Posts from ‘February, 2010’

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 [...]

From Edward Monkton:

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.

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.
* * * * *

“唔准哭,” he tells [...]

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 [...]

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)

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 [...]

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 [...]