The annotated budak

    

Howdy! The stupid duck still can't blog. Not only because me ban him from the computer but also cos he now quaking and quacking gibberish under the table. Why he neber ask me i dunno, since my super duper miao miao half-past-six sense could have told him today got tremors. So anyhows, the duck felt his precious lil' thing wobbling like jelly at 11.49 am and like the gutless chicken he is, proceeded to run about outside shrieking like his panties were on fire.

After that the dumb duck went back indoors and began talking about how he bravely survived the earthquake and all the usual duckamanee he tries to pile on clueless chickadees. But about 2 pm came another shockwave and he started to cluck like a headless cock again. Now he still cringing and crumbling under the desk and straining to keep his sphincter muscles from giving way. Oh, and did i mention the duck is not litter-trained?

  desk miao02 

Hello, this is Angel, the duck's mistress and miao miao. Me is a pretty kitty princess but unfortunately the dumb duck don't treat me like one. He is so lazy that only once a week do I get tasty tuna treats from the round can instead of the dry and dreary kibbles he dishes out with utmost reluctance every morning and evening, and only after my claws have threatened to turn him into nice pink ribbons. Maybe i should get meself a pet monkey instead!

Anyways, me is now blogging on duck's behalf as his net privileges are suspended due to excessive googling of barely-legal blogs and chatting with dubious damsels... and about dogs of all things! Not that I care – he can play with his duck while eyeballing hot bitches on heat as much as he wants, but at least he should use his free (and clean) hand to swing the ruler or lanyard around to entertain me while he's at his thingamajig!

So now i is sitting by the keyboard to stop the duck from dirtying himself further and keeping him at bay by swiping my paw at him whenever he dares to misbehave. The duck is very scared of blood one, so just the sight of my pretty lil' pawpad is enuf to make him quack and quake in his pants. hehe....

But at least i is kind enough to post up a few small observations he wants to highlight. First is that even after years of feedback, peepurr from the land of faraway still keep going to the wrong bus stop at the central to go to the zoo. And the duck wonders why peepurr at the bus stop seem to stare at him and mutter when he try to tell clueless tourists that they have to cross the road to take the right bus.

Also, the duck claims that peepurr are strange cos when a crowded bus reaches a stop where many peepurr are alighting, everybody heads to the rear exit while fiddling with their ezylink cards, even when they could make a quick getaway from the front door, especially at stops where hardly anyone is getting on board. Worse are those peepurr who like put their ezylink card so deep in their handbag or backpack that however they try to press their bag to the card reader, it still won't beep, until they finally give up and dig for the card. The ducky says he wants to whip up his duck to scare these peepurr off the bus faster, but me think hor his duck cannot make it lah, maybe can frighten monkeys only....

Finally, to give the duck some nightmares (although I already do my best at scaring the beejesus out of him by boinging off him when he's fast asleep), here's some links to some pretty scary cats:
The rabbit-headed cats of Kellas
Australia's giant feral cats
Big cats Down Under (new site here)
Big miao at the Grampians
Skinned big miao (not for sensitive ducks)

  moth and watch 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

Out in the field my duck did stray
one hot and humid Saturday
in mud and muck my knees were stuck
they almost had to call a truck

Poochy paws were out in force
but koochy kats were all indoors
I spied a hamster in a tank
Alas of fowl twas none to wank

As my duck some dogs did snap
crashed this bug on my watch strap
on my wrist it stepped and staggered
like a lout it swore and swaggered

  moth walk 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

See my stripes so bright and black
rawred this moth like a crow on crack
they serve me well as warning proper
that my flesh's a horrid supper

My kin by night like bats go flutter
'tis a habit that I'd not rather
so spare me your hand some time to saunter
whilst I pray and new crimes ponder

Eunice aphroditois

  eunice colour 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

is a mighty good reason to avoid swimming in the nude as well as the charming name of this polychaete worm, which is commonly found at rocky shores like those by the edge of St. John's island. With the equally evocative common name of Bobbit worm, these oversized sea centipedes (what appears to be legs, however, are chitinous parapodia) wind their through the boulders in search of eatables. With a grown size of 1.5 m (some web sources put it as 3-6 m), this worm has little to fear from hungry ducks, who'd much prefer to stay out of the way of its humongous jaws.

Despite having come across these fowl biters a few times, this was the first photo-opportunity for my duck, as the creatures would typically vanish into the crevices at the first sign of unseemly movement and silently emerge from behind the observer to deliver a fatal embrace. 

  eunice front 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

This time of the year, intertidal outings to the offshore islands are typically in the evenings, which makes for convenient logistics but decidedly inferior pickings compared to the glorious darkness of pre-dawn sessions. My ducky luck also ran out this round when the sky grew grey and released a bittorrent of rain the moment we reached the jetty. Not having packed a raincoat (moral of the day: always bring protection, even if you don't wear it!), I had to cover my dripping duck with a beat-up old poncho groundsheet full of holes and the scent of month-old sweat. But less than an hour into the walk, the clouds crumpled and gave way to an overcast hour of lacklustre lumens. Racing against the dusk, my duck found a snake eel, gangs of black sea cucumbers and a few eunicid worms. More keen-sighted folk spotted naked gill slugs white and yellow. In the fading light of the March tide, the city loomed on the far side of the waters, a misty leviathan of steel and souls lost in a world of their own, for whom these shores are but specks of soil and isles of dreams detached and discarded.

