ok, it's dark but not so stormy. but cold, nonetheless! :) i'm loving it. i'm happy to be a november child. according to the mother unit, it rained an entire week when i was born.

final four episodes to the end of the current project. i was hoping to finish it before my birthday but it doesn't seem quite possible if i want to be somewhat functional during my birthday week. i shall just cruise along as quickly and easily as i can and see what happens.

having a mac&cheese before attempting an earlier bedtime.

goodnight LJ!

:)

i managed to reset my sleeping hours after 546793728613 attempts... but i screwed it up again! thanks to work! :(

am about to pass out from fatigue from working like mad, so i will elaborate more tomorrow.

but i just wanted to say...

DRATS!!!

:[

i really, really, really want to go to bed.

work is killing me.

:(

ok my boss thinks a little too highly of me. i hope this doesn't come across as arrogance but i think i'm not too bad at what i do. however! the project my boss just proposed is just impossible! financial news magazine programmes with a turn-around time of 4 hours per episode? i don't like to promise when i may or may not deliver. i turned it down. no matter how much money they're going to offer.

this is the first project i've ever turned down from my boss.

just a quick one to say, lucia has laid her second clutch! =)

yes, i owe everyone pics and please be assured that i have taken some! but i'm drowning in work so it'll have to wait!

in the meantime, let me leave you with a snippet of the stuff i have been cracking my brains over. i'm so glad i'm done with this bit. i only hope they don't recite other parts of the scripture in later episodes!

天之道
損有餘而補不足
是故虛勝實
不足勝有餘
其意博 其理奧 其趣深
天地之象分
陰陽之候列
變化之由表
死生之兆彰
不謀而遺跡自同
勿約而幽明斯契
稽其言有微 驗之事不忒
誠可謂至道之宗
奉生之始矣
假若天機迅發
妙識玄通
成謀雖屬乎生知
標格亦資於治訓
未嘗有行不由送
出不由產者亦
然刻意研精 探微索隱
或識契真要 則目牛無全
故動則有成 猶鬼神幽贊
而命世奇傑 時時間出焉
五藏六府之精氣
皆上注於目而為之精
精之案為眼 骨之精為瞳子
筋之精為黑眼 血之精為力絡
其案氣之精為白眼
肌肉之精為約束
裹擷筋骨血氣之精
而與脈並為系

yippee!

this means i can get cracking on the 5674329 video clips of lucien and tiga that i have. :D

HOWEVER. as usual, time is a problem.

time is always a problem!

i've finished my last project, which was AWESOME. i loved it. i got so engrossed in the plot that i had a hard time transitioning into my current project. my mind and heart are still lingering in the previous story. i'm just too darn sentimental for my own good!

even the darn theme songs and mood tunes keep playing in my head!

ok, things will get better when the series concludes. the final episode is airing tomorrow (saturday) evening. i guess i will then finally begin to get over it.

new project is great as well. i love how i'm getting allocated all the stuff i enjoy doing. :)

the kids are well. i gave them interior decor! each one of them now has a little fabric leaf to lounge on. i gave one to tiga first, because after his failed attempts to date lucien, he became a little more nervous than usual. the boys, tiga and scout, both do not build hammocks to sleep in like the girls do. so, they're always 'standing around'. looks rather uncomfortable. so, i gave tiga a leaf to make him feel better. he loved it! took to it like a fish to water. he even sits on it the way i planned for him to - i blu-tacked it down at an angle so there is like a little platform for him to sit on.

after the roaring success of the first leaf, everyone got a leaf each. :) everyone's happy!

not sure if i mentioned it, i probably have and am repeating myself for the 19th time - i'm putting them on a diet. so they haven't been feasting like they used to. this was decided after uncle moo and i had a discussion about spider lifespan. the better they eat, the shorter (but i'd like to think, fuller and happier) their lives. god knows how well i've been feeding everyone since they were bubs! haha. so, i hope it's not too late, but i'm trying to do a happy medium now. i dread the day lucien leaves me.

hokay, back to the grind.

it's been a tough week, which ended this morning at 7am. yes, my work week ends wednesdays. :D

i'm trying to shift it by a day so i can make it to my yoga class more often. i guess it's my own fault for having a preferred instructor who only teaches on certain days. need to grab that yoga mat that i keep forgetting, so i can do it at home as well. am also seriously considering sleeping hours like those of kyle's - his are 9pm to 5am, which is pretty much impossible for me, but i'm thinking 11pm to 7am could be quite nice. even better if i can do 10pm to 6am, so i can have a quiet hour of yoga before the sun rises.

