welcoming the weekend

although it s been a crazy week with loads cleared off, bits of tears, bit of power play and politics, the week has passed.

welcome weekend.. you ve been looong awaited... i need the sunny sea and the sandy beach. lets throw in some massage too!

Am gona miss my baby boy ;<

say hello to the real world! o_O

~fishy fishy weekend~

D & I jetted off on another trip to Pulau Dayang with the Japs in company this time round. My 3rd trip to the same island so far and I wouldnt have stepped foot onto it so soon if not for jovial company whom I had lured into this sport. The collic got really interested after hearing me mentioning about my first trip for the first time! OKAY. I kind of tempted him with the moray eels, sea urchins, clams and his eyes immediately twinkled and I thought I saw a thought bubble floating around his head, spelling O-I-S-H-I neh~!

A peek into our recent rendezvous before the trip.....

We brought them to Ju Ju Japanese Hotpot restaurant @ Paradiz. D & I have been there once before and we were really satisfied with the humongous serving of the steamboat platter they serve and the yummy tamago that was 30% boiled given at the start of the course. So the heart melts into satisfaction when the wifey also commented tt tamago was oishi neh :) :)

Dinner over @ their humble hut.

Starter was oyster baked pasta sauce and melted cheese. (superlicious and I took at least 3 although I dun usually eat shell food).

Soup of the day was miso soup with lots of ingredients inside!! (lean pork strips, taupok, mushroom, veges, tofu - very unlike the usual seaweed and tofu miso and very very satisfying indeed!).

And the main course was what they invited us over for! Okinomiyaki - u know the kind sold @ fake japanese stalls during food festivals tt looks and tastes abit like our chinese carrot cakes? The real Jap style okinomiyaki is totally different!

Dessert was a home made chilled kaya swissroll.

And drink of the day for me was a can of TIGER beer :) That made the collic VErrrrry Verrrrry happy! because he finally found a drinking khaki! :) But i felt heavy headed and droopy eyed thereafter and dozed off on their couch ;p

so much for the yummacilious rendezvous, we went in search of their oishi sashimi last weekend :)

here's some pics to boast from our NEW and VERY OWN UNDERWATER CAMERA!!! :)

Friday night (1 Aug, 7-ish pm) before departure in the minivan from Dayang Island

~Embracing the warmth of the sunny beach~

we slept army style - 12 pax bunk. D&I normally get to stay in a 4 pax and more spacious bunk which had generator working 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, it was the 7th month and there was only less than half the crowd on the island. The 4 pax bunks were not opened and we had to settle for this army-style instead. The generator for this lower end bunk only worked from 7pm7am o_O. However, since there were soooo few ppl, 6 of us had the 12 bedded bunk to ourselves :) ( i din know it was the 7th lunar month when the trip was made, anyway the malays on the island offered incense and josssticks on the first night!)

first shot before headed to the waters with red filter (cost us S$200 whopping dollars!!)

A school of baracudas!!
pufferfish!!

tiny clam embedded in the coral

GIGANTIC clam!!! I was dumbfounded to see sucha RARE sight! the clam was almost 50cm by 70cm big AT LEAST!! i took extra precaution not to get too close because of my lousy bupyancy control. I was afraid the clam may just kiap me if i accidentally float into it ;p

zebra lionfish (this belongs to the scorpionfishes family and could be dangerous and its spikes contain a venom) - D was uneducated about this and went verrrrry verrrrry near to take pic of the beautiful 'coral' HAHA! My dream came true from this sighting :)!

AH-HA! recognise it dont u? Nemo look-alike! but it is black! It is the Clark's Anemonefish (aka clark's clown fish) and is was swimming towards D!!

here is a pink one, called the pink anemonefish

and there you have it! NEMO!! :) our favorite shot from the whole trip :)

random yellow tiny weeny fish tt D&I gave up trying to flip thru those pages of the TROPICAL REEFS bookss in search of its name... so its called the yellowfish (educate me if u hav the real name!)

Bumphead parrotfish! (has super sharp and menacing teeth but the gentle giant only feeds on corals). there was a family of 5 swimming around the corals and the same family of 1-1.5m long fishes i saw on my last trip :) awwwww~

rarity. we caught sight of a cuttlefish!! :) :)

Do you see it? A lizardfish :)

longfin spadefish

Highfin coral fish

Moorish Idol

The above 3 fishes do bear some resemblance so I put them together :)

Jetty dive - A school of thousandsssssss of yellowfin jacks

macro shot - nudibrunch (aka sea slugs)

Rayner's rock dive - BIG BLUE starfish!!!!

rarity. SEA TURTLE (my first sighting laaa)

underwater christmas tree

you know this is a FISH also???!!!! it is a FLAT FISH!!! I was super puzzled when D pointed frantically to this puddle of sand to our fellow leisure buddy, GES. Lucky GES, being a seasoned diver (and is @ maldives diving now), recognised it straight away and hooked it uo with his stick. THEN i saw it slipped and swam away, like a fish. :) Moving on.... N saw ANOTHER FLAT FISH!! and he tried to imitate what GES did to hook the flat fish earlier....

Stick pointing right @ the bottom of the fish (we were both having FUN with our flatfish while GES was inching further n further away from us) and GUESS WHAT???!! our discovery turned out to be jus a PUDDLE OF SAND!! and it dispersed into the waters when D hooked it up. hmf hmf hmf - our underwater giggling sound! hahaha!

Sea Urchin~! oishi!!

D&I spent 2 evenings collating these pics and flipping thru the FISH books to identify EACH AND EVERY once of the fishes u ve seen (n more in our photobooth). We had a rofl good time pointing out each other's stupidity in lousy identification of the fishes haha!!

on TOIL today!