang before, you are 1)…

Of course, I’ll be watching for the events that our athletes are participating in: swimming, table tennis, badminton, sailors and shooters. And any other events that has cute athletes — *CphOeUlGpsH* — in them.

A lazy Sunday

Before macha there was banana pancakes (or, in a more local context, banana prata). And slow lazy Sundays with a cup of tea and a noontime drizzle, a bit of chocolate, just a tiny bit, a nibble, really, reading, napping on the sofa with my sweet babboo as long as he doesn’t shed too much. When the whole world fits inside of your arms… I forgot how much I like this song.

Jack Johnson – Banana Pancakes

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Swifter, Higher, Stronger. The motto of the Olympic Games.

And never has there been a more watched, more anticipated, more scrutinised one than this, the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing. It begins on 08.08.08. An auspicious date. A propitious start to a memorable competition, one for the history books. And also the date on my new contract. It wasn’t planned, though. It only happened because I was free today (my current workplace was closed coz there’s a national holiday on Saturday). I didn’t even realise the numbers until I was writing it down next to my name in chicken scratching on the dotted line. Maybe it’s a good omen. 更快、更高、更强。

Let the games begin.

Sway with me

There’s no resort-style swimming pool, no infinity edge waters, no palm-shaded outdoor jacuzzi; no television in the room, or anywhere, no newspapers, no radio; no lounge, no business centre, no recreation room, no tennis courts, no spa, no gym. (There is a bar, though; must have beer.) There is air conditioning and hot water in the rooms, but no electricity between 10am and 7pm. There’s no satellite TV, no Internet or Wi-Fi, and for one weekend, your mobile smart device becomes a very expensive alarm clock. There’s very little to do at most dive resorts. And yet we have tons of stories to tell.

On Tuesday night, under a crescent moon, over nasi goreng and teh halia (Malay style ginger milk tea), K, Jun and I met for dinner and ended up having a long session comparing bug bites, recounting past dives and exchanging amazing tales like weathered old fishermen talking about the catch that was that big.

Jun had some bed bug bites (we think, or they could just be bugs from somewhere on this trip) on the back of her neck, and some on her back which she thinks she got from the boat — the owners of the boat probably don’t clean the mattresses very often, and we’ve seen wet divers and sweaty beachgoers just plop onto the mattress after a dive. And don’t even get me started on those orangey-black moldy life jackets… Ew.

K had a bite on her arm that was still oozing pus that we think is a sea bug bite; she was wearing shorties (wetsuit with short sleeves and legs). It happens. I remember when I did my Open Water, I had shorties too, and as I swam, I just kept feeling things which I could not see stinging my exposed skin. Sea bugs. Bleah.

I lucked out this trip. I might have a few tiny bites here and there, but other than the ant bite on my ear (I was napping on the wooden deck outside our room and sometime during the afternoon, a line of ants decided to cut across my towel, and I guess one inadvertently strayed) there was nothing major. I did get a few stings from a nudibranch, like a few pin pricks on my palm and finger (it was floating in the water and I was trying to return it to a rock, serves me right), but those went away after one day or so. There was one point, though, during one of the dives I suddenly felt a pain on my upper lip — my first thought was Oh #@%&! Not the face! (hey, I’m a girl, I’m vain like that) — but it came to nothing. Phew.

Most importantly, no one got sandfly bits. Those are the worst and the small beaches on islands like Aur and Sibu tend to have sandflies. The bites itch like something wicked and, even if you don’t scratch them, which takes the strength and willpower of a buddha, they leave a scar that lasts for two months. My reaction to sandfly bites is they swell to a blister the size of a ten cent coin. 

And, no jellyfish encounters. I hate jellyfish. They freak me out. For me, jellyfish are to the sea what spiders are on land. Plus the fact that their stings are nasty. I once saw a colleague come back from a dive trip with jelly stings across his face. You could almost do a survey of the tentacle count of the jellyfish he encountered. (But he was a guy, they were like battle scars; they’ll heal but in the meantime, it was a good story to tell the chicks.) Jun has a horror story from a friend who on a night dive, where you can’t see anything in the black water, did the giant step right into a school of jellyfish. Ouch.

