..:. Cracking My Vainpot .:..

I breathe.

I bleed.

I'm made of flesh.

I'm made of bones.

I see.

I hear.

I feel.

I think.

I laugh.

I cry.

I scream.

I shout.

I fall.

I get back up.

I live.

I let live.

I love.

I let love.

I kiss the wrong person.

I kiss the right person.

I make friends.

I make love.

I dream of getting married one day,

... before I die.

When I'm alive, I deserve full equality.

(This is the 1st entry that travels the other way, from my facebook into the blog!)

I'm a shark, and my kind is being driven to certain extinction because of Hong Kong's demand for that tasteless and nutritionless shark fin soup.

Air-drying shark fins, just like they do illegally in Costa Rica, after killing close to 100 million sharks each year...

Ironic isn't it? I have survived 400 million years of evolution and 5 mass extinction cycles in the past... long b4 there were dinosaurs, let alone mammals. But I just can not escape from long-line fishing and the insatiable and uneducated Chinese appetite.

My fins have all been hacked off by illegal poachers, and my body tossed back into the sea so that I suffocate to death...

Most people still don't know that most sharks species are endangered and the ocean's ecosystem is on the brink of collapse.

I'd like to bite the head off that pig with lipstick - Sarah Palin (and all those irresponsible soup-drinkers of Hong Kong)

Safe-d-sharks activist arrested by a corrupted policeman for exposing the truth...

If the Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization, then yellow (soy) beans must be what made me yellow.

I've been drinking yellow (soy) milk and dipping yellow (soy) sauce for all my life. Yet, I've never ever seen or touched a yellow (soy) plant until this week, when I travelled with a bunch color people to a 93% white suburb of Missouri.

It was such a strange feeling, that I had to go all the way across the globe to come face to face for with this pod of familiar beans for the first time.

I even remember that famous 7-step "bean" Classic poem from the 3rd century Three Kingdom.

No mum. I want a black president and I suck white cock, but I haven't lost my true color.

For my whole life, I've been told that Asian women have the physique to compete with the rest of the world (outside diving, gymnastics and ping pong) but not Asian men. In bodybuilding forums, racists meat-heads are still debuting whether Asian guys have enough testosterone. My parents weren't born yet when Japanese men ruled the pool before the WWII. Even after seeing Kitajima won in both 100m and 200m breaststroke in Athens, we still simply dismissed it as "just breaststroke". When speedo launched their revolutionary but controversial LZR Racer swim suit back in February, I wondered why they used an Asian model. I didn't know who Park Tae-Hwan and I did know that Asian men have the strength and stamina to best the Aussies in 400m freestyle. FOUR HUNDRED! FREESTYLE!! Now that this asthmatic 5'9 127lb teenage world champion has taken Ian Thorpe's Olympic title, with Zhang Lin the 21yo Chinese bagging the silver, I feel like the glass ceiling is finally starting to crack open for the rarely-appreciated physical Asian guys. I'm not saying there will be an Asian 100m sprint star by 2012. But I want to see people defying their genetic expectations. I want to see that given the right mix of talent and hard work, ANYONE can achieve greatness. Go Go Wong Kam Po! Go Go Kitajima! Go Go Zhang Lin! Go Go Liu Xiang! Go Go Yang Wei!

Once we were inside the Rio Camuy Cave system, all we could really see was a snake of our headlights. It wasn't long before we got a cold welcome from above - a refreshing shower of natural mineral water dripping down from the ceiling. Fabulous~

Remember the Mines of Moria in Lord of the Ring, where Gandolf sorta "died"? It was rocky like that, except there were no steps, and it was full of spiders, bats and... big cockroaches.

Wherever we turned, there were strange columns of mineral deposits and even stranger coral fossils. You know those gigantic stalactites, stalagmites and geological formations that are usually elaborately lite up in national parks and one can only take pictures with?

We had to climb them!

Both up and down, and use them as anchors. Would've thought it'd be tricky, with water running down their surface, but it was surprisingly easy. Those intricate grooves and patterns on their surface actually turned us into spidermen!