i've had twice my usual workload this week. desk-bound round the clock for three days straight. normal weekly workload should resume from now. speaking of which, i'm quite enjoying my current project. there are lots of awesome CG scenes, during which no one speaks! heh. of course, other than the fact that it's easier to work on, the production itself is really quite enjoyable to watch. i'm glad i was assigned this one. :)

on the sidelines, i've been drafting sample chapters for the munster book. not sure if it will happen, but i'll have a crack at it for sure! it would be awesome if munster can live on in the hearts of children all over the world. :)

i did a tiga shoot. videos and peektures. :)

i've not had tiga out on my hand for a long time because he has become so jittery as a big boy. both my boys, scout and tiga, move in a jerky, nervous manner, unlike the girls. i notice that this is true for all the jumping spiders i've had in my care.

strangely though, tiga was the bubba i'd shot the most when they were all bubs. this was, of course, before their gender became apparent. as a baby, tiga had also once snuggled up in the middle of my palm, along a little fleshy ridge, and fallen right asleep. the icon for this entry was snapped when he was napping. :)

when he started to grow into a big boy, the naturally nervous nature of males also began to show.

the last shoot i did of him on my hand was when he first got his black colours. he still had his little tufts of hair then. he looked like a cute little devil. :) but another moult later, his devil horns came right off with his exoskeleton, and i suddenly found myself looking at a gorgeous specimen of the male hyllus diardi. hyllus diardi boys are so uncommon and rarely documented, and very little is known of them. the girls are so often photographed by nature enthusiasts, i guess because they're so much less shy and easier to spot.

so. i've always wanted to do a shoot of tiga on my hand again. but i was so scared of losing him. now that all my bubbas are so big, their jumping prowess is also quite something. i thought about it all day today, and i'm not sure what made me decide to do it, but i did.

he refused to budge, at first. he hid in his bed and peeked at me in such a cute and shy manner that i almost dropped the idea. but he has been less nervous these days, and i knew there was no better time to do it.

so i gently brushed one of his web strings from afar, enough to alarm him only slightly so he'd move but not panic. i wasn't sure how readily he'd move onto my hand, because i knew that unlike lucien, he seems afraid of this 'fleshy' texture, even though he'd been so comfortable with it as a baby.

he prodded me tentatively twice and walked onto my hand! but before i could get too happy, he freaked out and leapt off onto my desk. i picked him back up and he leapt off onto my desk again, and then onto the floor! it was the furthest any kid has ever got to.

i picked him back up again, and he calmed down finally.

so, after our first few seconds of panic (both him and i), we got re-acquainted with each other. he re-explored the hand he used to know so well, and there were no more attempts to be superspidey. he was a good boy and just wandered around on my hand, albeit slightly jerkily. i managed to get three short clips of him, which i didn't expect to. all i wanted was at least one good photograph. i got a few. :)

i shall leave you all in suspense and post the pictures another day. ha!

:)

i know i'm so terrible, but i just wanted to record this moment. i still want to post their pics in progression. i know! there has been such slow progress... one day, one day we will get there!

just so i seem a little less terrible, i'm working on a korean fantasy epic right now for work. it's pretty hardcore translating stuff that don't exist. will lose a bit of hair over the next two months i reckon!

four more days!

just handed in a batch of files.... one last submission to go before this project is over!

hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

i've decided that i don't want to work nights anymore. things need to change.

on a completely irrelevant tangent, here are some old pictures of lucy from last year. this was the day i made her move house into a nice, huge jar because she was freaking her babies out. i remember feeling a little bad for chasing her out... because she was obviously really, really scared. she leapt from her old jar into the new one with such a loud thud i almost jumped out of my chair. :( she then crouched on that leaf for a few hours...



but as seen in the second pic, she was happily exploring her nice big home by nightfall. :) i miss lucy. may she rest in peace under that tree with munster, sonic, bobby, bobbette and slash.

so much to say and do. i feel a little lost. :)

i've finally finished my 50-part project, as of tonight. the satisfaction is beyond description. i've been told that i'll be given a break - this holds two very pleasing bits of information because 1. i really do need a break 2. a break means i will have more work lined up.

regarding medical stuff and us humans, there has been a change of plans and mother went ahead with her surgery first. she is now recovering in hospital, after having gone through a 3-hour operation on monday. she was meant to be discharged after 3 days, but she's not been able to eat anything solid, or even keep much liquid down. she can't come home till she's able to eat solid meals and digest them normally. i was by her side when she was tormented by trapped wind in her stomach and indigestion from drinking soup and liquids. it was painful to see. i wished i could share her suffering. i felt horribly helpless. but i was very glad to be there when she finally managed to throw everything up after more than 4 hours, so i could hold the plastic bag and clean up afterwards. i doubt the nurses would have rushed over in time.

