Thanksgiving

We had a 4-day weekend for Thanksgiving. I went to Phuket with 2 of my girlfriends from SAS. We all started at the school at the same time. What did we have in mind for this holiday? Some beach, good food and lots of time at the spa! Of course, I ran away to go diving for a day (what did you expect???) It was relaxing and just what the doctor ordered...

The "gals" on Karon Beach, Phuket.

Black spotted porcupinefish with 2 remoras. Like the puffer fish, the porcupinefish is able to inflate themselves but have additional large spines which point outwards when inflated (during stressful events). The remora usually attached itself to sharks or other large pelagics (large fish), but these guys must have been desperate to hang on to this small guy! This slender suckerfish is easily recognised by the sucking disc on the head and nape, that helps this guy to attach himself by suction to other fish, turtles and whales. Food is obtained when the host is feeding. (Source: Asia Pacific Reef Guide)

It is quite hard to spot decent sized shrimp during the day, but these hinge-beak shrimps were easy to spot. It was hard to take the picture, though, with all the sea urchins around. These guys are also known as the dancing shrimp: they move around carefully, only to stop after a few movements, as do tango dancers (Source: CRUSTACEA Guide Of The World)

Breast Cancer Survivor World Dragon Boat Championship

Did you know that many breast cancer survivor do dragon boating? Apparently, a doctor in Canada decided it would be good therapy and now, there are breast cancer "boats" everywhere. In October, Singapore was host to the first World Championship for these ladies. We had women from New Zeland, Australia, South Africa and Canada fly here for this special regatta. The Canadian High Commission hosted a dinner for the teams from Canada and invited the Canadian women from our canadian Dragon boat team (most of our paddlers are not from our fair country, but decide to paddle for the best team around!) There were 3 of us there with 100 breast cancer survivors from Canada. No mistakes, A HUNDRED women came to Singapore to celebrate winning their battle with this terrible disease. They kept on staring at these 3 youger ladies with quite healthy boobs and asking us if we were survivors. I felt so "out"! It was kinda funny though.

On that weekend, these ladies competed in the 250 and 500 metre races. It rained, and the whole area ended up being a big mud pit. We took part of the invitational races. It was a disaster! We ended up crashing into another boat when our cox (person "driving" the boat, at the back) lost control of the boat. After the impact, another boat crashed into us. It was crazy! As the other boats raced to the finish, we decided to paddle back to the starting line and had our own little private race... Strange, I know....

For the last race of the weekend, they had organized a novelty race: teams could have men racing, open to anyone. The only condition: use pink in a creative way. Melissa and I were in charge of our team's costume. We decided that all paddlers would be little piggies and the cox & drummer would be the big bad wolves (3 little pigs storie). We were a hit! Everybody liked our costume. The abundant mud everywhere even tied into our theme quite well! Sadly, when we got to the dock, they had made a mistake in the race order and we had 2 races in a row. We ended up with half our team racing with strangers because my boat didn't get back to the dock on time for the next race (which was the novelty race). Too bad! Our team decided to race backwards, to make sure not to beat the unexperienced breast cancer supporters that were taking part in the same event.

Alicia and I, in our piggy outfits.

The Canadian team with a few visitors.

At the end of the weekend, one boat was assigned to each country to paddle out in front of the crowd with flowers. They played a song and observed a minute of silence for all those women that had lost the battle to breast cancer. Most of the women on the boat were crying and the whole crowd had a hard time holding back their tears. It was a moving moment.

Breast Cancer Survivor World Dragon Boat Championship