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So this long hidden memory came back to me when I was writing this post and I remembered the time when harry potter just came out its first movie. Potter was entering Hogwarts at that time and because I was the same age as him and the stated age of first years to Hogwarts, I was silently hoping that I would receive an invitation to such a school too. And now that monsters university is showing, I am in my uni years too. So qiao horh...but the movie schools always look wayyyyyy cooler than mine (unfair). Okay back to topic, I dunno why we are so on butt, if you've noticed, we actually wore MU shirts to catch the movie! Muahaha ~ The experience was great! But we'll be broke if we were to do it for every movie so I guess this might be our first & last ;)

Then today, I brought my sisters to Poulet again for the delicious lamb shank. I ordered smth new - chicken sandwich - and it tasted alright. Lamb shank is still the ultimate champion for me but my sisters felt that it was ok-ok only. Ah well, different palette I guess...

See, let her have a few alone time with my phone to take a photo and this is what I get...*headaches*

Haha, I think since the lunch portion was rather small, all of us didn't have our fill & we went for desserts and my sister even continued to take away her BonChon cravings. She and the little one had quite a time eating the seconds and here's a collage to remember the never-ever-stay-still-while-eating niece of mine =)

 Okay, so shall end off with a home-made quote for this post:

=)

There were quite a variety of fish, and also a variety of showcasing methods. There's this like glass plank showcase where we can step onto and feel like we were "standing on water".

There's also another showcasing method where one area of the glass is a convex portion that acts as an magnifying glass (see below, compare the seahorses' sizes!). This idea is quite interesting, but the whole showcase was rather small and only around 3 person can view it at any one time (others will be blocked already). So the area is always crowded and takes quite a lot of time to view.

So there were loads of aquatic species to view, but here I'm only gonna show a few of the nicer and more interesting species I took. Here's one that looks like it inspired Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. It looks like something with a fish body with an octopus head, and it changes colour when it gets agitated. Heh heh, we know cause we witnessed it. Quite scary though, luckily got the glass separating us if not I think it'll surely go into full attack mode on us. Have the video here but will upload when there's more time!

Okay, here's a pic of a yellow stingray. It's quite small in size but they always look so smiley under those stingyness...and I manage to got one nice pic of it so here it goes!

Another thing praise-worthy about s.e.a. is that their coral reefs are really pretty and brightly coloured which makes the tank kinda attractive. The fishes in it also had very nice colours but the reefs really got most of the attention.

Oh! There's dolphins there too! Loads of them and they kept swimming upright and somersault. At this station, there was this guy who was explaining why the dolphins does this and that and it's quite interesting and educational.

We had a jelly good time posing with some wall decors =)

As advertised, this aquarium has the world's largest viewing panel (36m wide by 8.3m high) and it's really breath taking to be standing in front of the panel. There were many different types of aquatic animals and it's quite cool to see them interact and swim here & there. However, it's quite difficult to take a photo with the panel without so-ever-many people camping by the panel. But one interesting angle was from the side viewing panel, kinda like a mini extended submarine by the panel. There I took this shot which I really like and so I'm naming it the best shot of the adventure! You can really see the schools of fishes swimming about like the ones that made the underwater mirage in Finding Nemo. Cool.

There's this souvenir machine which we "spotted" at a corner & luckily haven't attracted much attention yet when we arrived, and so we proceeded to make ourselves a little penny memory for our visit...

The process is quite interesting and we can get to turn & choose the pattern we wanted to stamp onto the penny. I got a turtle one and he got the stingray one! There are 2 other patterns to choose too (hammerhead shark and just the simple aquarium logo).

Yeah, and so here's another shot of the attractive reefs which this has a glow-in-the-dark effect. 

We also manage to queue for a chance to experience the touch pool creatures. The queue was like 15 mins and then shwoosh, you get directed to move left move left and end the experience in 5. We manage to touch a few starfishes and also an empty shark egg (err...I guess it's for texture experience?). There was the in charge informing the visitors on the dos & don'ts and apparently we shouldn't pull a starfish from its position. So that translates to a "no-carrying of starfish" I guess. Quite different experience from the one I had in Korea where the in-charge just kept taking starfishes to place them on the side rocks and ask the visitors to hold and place them back into the tank (which is much more interesting & also memorable). The Korea one didn't had a queue too and I spent like 10mins by the touch pool looking and sometimes trying to get some tactile experience at my own pace. That one had a wash-area nearby but this one wasn't too bad either as they provided tissues.

