Morbid Hope

Flies on bird carcass.

All things end.
Embrace the end, accept it, and know that from an end spring many new beginning.
Of this I truly hope.
For a phase in my life is nearing its end, and I can't wait to experience what comes after. The closer I get to the finishing line, the more unbearable the current phase becomes.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

Mom and I at one of the glacier sites in Jasper National Park, BC, Canada. Post-BSc. Tour, May 2006.

Mom and I at Cape Breton National Park, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Two things to note from these pictures:
1. Mom was wearing so many layers of clothes hahahaha....like a dumpling ar!
2. My face was much 'meatier' four years ago. Sigh...my face now ...sigh.

National parks, and the great outdoors made up >80% of my post-BSc. tour of Canada. I was particularly fortunate that not only did my mom share my preference, she also had the physical prowess to hike those trails. So awesome!

Ooh...hahhaa...writing this bring back very very good memories of our trip. All the silly things we did.

Luckily our next post-graduate tour is coming soon~ Oct 2010. This time I will be richer so we won't have to eat microwave-oven-quick-prepared-food mom! hahaha.

Thanks for everything.

An Aphid's Worst Nightmare

Can you guess what insect this is?

It's a larva of a ladybug (ladybird/lady beetle). I think this was a Multicolored Asian Ladybug.

The first time I saw a ladybug larva, I couldn't make the connection. The adults and larvae look too different! I mean...look at some adults of the Sevenspotted Ladybug.

Ladybugs feed on many insects (those small enough to be eaten of course), but they are widely used as vicious predators of aphids, a pest of many agricultural and ornamental plants. Aphids can be really annoying, especially when they grow to high densities, make the plant all sticky and then take off and land in my eyes as I bike. Grrr...

 Nevertheless, I can't help but /cry for them aphids for having to suffer the tyranny of... what must seem to them a MONSTER/HERALD-OF-THE-WORLD'S END.

For the ladybug larvae, they feed and grow by going through multiple stages (instars). Between each instar they got to molt, and here is an exuvia of a molt.

At the final instar, the larvae turn into pupae. Two pupae of two different species are shown here in this picture.

Here is a pic of a pupa from which an adult ladybug has already emerged. Another ladybug to terrorize aphids!

*all pictures were taken in Davis, California, USA. Most were taken just outside my apartment.

Bees

I always thought that taking pictures of bees is kind of lame...haha. Guess I just got sick of bees getting all the attention. I must confess however that I have also succumbed to the temptation of snapping pics of bees when the day is warm and flowers are blooming.

These two pictures were taken outside my apartment. The tree was blooming (still is to some extend) and since it was a warm, calm day, the bees were out in masses! With my windows open, I could hear the humming of the bees wings from inside my room.

I like this picture :). Bee butt. Looks shy and...sneaky.

 I saw this bee during my hike at Point Reyes, California in March 2010. I had no idea what bee it was, although I guessed that it was a bumblebee. I asked Katharina, a fellow grad student who studies bees, and she confirms that it was a Bombus melanopygus, a species of bumblebee. The thing that caught my eye was the reddish thing on its hindlegs. That's supposed to be the place where bees keep the pollen they collected, and it's called a pollen basket (or 'corbicula'). I have never seen pollen of any colour but yellow, yet this bee seemed to have red pollen! Katharina told me that pollen colour can be quite variable--yellow, red, orange and even........PURPLE! Now I would really like to see purple pollen~

Point Reyes National Seashore 2

 Some plant growing on a rocky slope. Point Reyes National Seashore, March 24 2010.

I have a noticeably strong affinity for rocky patches with plant growth.
I think it started with a chapter in a Chinese textbook I read in high school. It was an essay of this grass that grew out of a crevice in a rock wall. The essay did a great job praising the resilience of the grass and the values we can learn from it. I am embarrassed to say that I can't do as great a job as that author did, but I can simply tell you what I see in plants that grow on rocky patches.

Patience, and a big long river of time: How many years have passed before a sufficient enough shallow layer of dirt has accumulated on the bare rocks to support plant life? How many years since the first plant started to cast its seeds into the air, hoping to land on dirt and not rocks? I suppose it must have taken ages of disappointment, but the dirt accumulated and a plant found roots.