Then we got to the best part: the dive tales. The monster moray form Perhentian. The descend into deep blue nothing and suddenly see a pair of lionfishes waiting for us at the bottom. Seeing sharks on my first ever dive. Being surrounded by six sharks at Tulamben. Jun’s mola mola and whale shark adventures. The huge green turtle resting on the table coral. The triggerfish that cracked the camera casing. The case of the curious cuttlefish during the mask clearing exercise. The night dive with the puffed up puffer (so cute, but I felt so bad for them; puffers shouldn’t puff up too many times in their life, it’s bad for them). Seeking shelter from strong currents at the USS Liberty Wreck… So many stories.

From there, we eventually got to lamenting that fact that the dive shop people we were with over the weekend would have left for Bali that day (August is a good time to go manta ray and mola mola hunting; to see, not shoot). This weekend is a national holiday, after all, so dive shops around the country would be leaving for big dive trips.

K’s a convert now. So that’s another diving kaki for future trips. (Eam wants to take his Advanced Water soon. Dave’s also thinking of learning…) 

But till then, we paid up, grabbed our shoulder-aching computer bags, and headed home. All of us brought work home to do, but none of us were in the mood to do them. Thanks to the water as well as the boat rides, I was still enjoying the last remnant of the dive trip, the swaying. My head’s still in a slight haze, spells of rolling like the waves every now and then, but it’s a happy buzz. I’ll miss it as it fades as the week goes on.

Note: Except for first row, photos are from Wikipedia.

The Aur sashimi special

The good news: I can fit into my wetsuit. The better news: I went diving! Yay!

K and Kim were taking their Open Water certification over the weekend, so Eam, Jun and I tagged along to Aur. I’ve not dived for over a year, so this would be good warm-up to, hopefully, a bigger trip later this month. Plus, I’ve never been to Aur before.

Everyone made it on time at the dive shop Friday evening, narrowly, for one of us who had a big client meeting in the late afternoon. It was gonna be a four hour bus ride into Malaysia, then a four hour boat trip on choppy waters in the middle of the night to the island.

We arrived at the jetty just before midnight, a toilet stop not for the cockroachaphobic, and because of the low low tide, we have to take a small boat out to our dive boat.

The dive boat is custom made for dive trips heading to the Diver’s Lodge on Aur. While the deck out back is equipped to handle divers and their gear, the main cabin contains the sleeping area for travellers to catch four hours’ sleep on their way to the island.

Four of us head for the top deck. If you can call it that.

The railings on the sides come up only up to mid-calf and the floor was wet and slippery — we’re basically on the roof of the boat. The waters were choppy so the way that the boat rocked and rolled, it was best to stick to a crawl on all fours, dragging a life jacket scented with Eau de Sea Dog behind you (it was mandatory for everyone to have a life jacket with them at all times, indoors or out), while you picked a perfect spot for the night, that being the least wet patch you could find in pitch darkness, and deftly, cleverly positioned yourself to lie on the dry parts of your life jacket.

But it was worth it coz it was a moonless night and there stars were out. More constellations than I can recognise (yes, this isn’t much of a claim as to how plentiful the stars were). And the Milky Way. And even, while in half-sleep, a couple of shooting stars (I made my wish). However, after an hour of sliding precariously back and forth, I figure even if I fell asleep, I can’t hold on to the railings as securely as I ought to.

I head downstairs to the berths. If you can call them that.

The sleeping berths are basically two communal levels of thin plastic mattresses. The upper level is less crowded, it’s about two feet of space, but that’s more than enough for me to sleep, lying sideways even. (I sleep anywhere. And since young, rocking boats mostly makes me sleepy — maybe it’s good that I inherited genes from forefathers who probably left China and journeyed south in the hold below deck of some coolie junk.)

Was sleeping like a baby when we arrived at Pulau Aur at four in the morning. Tide was so low even the small boat could only take us from the dive boat to nearer the beach and we waded the remaining fifty or so metres to the beach.

Got our room, 012, settled in fast, and went back to catching some zzz’s. Four girls two double beds, Jun brought her sleeping bag to line our bed coz dive resorts like this aren’t exactly known for clean, crisp, 300-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets (Jun’s been to this resort before and knew the beds had bugs). Eam was assigned a similar room, two double beds, with three guys he didn’t know, so he took the deck chair from our balcony and crashed with us.