Deep inside the cave, things got muddier and muddier, and the sound of flowing water got louder and louder. Soon enough we came to this cliff over this sizable subterranean river and had to jump into it. LOL I really wanted to climb back up and to do it again!! The water was so deep we couldn't touch the ground at all. At times, it felt like I was swimming in a flooded London Underground. At times, I felt I was in the sinking Titanic, with water creeping up to the ceiling and we had to tilt our head to keep breathing.



Finally, we got to in this massive chamber with the size and acoustics of a concert hall. Our Adventuras tour guides, being attentive in every aspects, now reached into their huge backpacks and whipped out seat pads, candles and a ziplocked waterproof boombox. So we had a very memorable and bizarre candle-light meal in the middle of a cave, with jazz playing in the background! Fantastic.



Things got a lot rougher after that. First, we had to jump back into the river, this time in pitch dark. Then, we had to sprint through mud. My shoes were perfect for swimming, but they got stuck when it's muddy. The more I struggled, the more my feet sank into the Nutella and the tighter the vacuum became. It got to a point where them mud was up to my knees and I could no longer free my legs without losing both of my shoes. So I put my arms into the mud, fished for the shoes and ran bare foot for the rest of that dried-up river bank. Some people did lost their shoes though, I was lucky to lose only a sock, and even luckier NOT to have stepped on any of the mud crabs that we spotted only afterwards.



By the time we saw daylight again, we were met with a tropical rainstorm outside the cave. My headlight stopped working halfway through so I was covered in cuts and bruises, even underneath my knee pads. There was sand between my toes, mud on my heels, one of my contact lenses has gone funny. My whole body was visibly shaking and I had to chow down a whole protein bar in the rain to snap out of it. Nonetheless, I didn't want to leave. I didn't want the adventure to end at all. Adventuras you guys ROCK!!! I totally recommend caving at Puerto Rico's Rio Camuy Angeles Cave to anyone dying for adventures.

After this trip, lying on the beach just seems SO lame~

*Special thanks to Jennifer who translated everything for me and took all these wonderful pictures! I'm so glad that her 5-time ziplocked digital camera survived the swim!

My natural high has subsided now. I'm starting to feel the dozens of cuts and bruises that cover my arms and legs. But boy I tell you, it was totally worthy. Cave Angeles, Puerto Rico - by far my best adventure ever!!




5.30am. San Juan. As soon as I boarded that Adventuras bus, I knew it's gonna be quite a trip, for I was the only foreigner and the only non-Spanish speaker in the whole tour.

Luckily, Rosanno, our guide-entertainer-DJ-captain, didn't mind repeating everything in English for my sole benefit. I sat next to this girl Jennifer, and we both thought we were going to die that day lol

Heading southwest into the heart of the island's, we left behind all things civil, donning only helmut, harness, knew pads, lifejacket and the spirit of an explorer.




We got to our first challenge after a short hike through the untamed jungle. Rosanno started playing the theme tune from Indiana Jones from his ziplocked waterproof boom box.

It was a dream came true - we had to zip-line over to the other side of the valley. Yeehah!







If that looked crazy, guess what, it was the easiest thing we did that day~

After a 5-minute crash course, we rappelled down a 250-feet sheer drop into the cave. Supposedly, we just have to trust the rope system, lean back, relax, spread the legs, and go down that cliff in a controlled manner.

As soon as I went pass the point of no return, I realized that my gear was funky. Instead of having 4 interlocking metal bars restraining my rope, only 3 were in place.

I couldn't control my speed at all. I'd just fall if I didn't physically hang on to that bloody rope. One wrong move, I'd be dead in the jungle.



THAT was the biggest challenge EVER in my life - how to get out of that half-dangling, half-free falling situation, alive!

With all the strength I could muster, frantically squeezing and feeding the rope at the same time, I somehow got to the mid-section.