Determination, and a try-and-try-again spirit: Even in fertile soil, seeds may have trouble germinating, what more of environment as hostile as shallow dirt on rocks? Leaching, erosion, dessication; one small blow and a seedling is finished. Look at a growing plant, and know that countless have failed before this.

Point Reyes National Seashore 1

During the one week break at the end of Winter Quarter, I joined four other Malaysian friends on a hike in the Point Reyes National Seashore park (http://www.nps.gov/pore/index.htm). It was a semi-cloudy, not too sunny day although it was bright enough for me to snap some nice pictures.

The beginning of the trail we took.

I took about 300 pictures during the hike, of which fewer than 30 were focused on humans. The rest were all insects, plants, lichens, slugs and some spiders. The skew says more about the (lack of) appeal of my fellow human companions than of my bias for non-human subjects.

Yellow flowers along a trail in Point Reyes National Seashore. March 24, 2010.

There were many different plants along the Palomarin Trail, and they come in all sorts of colors and shapes too. One of them had yellow flowers on a bed of green, and as the wind blew and the flowers swayed among the green grass, they would shifted in and out of my vision. Twinkling, like stars on a cloudy night sky.

Was I the first person to see these yellow flowers as stars on the ground?
I hope not.
I believe not.

Dandelion among giants

A dandelion on a patch of grass outside my apartment.
All the dandelions I have seen were short plants; they didn't grow taller than 20cm. Standing so lowly among trees that must have seemed like towering giants to them, I wonder how do the dandelions feel?
Inferior? Self-pity? Jealous?
Do they ever aspire to be taller, to stand as tall as those woody trees?
Do they ever wish to get out of others' shadows, and to have others stand in their shadows for once?
If they could achieve such a change, would they like it?
For this dandelion, its life was nearing an end. After it has released its seeds into the air, it would wither and die. It would not have the chance to grow taller. Its life and legacy would have to live on through its seeds.
I wondered then, if this very dandelion, using each of its last seconds with its seeds, reminded them again and again to grow taller, to make a better future for themselves.
A future not in the shadow of another.
A future that perhaps will one day lead to giant dandelions.

Charlie, the bearded dragon

Here is Charlie, the bearded-dragon kept by Melody, a departmental colleague and my housemate when I first arrived in Davis.Charlie was pretty long, about 30-35cm (tail included) long. I thought Charlie looked pretty menacing, with all the spikes and its grim face, yet surprisingly it's one of the popular common reptile pets. The fact that those spikes are soft and that its grim face is a mere masquerade for its actual tame nature probably has something to do with its popularity.
Charlie lives in an aquarium kept warm by artificial lights. He eats...cockroaches. One of them was sitting nicely on Charlie's nose! The reason Charlie didn't just snap up the cockroach was because it was already passed his usual feeding time, and that they had cooled down his aquarium a bit before the 'show'. Since reptiles are ectothermic and require external heating to get active, Charlie was definitely not in the mood/state to catch cockroaches, or even digest them.
Nevertheless, several minutes later, that cockroach said 'hi' to a couple of his friends in Charlie's stomach.

Here's a better look at the cockroaches. Melody buys them packaged in a carton. To be frank, the cockroaches are prettier than Charlie (in my humble opinion).

On keeping reptiles as pets...it still baffles me. Pets mean extra work, so for me at least, I better get much more than just another mouth to feed in the house to justify the extra work. Pets are meant to be companion, no? And it can't be a companion if I can't connect with it. Connection...is best achieved if we can see eye to eye, literally. That's why I would rather have a dog than any other animal as pets. Dog eyes are just so...expressive!

On that note, here's Bowie contemplating the secrets of the cosmos.

big strawberry

Some things just weren't meant to be, and if you happen upon them, you can't help but doubt.
We found a monstrosity of a strawberry several weeks ago. Strawberries were selling cheaply in boxes. We bought one and lo' and behold--there was a huge fellow snugged among the normal ones.
This fellow looked like it was actually two strawberries that...didn't grow independently. Sort of like twins.
Too bad it wasn't as sweet as it was big :(

*that was a Skittle candy for comparison's sake*