yesterday i sprained my neck by sneezing too hard (wtf) and so was trapped at home. am slightly more mobile now and should be right as rain tomorrow. father reports that mother is feeling better today, although still unable to eat.

my own operation will take place only after mother recovers. which could be a few weeks or a month. maybe i'll do it on my birthday as a joke on myself. har har.

now, on to the more fun stuff! :)

bobby3 has been planted in bobbette's jar. teehee. i didn't know what would happen to him. when they mated for the first time, they took such a long time that i went to bed before they were done. i woke up the next morning half expecting to find him dead on the floor of the jar. but, no! there he was, hanging quietly sleeping in a corner away from mrs bobbette. and somehow, he has survived till today. occasionally, they have a domestic - bobbette would chase him round and round the jar but he manages to get away. either that or she gives up. i don't know. but they seem to be living quite happily ever after. in fact, i'm so amazed at this happy coexistence that i'm tempted to swop bobby in. cos i'd much rather bobby be the happy little guy, right? but i'm still afraid that bobby won't be as quick on his feetsies as bobby3. so... better not.

munster has laid her third batch of eggses. this time is a little worrying because i can see eight eggses sitting inside her cocoon. they're not meant to be visible and usually are wrapped in a fluff ball inside the cocoon. i'm not sure if she was careless, or they dropped out, or... she's getting senile? jeremy says web spiders do that when they're about to die - their last eggs may not be wrapped properly, maybe they're losing coordination or energy or something. i'm hoping this isn't the case with munster since she isn't a web spider...

i've started to train the bubs to hunt more menacing meals like flying (queen) ants. strangely, on two occasions when i'd managed to catch flyingants of the right size for the bubs (about 4mm-5mm or less), they'd appeared in fantastic numbers on the floor of my living room. it was amazing. the first time, a total of 5 turned up. just nice, one for each bub. the second time, a total of 9 turned up! one for each bub and one for each adult, including the bobbies! (bobby3 hadn't joined us then)

feeding bobby3 was quite difficult because bobbette kept snatching his meals. until i worked out a method. i now feed bobbette first with a big fat meal. after she spins it into a ball, drags it into her corner to eat and is totally engrossed in it, i throw in a smaller meal for bobby3 - as close to him as possible so he gets to it first without alarming bobbette. this works well so far. :)

not sure if i mentioned it before, but poe has gone to her foster mom, salsarina. i will be visiting her tomorrow after i visit mother. :)

all my 5 bubs have done their third moult so far. they're getting quite big! i think because their eyesight is getting better, they're freaking out more as well. they startle at more movements now, and even min is getting more jittery. i hope my mission to photograph her life stages can be completed without mishaps.

there are lots more little stories to tell about them but i will save those to post together with corresponding pictures. i know i keep saying this but i truly have mountains of pictures to post. yes, kyle, i did promise to post some by friday. i know. i will!

:)

it's been a crazy 5 days from the time i decided to take on less duties in my office job. it was a good thing i did what i did then, because the past 5 days have flown by in a blur of translation work. i've always been quite nocturnal but it's been ridiculous this week. i think i'm ready to turn my bio-clock around once my work settles down. for now, i have to trudge on to clear the mountain of projects in my hands.

i've been keeping myself sane with little photoshoots of my spideykids whenever my brain overheats. i have the wickedest pics of bobby and munster! coming up soon when i get over this hurdle.

i got myself outta bed at 7am friday morning and trundled to the office, with about 5 hours of very deep sleep. not too bad. totally amazing to myself, since this is completely against my bio-clock. 7am to me is like most people's 1am or so.

showdown went well, even though i did not get to say everything i really wanted to say, but the outcome was what i wanted. one day, i'd still want to say my piece for the sake of the company and its future though. i feel it is a waste of a fantastic future for this company that still has lots of room for growth (but is being held back by issues i wanted to address and didn't get to say). one day i will.

meanwhile, a huge weight has lifted off my shoulders. well, actually not all of it, but a big part has been dissolved. so i'm carrying a much smaller burden now (from an army backpack of rice to a medium-sized handbag).