The first day of dives was mostly off the house reef, just for K and Kim to get used to the waters. (Near weightlessness! Whee!) We saw lots of reef fishes. There was one species that was particularly territorial, maybe coz they were probably nesting as that’s when they are their fiercest, that kept harassing our dive master. He pointed his finger at one and mockingly warned it, whereupon it swam away, then doubled back and nipped him in the wetsuit at the knee. I mean, it wasn’t a painful bite but that was a naughty, naughty fish.

Also saw some pretty nudibranchs and a Spanish dancer, wrasse cleaning stations in the coral reefs, a shrimp residing on a plump juicy sea cucumber, the shrimp’s shell blended very well with the colours of the sea cucumber which soon started spitting out goo, displeased that we were manhandling it, flipping it over and around just to see the shrimp; a Titan triggerfish, but it didn’t attack, only swam around and behind us; a puffer… Nothing spectacularly spectacular.

But the dives on the second day, the dawn dive and the last, mid-morning dive, wow…

We saw a big school of yellow silver fish, K’s face lit up so much it was almost beatific: those were nasi lemak fish she saw swimming around. A school of small barracuda. A pipefish. A pair of batfish — so cute! A blue puffer. A family of bumpheads — they are parrotfish but they are huge, like each over a metre wide. They ram their bulbuous foreheads against coral, and they feed on live coral with their strong upper and lower teeth. A huge octopus — we were bugging it, trying to get it to swim out of its crevice, but it flatly refused and kept flashing colours at us, like a disco strobe light — that, when we swam away, stuck half its body out in pompous defiance, mocking us. A huge moray eel at the entrance of a hole (huge, but not as big as the sea monster we saw, that I spotted first under a table coral, in Perhentian). A chorus line of cuttlefish hovering weightlessly above us; it was surreal and so beautiful I could not tear my eyes away. A jellyfish floating on the surface that looked like a plastic bag (it was not). More nudibranchs and a yet another graceful frilly furling-unfurling Spanish dancer.

I remember clearly I was behind the dive master when I saw his right hand reach into the leg pouch. My mind was going oh no, oh no, oh no… and true enough, he took out his bright orange sausage. That was to be used to signal for the boat to come pick us up — the dive, our last dive of the trip, our most spectacular dive this weekend, was over.

Still, it would take a while for them to release the sausage, and a while more for the boat to come. I wandered a little off, as far as was tolerable without getting reprimanded, and peered hard out into the blue depths. And saw something! Turtles! But, no, they were really a couple of bumpheads grazing in a coral patch. It was nice to watch tho. Like looking at cattle grazing…

Anyway, we couldn’t really complain. That dive was a veritable sashimi platter. Even though the downer was that we didn’t see turtles, I’m not complaining. It made the bug bites — sea, bed, boat, miscellaneous — worth it. I slept all the way back on the boat.

Clair de lune

It’s autumn, it’s night and it’s late. There is a chill in the air, but my favourite green coat keeps me warm like muffins. I’m strolling through Central Park. The path is wet from an evening drizzle and the pavement glistens in the dark like black silver. My hands are cold so I hide them in my pockets. I’m on my own. Or maybe not. There are strangers around but I don’t notice them. I’m in the old square of San Gimignano, sitting on the steps around the old water well as people hurry past me on their way home. One by one, umbrellas close, shop lights go off, shutters come down. I walk on the cobblestone streets, careful not to trip. I’m in London walking through Bloomsbury. Visited the museum today, feel like a hot comforting cup of tea later. Green tea. In Tokyo. Lost in a sea of people, wandering where steel and glass skyscrapers pierce the night sky. A city of a million neon lights. I’m in Shanghai. The lights of the big old buildings along the Bund sparkle in the river. Feels like Paris. I’m in the courtyard of the Louvre. Paris is lonely. No one sees me in my reverie, skipping around the pyramid on New Year’s Eve. Here, it all began under a moody sky. Here, a poem comes to mind: The soul is a landscape of fantasy where masked players strum lutes and dance. The pale moonlight’s sad beauty sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees. And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming, sob their ecstasies.

I saw a new moon smiling my way tonight. And there is a song in my head.

Claude Debussy – Clair de lune