Musings of a barefoot traveller

I knew the moonroof was leaky but lately it seemed to hold up fine under inclement weather and I thought it must have slotted back snugly into place. Well, I was wrong. Wilmington saw the first of the fierce storms of this year's summer last night, and when I opened the car door to drive to aikido class I saw a steady stream of water flowing down from the moonroof onto the driver's seat. 2 inches of water lay on the floor. Threw a cover over the roof with A and rescued the electronic items from the car. As I was now car-less, was contemplating my options viz. getting to aikido class. It seemed like the commuter was my best bet, and I threw on rain gear and lights and headed out. Only to find much of Wilmington flooded. Cars were stuck in ditches, a fire engine screamed down Racine Dr, thundered roared and lightning flashed overhead. All the while, I was marvelling at the bike's ability to navigate through ankle to shin-deep brown water, and roll over unseen kerbs and pothol...

And you think, just because it's happening somewhere else, in someone else's backyard, it doesn't really matter. It's just going to come back and bite you in the butt one day. Cambodia under the sandmen's spell Since Singapore was banned from mining sand in Indonesia, the city-state – which surface area covers less than 650 km2 – is struggling to find the sand it needs for its gigantic land reclamation and construction projects. As a result, it turned to a much less discriminating country, where the buying cost of sand remains quite inexpensive, Cambodia. For the last year, the provinces of Koh Kong and Kandal have seen a heavy traffic of boats, which sometimes arrive in dozens to dredge the seabed or dig along the coasts to collect as much sand as possible and export it to Singapore... Read the full article here .

What's the point of enduring a 17 hour car ride down to "sunny" Florida to be met with chilly gusts and cold cold nights? Gah! No respite from the colder waters of winter when I'm blasted with frigid winds upon popping my head out of the water. And though I brought my Goretex (thank heavens), I sorely miss my fleece sweater, and maybe even fleece pants and a beanie. No pay-off at the end of two weeks of tolerance too. Back to frosty Wilmington and scraping ice off car windshields in the morning...Pffff... Well, I don't want to complain too much. Though it's gusty out, and there are white caps at Conch Reef, we have been getting our (cold) dives in, and getting work done. The vis at Conch has been pretty too, and I miss having my camera with me. I think I shan't fuss about the heat and humidity once I get to S'pore. Best to soak up all the warmth I can.

Just returned from a rather..ahem...eventful field trip from Bocas del Toro, Panama. So was rather relieved to be home in familiar and comfortable surroundings. A was starting to tell me a funny story about the evening he spent with friends, who asked about my tshirt size, only to get a response from him that I'm one size up from him... "Wait, wait, wait...you told them I'm a MEDIUM??? I'm a SMALL! I wear the same size as you!!!" I don't even need to squeeze into a small! Arrrr.....(chews head off)...

My Powerbook screen is on the blink, causing me no small amount of anguish. In the meantime, I've hooked up the laptop to Tim's monitor and am in the process of transferring all my files to the external drive. Currently in a quandary- should I get a new MacBook, given that I have an educational discount and will get a free iPod touch (by Sept 15th) and printer that I can sell off to get a further discount, or 2), buy a $5 monitor and use this laptop as a desktop at home, plus switch to using a WinDoze machine in the lab for the next few years?? There's a laptop in the lab I can use for field trips too, but it's also a dozy machine, sigh.

Back to texting with one hand, dammit! Re-injured my left thumb two weeks ago by jamming it against Sensei Keith's fist twice in aikido class, and my first thought was "Oh %#@%, I gotta dive next week..." Somehow managed to scrape through mountain biking shifting with the fleshy part of my palm and playing volleyball mostly with my right arm, and was just wondering to myself when it would stop hurting when I landed a hammer on my left thumbnail today. Hard. Resulted in 5min of tearing underwater, gripping my left hand between my knees and swearing silently but profusely. And did it again 10min later. Hurts like hell. Going to bed now so I don't hit anymore sensitive body parts with hard and heavy objects...

...life throws another curve ball at you, and then sticks a rusty knife in your ribs while you lie winded on the ground. I love being Malaysian and all, but this passport and visa business is making me sooooooo.....frustrated. Some might remember the big hoo-ha last year, and the hoops I had to jump through to get a visa to enter Panama to take the Smithsonian sponge course. Next year, I vowed to myself then, next year would be different. Fast forward to this year, with me feeling pretty confident, having submitted my visa application in February, giving the consulate 3 months to approve my visa this time. Was overjoyed to see my return envelope sitting in my mailbox yesterday, and gleefully ripped it open, extracted my passport and flipped to the visa page. Was thoroughly deflated to find that my approval dates run from April 9th to July 9th! WTF! It's already April 18th, and besides the point, my fieldtrip is in August. To add insult to injury, my gender is listed as 'M'...

Was trying to work with high-resolution photos in Photoshop on Sunday, and it's very frustrating, because my (kinda old) laptop kept freezing, and it took FOREVER to force quit the programme and try again. Finally got so irritated with the whole process that I went to make steamed tau sar pau instead. And got 20+ paus out of the whole process (yum!). For some reason, people think that it's a very weird reaction to have to a computer problem... No photos 'cos I ate most of them before my batteries could charge up :P

Kena soundly thrashed two nights ago in pool, and even though I'm not a good player, that really stings. That will teach me to play 'just for fun' with yet another person who claims to be a 'bad player'. But at least I didn't play for cash :P. Still, having all my balls on the table with only the 8 ball left for the other side is terrible!! It stung so much that I briefly considered getting some secret training in, and probably would have today if my oxygen administration course didn't run so long. Not that I hate the thought of losing that much (yes yes, even if I'm very competitive by nature). I can stand to lose, just not in such a lau kui fashion.

Looks like I'm spending the weekend in Wilmington after all! Short of a miracle happening in the next two hours...but...nah, I don't think so...I have a better chance of striking 4-D with the licence plate number of the driver who struck my car and then refused to pay for the damages. So much for my visa being approved this week...I found out yesterday that visas have to be approved by the Security Council in Panama, and they only meet once a week. If my application wasn't considered this week, it's shifted to the next. Why only tell me now? Why can't they just tell me when the meeting date was? I was expecting my visa to maybe come in today, and paid %#$%#$@^ $280 to change my flight to tomorrow. And I have to change it again? How much more must I pour down this black hole? Plus I don't even know if and when my ^$#^$%^#@$%^$ visa will be approved. Felt like smashing a multitude of breakable crockery last night, I'm so frustrated! Looks like I'm just not...

So I've been emailing the Smithsonian External Affairs i/c in an effort to see if my visa could get approved and my passport returned before I'm due to leave on Thursday. Now it seems like I have to request for an overnight delivery of my passport from D.C., without the visa in it, and for my visa to be sent to the airport in Panama (if it gets approved by then...else, I guess I might be deported...). The story doesn't end there. Even though the visa is approved, I can't get it attached at the airport immigration. They have to confiscate my passport, and I have to go to the Immigration office to pick it up after 2 working days. My connecting flight is supposed to be on Friday, 3pm, and the course starts on Saturday morning. Apparently I can't fly without my passport too. If I wait till Monday, I'll miss 3 days of lessons. And it's the intro to sponge taxonomy and morphology too! Sighs... All these madness, while I'm trying to study for the oral exam on M...