on the other hand, the other burden i'm carrying has increased from a lightly-packed overnight bag to a small luggage trolley - lots of tedious work increased but i will roll along just fine. :)

just switching the weight around. :)

celebrated with a lovely lunch with ness, then a coupla hours of retail therapy and ketchup with val over an old-skool ice-cream cone and a hugeass love potion sundae. yes, i had both ice creams by myself while val had two beers. :D

when i was walking out of the office, i felt as if i'd just graduated from school or something. i felt like a cat without a collar. a hamster without a cage. a bird in the sky. a spider in a web (did anyone see this coming?)... i beamed to myself on my way to town.



first photo of something edible by my new ricoh camera. no contrast required. :)

in other news, munster seems to have bounced back to life after finishing her meal. not sure what happened before, maybe she was absorbing my tired vibes. :)

she's still scratching her legs a little, though much less than before. and i also realised that she is so much fatter than when i first found her. :) her tummy used to be triangular in shape, and now it's a round ball. hehe!

she is now running around the jar, peering at things inquisitively like how she always does. :)

in otherother news, i've collected the new suped-up macbook. i'm not sure when i'll have to give it up to the person taking over all the things i've stopped doing, or whether there will be such a person at all. :p in any case, i may not get to use it for long, and i'm too busy now to fully enjoy this beautiful machine. in fact, it's still sitting in its box since coming home with me on thursday evening. such a waste, but i have too many things to do...

rest assured that another gadget entry will come up soon, starring ricoh and apple.

:)

showdown postponed to tomorrow (today) 830am.

i am a big ball of stress.

off to bed now!

ps. munster is in her hammock resting, no more itchy-scratchy.

my brains are over-heating at last.

the time has come for me to make a choice, even if the cards are not ideal yet, on the side i want to go to. cardplayer says no promises yet, but i can't do both anymore. i'm still trying to decide how much i can trust this person, whether this is going to work out.

on the other end, i'm in the midst of changing status into a project-basis as well. so that gives me more breathing space.

i neeeeeeeeeed breathing space. bad.

tomorrow, there will be a big showdown at the office. wonder how bad the weather will be, indoors.

in other news, i've been fretting over not finding enough meals for my spideykids over the past few days. but somehow, meals were everywhere tonight! :D i'd just fed munster two relatively big flying ants, with a third one kept aside for later.

i'm a little worried about bobby because he hasn't eaten for awhile. oh but last night was quite exciting! i caught this bright red crane fly and popped it into bobby's jar. the fly was such an uncommonly pretty red thing, i felt a little bad for sacrificing it, but bob needs to eat mah. as the fly bumbled around the jar, wriggling against bobby's webs, bobby sprang into action! he actually ran along his webs and tried to grab the fly (about twice his length with longass legs, but skinnier and weaker than he is). i'd never seen bobby run so fast, across the entire jar, trying to grab the fly. he managed to grab one of the fly's legs at one point, and they started to fight! bobby tugged madly at the leg and it came off... oops. the fly got away and is still alive in the jar today. it doesn't look like bobby has made any other attempt to grab this redflydude. :s

i've put in two small flyingantdudes tonight, hopefully he feeds on one or both of them. they don't seem to move much, which is a problem for bobby to detect. sigh. my little boy is blind as a bat.

meanwhile, munster is a brave little girl! the current meal in her fangs right now is a red flyingant, which i'd put into bob's jar at first without looking carefully till it was already in the jar. THEN i realised it was like a flying version of a fireant. oops. maybe not so good for bob. i thought about it for awhile to decide if it would harm munster (very big fangs on this flyingant), then grabbed it and popped it into munster's jar. munster flew at it before i even closed the feeding hole. there was a slight tussle and then munster had it in her fangs firmly. flyingant continued to struggle but munster held on. i could see flyingant pinching munster on her arm with its fangs, and she was twitching to shake it off without loosening her fangs on the flyingant's body. after a little while, she had him maneuvered to an angle where it couldn't bite her. and soon, it stopped trying to be funny.

now she's enjoying her second course of the night. :) her tummy is looking fat and round! i've been peering at her arm to see if she's been hurt, it looks all good.

wow, as i type, another flyingant lands on my desk. when it rains, it fuckin' pours aye? now munster has two meals-in-waiting. and bobby has four meals sitting cautiously in his jar (i think they know staying still is the key to staying alive). i hope he eats soon. :(

hehehehehe. munster looks so fat, i wonder if she can fit into her hammock.

i made something impossible happen at work today. am feeling very good about it. and extremely excited. it seems certain stubborn people can be tricked/cajoled/persuaded into making some radical changes that will let the company progress at last.