Kiki and friends

  kiki held 

Selina (left) with Kiki (the pup not the girl), a two-month-old rottweiler-cross currently at the SPCA with her siblings. Kiki's rather roly-poly now and lunges around like a tetrapodal sausage on nitro, but she's expected to grow up into a real bruiser, albeit hopefully with more bark than bite. For now, she's the dog of the day at the SMU Animal Day, where Selina gave a common-sense primer into responsible animal care and adoption opportunities at the SPCA. Sadly, a large number of animals 'donated' to the society are on-the-spur purchases by families who were not prepared for a pet no longer pocket-sized and pudgy. Many children or teenagers also acquire pets without their parents' knowledge and where their folks are unsympathetic, the animal ends up at SPCA or on the street. Serina also remembered a little tri-colour girl called Angel, who arrived at the society some two years ago as a young adult unwanted by her family who found her not-get-alongable.

  hug 

Louis Ng of ACRES also gave a short presentation on the group's recent activities, which included a much-heralded exposé of the local market for bear bile. And with an increasingly vocal set of people these days regarding animals as horrid, filthy things best found in the pot or the park, it was nice to see at least a few families at the field who did not scream blue murder at the sight of their kids frolicking with furry creatures. The parents of this little girl and her sister were happily nonchalant about her wanton attempts at dishing out positive reinforcement to the panting paws on the muddy green.

  spaniel 

My duck is no dog whisperer but among the breeds I could identify were whippets, huskies (or malamutes? and why are their eyes differently coloured?), a king charles spaniel, chow-chows, pomeranians, a leggy saluki, a chihuahua, a gargantuan poodle, schnauzers, rough collies, shetland sheepdogs, golden retrievers, a corgi and a flying border collie. Sadly, no dachys though. I also thought of getting this little hat for Angel, since it looked kitty-size and it might make her think twice about trying to run outside in such garb. But I eventually decided against it as it would probably result in my duck getting shredded. An added attraction at the fair was an opportunity to get your nose-bleeding mug taken with one of the the hottest babes east of the Suez shooting your pet in high resolution and producing instant glossy print-outs. Not having any monkey in tow, I tried instead to interest her in picturing my pet duck in pixels but unfortunately, this was a job she'd gladly pay to get out of... 

Stiffed!

  Having a Leffe before going to class 
  Originally uploaded by skinnylatte.

Back in the ancien régime of NUS in the 90s, the campus (save the Guildhouse where crusty alumni are too respectable to get buzzed) was as dry as the Atacama, with nought a sniff of imbibable ethanol on the grounds, and even on the periphery. The administration was so anal-retentive that shortly after a no-shorts-no-slippers dress code was implemented, zealous staff would harangue hall dwellers in their standard attire (tight Ts and near butt-crack exposing shorts) on their way to the SBS 96 bus stop for a night-out at Clementi. It was a happy era indeed, when all we undergraduates had to do was churn out term papers and attend the occasional bash where half-baked bands strummed to screaming hordes of harpies nubile nymphets. As far as campus life was concerned, it was strictly no booze, no smokes, no sex or anything that would remotely sully the name of an institution where order and discipline assuredly keep young minds safe from the dangers of intellectual serendipity and pursuit of untrodden paths.

What a 'change' it was to actually spend an evening sampling semi-free flow Belgian beers at the joint known as KR-50 by the University Cultural Centre (which in my days was a grassy hill overlooking the AYE). There was Kwak, Hoegaarden Grand Cru, Orval, Mort Subite Gueuze, Triple Moine, Westmalle Tripel, Leffe and Duvel, plus a table of mussels, penne, fish fingers, wedges and yusheng (!), all for $28 per head. Regular Hoegaarden was also available on tap for $7 a pint! I also bagged a few bottles of the gueuze for later consumption.

With Joe, the Lonely Ham and later, Mr and Mrs Chico, we wondered aloud at this sea change in between forays for finger food and attempts to coax the hapless serving staff for a more generous pour (some evidently were kind enough to judge that locals had a lower tolerance for alcohol than ang mohs and hence dished out portions that matched this consideration). One hypothesis suggested that the growing number of foreign faculty as well as visitors from associate institutions might have convince the Management (yes, that's what it's called at NUS) that a little lift to lubricate business lunches and catalyse academic tie-ups was in order. Related to this idea is the positioning of KR-50 as a decidedly (apart from some cheerfully drool grafitti on the inside wall) unstudently-like place and its downtown menu pricing, which seem to have in mind a more affluent crowd than cash-strapped grad students.    

My camera screwed up that night so I didn't take any pictures. In lieu, I am using instead adri's shot of her pre-class boost at Xander's, where pre-investment bankers and cart-wheeling bean counters can sip a spirit's stiffener before that soul-sapping seminar on schmethics. It's bad enough that this cohort gets to go to classes in the city, where opportunities for urbane pleasures 'abound'; what really triggered some fowl squacking in betrunken protest was the announcement of a full fledged watering hole with 50+ types of beer right at their business school. Oh the injustice to a duck deprived of dives!