Tada! Finally a chance to take photo with an unobstructed panel!

We met this friendly diver & he posed with us for a photo! Not bad huh my photo-taking skills...

Haha! I really liked this random pic of this pufferfish that seemed to be looking in my direction giving the "blur-king" kind of expression just when I pressed the camera button.

Actually, most of the designs of the aquarium are rather new and refreshing. The only thing pulling it back is the problem of over-crowding because some exhibits only cater to such a small number of visitors at a time and yet, people were still streaming in non-stop. Here's one pic just to have an idea of how crowded it is inside...

Of course, the crowd sometimes thin at certain places but seriously, its a non-public holiday and the numbers are already this high...

Nevertheless, it's an experience and I can strike the target to see the world's largest aquarium panel display off my list of to-dos here in my hometown. I've recently learnt how to use a panorama and here's one to end this post! Enjoy!

And one quote to end it all that suits well for this experience and life too:

"Just Keep Swimmin'" - Dory ;)

Loved it and can't wait to eat the next meal!

=*

Tried this triple thingy and he liked it.

Then on another day, when we were hungry but not that hungry to eat a full meal, we decided to give the "new" Canton Paradise restaurant a try. I like the blue porcelains. 

The dim sums were not bad too. We only ordered 3 dishes, which managed to fill our stomachs by the end of it. The yellow pork buns and chee qiong fan are nice.

To end this post, I found a quote recently which I think is very true. Here it goes:

"Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness" - unknown

Are you free or happy? For now, I guess I'm both =)

All the days of hard work and late nights for the past year, was summed up (mostly) in a poster and that 15 mins of chit chat with my examiner. I was quite nervous before the presentation began with my mind thinking of the not-so-related stuff like how I was over-dressed for the event and the-kinda-related-stuffs like how was I gonna survive a 10 mins presentation in the ever-so-open presentation venue that anyone would be able to see you present. But gradually, when it all started, the conversations kind of muffled alot of other sounds when it was my turn to present, I was glad I couldn't hear most of myself =P So the whole thing passed super fast and as my direct prof said I need not present to him, I was kind of done for the day. Next up was the photo-taking session where people went around taking photos with everyone else. I wanted a photo with my prof too but I guess I was too late in doing that and he already went for his lunch. Next time next time! Anyways, I managed to get a few shots with a few people and here is one to sum up the photo-taking session:

Beef & red meat up next, with baked potatoes that I didn't really like though.

Oh there's this small dish with prawn and suan vege...take it if you see it, must try everything right? =)

For the Asian cuisine, we took abit of each: beehoon, oyster sauce vege, broccoli, chicken, toufu, mushrooms & I forgot the rest. This bit was more than enough for two!

Then we continued with the noodles special. I wanted to have laksa one, but I started with prawn noodle instead and he took the tom yam flavor. We were so full that we didn't take the laksa later on (why my stomach so bu zhen qi =/).

Coffee, tea or me? Apparently coffee was the choice...

Okay, so there was a selection of meaty stuff too. And again, we took abit of each: salmon, duck, ox tail, chicken & prawn.

Sashimi side, there was salmon, tuna, SWORDFISH (the word itself sounds cool right), something and something. One was a type of clam I think...but salmon tasted the best to me.

haha, it's oyster time again and this time we got a king oyster! Look at the size diff (okay the pic doesn't really bring out the impact, but it was really much larger in real life). The king one was much yummier than the regular ones, with more "meat" too!

Finally, it's desserts time. Saw this cute decorated dessert and we just took it without much look. It's made up of a cream like thingy, on a doughnut like thingy on top of a chocolate like thingy. The taste doesn't match the visuals though.

Yay! I've been like eyeing the waffles ever since I stepped in the place and finally I got to eat it. The waffles here have a few types of flavors, and we chose the chocolate and pistachio one. The portion given was just right as we (or maybe just me) were very full by then already. See the brown sauce? It was one of the best toppings ever! Tasted like chocolate plus cornflakes but not too heavy on the chocolatey side too. The nuts were making us nuts too. One word to describe the following picture will definitely be "YUMS". Could just eat this everyday...

A smiley face decorated by him, see see, playing with food already, must be super full by then. For this, the green tea choco balls were good. The white lemon balls were too soury for comfort.

Ice-cream time! There were more topping selection here and I could express my artistic self =P The ice-creams were distributed instead of open for all to take, and I actually feel that it is more hygienic with this arrangement. There were more flavors than the usual choco-vallina-strawberry combo.

 "Never get older" - despicable me 2