in other news, spidey is still with me because i've had absolutely no time to take him to the bio-science dept. ok, i'm also getting rather fond of him. i've been trawling through the web (haw haw) especially websites dedicated to spiders (spiderwebsites! haw haw haw) to try to identify him but i just can't. :p i've written in to one of the sites, kindly suggested by brainclaw but maybe my pictures were too boring... i didn't get an answer yet. i must admit that spidey looks rather plain next to some of the gorgeous/scary ones they receive... (but spidey's still cute to me!)

as we speak (type... read... whatever), spidey is feeding on a big, fat ant. other than that first night of feeding when he treated me to an absolutely stunning display of speed and agility (refer to previous post's first comment), i'd not had another good show like that. i suspect i might have scared him a little, because i tried to give him a prey twice his size the second night. :p ok, i have a lot of faith in spidey.

so i popped in a HUGE flying antsy. he was a strong one, with slightly spiked legs and all. he got stuck in spidey's web and started to struggle madly. spidey sprang up at him and they actually fought, clashing with their legs. spidey didn't get close enough to bite him with his little (but visible) fangs. after about 20 seconds of intense leg-fight (like sword-fight), spidey sat back and watched. bigflyingantsy kept struggling madly to free himself, but to no avail. some hours later, he died... maybe of exhaustion!

spidey left him well alone. didn't even go near the corpse.

i put a smaller flyingantsy in for him and went to bed because it was way past bedtime. am not sure if he ate that one, but it was dead in the morning. can't tell it's a dry corpse or normal one. i assume he did have a snack.

today, i couldn't find any flyantsies. so i put in a tiny little kitchen ant. you know, those half-red ones that crawl around in everyone's kitchens. this one was a clown. he kept walking near spidey, sniffing him etc... but spidey avoided him! this antsy is like, a third of spidey's size. i think spidey was actually scared of him! so i let antsy out.

we've had a recent army of foreign black ants in our home because our uncle has just given us HEAPS of durians, freshly plucked. comes with free ants! shitloads of 'em! big, fat, black ones which don't seem to have fangs. they just walk all over everything (table, things, face, arms, hair... ) and don't bite. unlike our little kitchen ants, who almost always bite. they're about same size as spidey, only slightly bigger than the flyingantsy he tackled easily before, so... i got one of the black fellas and dropped him in.

he was a mad struggler too! and a clown as well. he staggered a lot, so he was very unstable... and he actually kept falling directly into spidey's web right where spidey was sitting! and spidey would dodge him! :o

sigh.

anyways, bigfatantsy was finally worn out by all the struggling and was lying (almost dead) in a far corner. i expected spidey to ignore it and it would be another case of wasted prey (and wasted life) but to my surprise, spidey actually walked over and grabbed the almost inert bigfatantsy. no struggle was put up, only slight flailing of arms. spidey spun him round into a roll like he did with his first meal from me, albeit much slower this time. i wonder if he was injured in the tussle with the bigflyingantsy.

yeh, so he's having his yumyum now. he looks so round and fat.

:)

i'm gonna miss having him on my desk.

ok, the supposed other news turned out to be spidey-dribble. teehee. am finally off to bed.

ps. have pics of spidey feeding... but taken through his plastic jar wall because i didn't want to open the cap while he's feeding, so he can eat in peace. rather blurry pics but will post soon anyway!

i hope not.

i've just submitted my first round of that horrigibly difficult, pain-in-the-arse project. that's 2 bits out of a total of 7.

5 more to go!

in addition to this wonderful news, these 7 are possibly just part of 40 in total.

hahahahaha!

that's the laughter of a crazed person.

in other news, i hung out with freddie last friday evening and he snapped some test pictures of me with my new lumix baby.



i must say, my new camera is not going to let me be lazy. the auto-function sucks pretty bad. the intensity of colours beats my old pentax hands down, but the clarity and noise level of the image is extremely ho-hum. these can be rectified by shooting manually. i guess there'll be no more lazy photography for me for the time being.

in case anyone is wondering, i'm taking a break from new food entries until i finish posting ALL of my melbourne entries. there's enough food there to last us a long time. :p in the meantime, i'll be practising food shots with my slave-driver lumix. will also store all good food pics procured during this break for future posting.

have a happy monday, everyone!

;)

i know i'm good at what i do but.

damn these ridiculously incomprehensible projects!

they seem to enjoy throwing this sorta stuff at me, each one harder than the last.

perhaps no one wants to do them.

perhaps no one can?

naaaaargh!

*tears out hair*

*shoves it back*

*gets back to work*

one day into working two jobs and i am sleeping at 5:30am.

need to improve on this.

:)