So there I was, my arms trembling, my feet tiptoeing on some mouldy rocks, my numb fingers holding onto dear life, and then, guess what. This guide Johnny who stationed there saw me, started flexing his muscles and wanted me to feel his biceps.

No shit! I fucking swear!!

After some panicky primal yelling, pointing and signing, that bastard finally turned his attention to my gear and fixed it. I couldn't believe how easy everything just became!!

Slowly, I descended into the mouth of this ginormous cave and IT WAS MAGNIFICENT!

As if there is a wonky light bulb in heaven and god has forgotten to fix it, the sky has beening flickering like mad.

For 3 hours straight, we had at least one lightning per second. No rain. No thunder. Just amazing electricity.





Every lightning is unique. Most strike vertically, others travel horizontally, some even hop between clouds. Although their paths might be different, the brilliance is the same.




No wonder the hippest part of Kansas City is called the Power & Light District!

.: Hong Kong :. When Star Ferry was still Star Ferry, it was my favourite pastime. Every time I crossed the Victoria harbour, he'd be there by the entrance to the subway that leads to the Central Pier. Scrawny down to the bone, his ancient frame is an unwelcome reality check to all the well-heeled bankers passing by.

He must have contracted polio when he was small. One of his legs was visibly smaller than other and never quite touch the ground. Yet, unlike most of the beggars in the city, he chose not to mope around on the floor. In one hand he had his tin can, with the other he held his crutch. When late afternoon comes, his humble stature cast a long shadow. Still standing like a broken tripod, that is his dignity.

.: Oxford :. Wonder if he's a patient of my ex, a psychiatry consultant. Old and hunching, his long messy hair salt-and-peppering all over his shoulders. Day in day out, he wandered the busy streets of central Oxford aimlessly in his drape, dodging schools of tourists and exchange students.

One thing never changed. That big armful of yellowing letters he clung to ever so tightly in his chest. Never saw him dropping a single one. What drove him mad? Who was he writing to? Had they all deserted him? Are those love letters? Why is he still holding on to them so dearly? I do worry that I'll end up like him, with nothing but a load of memmories.

.: San Francisco :. There was this young hippy in Sunset who usually sat near the farmer's market on Irving. Most of the ones around the Golden Gate Park would openly ask you to subsidize their dope, but this one wanted money for carrots, too. If I got off work early, I'd make a little detour and pay him a visit, for he had the cutest grey bunny in the whole world. Sometimes, he would dangle a carrot in front it to make it stand up and walk in circles.

Then winter came. One dark afternoon, I caught him staring blankly into emptiness, with a sign "Money for new bunny". That day, I gave him a dollar for the first time.

Imagine you're clipping away, scattering toe nails everywhere.

Then slowly, each of these filthy (ex) parts of you spontaneously grow into your identical twins.

Freaky.

Well that's flatworm for ya.



Flatworms are truly wonderful creatures, despite their reputation.

If you cut their heads off, they'll just grow a new one back.

In fact, you can put one on a chopping board, dice it into hundreds of little pieces and watch each of them growing back into a full worm~!!

But that's not all.

Some guy back in the 1950s trained flatworms to avoid light by pairing light with electric shocks. He then chopped those little buggers into 2 halves and let them grow back into 2 whole worms.

The old tails would grow new heads... and STILL remember to avoid light!!

Memory storage *outside* the head??!

Totally crazy stuff.

You could even transfer such learning and memory by mincing trained students and feed it to new students!

No kidding. I was hysterical after reading this.

Funny how scientists just sorta "forgot" about these experiments, cos hardly anybody under the age of 75 are aware of them.

Well may be in 50 years' time, the next next generation too would look back at my work and go, Jez what a nut case, what was he thinking!?

Source: Durham University

Us scientists are supposed to be geeky and nerdy. Female members included.

But all I could only think of is a fit brunette wearing sexy dark-rimmed glasses when I listened to this editor of Cell magazine seducing white blood cells.

"B cell progenitor" has never sounded so naughty before :P

(no that isn't her...)

(yes even i don't understand this gibberish)