I came across this photo from U San Oo’s Blog, I just love it so sharing with you. Check out how she gracefully wear Myanmar traditional dress and the way she was posing. Just sooo cute!!!

Come to think of it…I’ve never worn a Myanmar traditional dress in my life yet. I don’t even wear a Longyi (Sulu). I’m going to get one next time I go back Burma. The photo is a bit blur but you get the idea of how Burmese traditional dress looks like.

I have a great dislike, rather a phobia, for long eerie looking creatures namely, earth worm, leaches, snails, snakes, caterpillars etc. I remember back in high school (Form 6 Bio Lab), we have to do experiment on earth worms. We have to search for earthworms and found heaps of them near the creek at the back of our school. I almost vomit looking at the size of those earthworms. They were so healthy, huge, twisted and piles of it once you unearth moist rubbish dump.

My classmates (mainly guys and some daring gals) were picking them up with their hands and throwing around. That was so gross yet we have to endure it and took the best looking big, fat, long worms back to the lab. We then boil them up in hot water. Gosh the smell was indescribable. It stinks the whole lab and near by classrooms too. Once you boil them up, they changed in color and their size too. Before they were reddish brown and changed into dirty pale pink.

We then dissect them from head to tail. I didn’t touch a single thing. I just watched and examined from the sideline. It was quite an experience to study my greatest fear – the worms. Though they seem to be very harmless and have many worthy means for the environment, they are the most annoying, ugliest, yuckiest, good-for-nothing, useless creatures for me.

The once and only time I encountered an earthworm was while I was digging soil for a vegetable plant. I cut them half in the process. The cut parts got twisted and jumped up on my foot; I run like hell and never dig the moist soil again. It was my 1st and last association with earthworms as well as helping mom garden.

Ok, enough about my earth worm adventures and back to the main story. I want to talk about another long eerie looking creature called “Duna”, the eels. A few days back, my friend forwarded two great photos of Duna caught at Monasavu Dam. The eels were enormous. I was surprised by the way locals caught them. They seemed to be using some bamboo and a few spears which I find it quite small to catch that big eels.

Check out the way they handle the eels. Slice up the head and poke a bamboo in to carry around.

I never seen an eel in real life but only seen some small ones on books and TV. I don’t know much about eels but I’ve decided that they are surely not in my desirable animal list. I wasn’t sure of whether there are lots of eels in Fiji so I did a bit of research for my own satisfaction. Turn out that, Fiji is a good place for eels culture since they like tropical climates with temperature around 23-28C.

Here are some facts about eels.

True eels (Anguilliformes) are an order of fish, which consists of 4 suborders, 19 families, 110 genera and 400 species. Most eels are predators.

The flat and transparent larva of the eel is called a leptocephalus. A young eel is called an elver.

Most eels prefer to dwell in shallow waters or hide at the bottom layer of the ocean, sometimes in holes.

Depending on their species, eels can reach from 10 cm to 3 m, and weigh up to 65 kg.

In Micronesia, eels are believed to hold the souls of one’s departed relatives. As such, killing eels is a grave offence and was once punishable by death.

Wiki information on Eels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eel

Don’t you think it’s just so big and ugly? (I meant the eel) Those Fijians seem happy, may be a good meal for them.

This is an abstract from SPC article:
Catching Eels in Pacific Island Countries and Territories [ pdf ]

Pacific Island countries offer a good environment in which to culture eels, as they grow rapidly in tropical climates, preferring a temperature range of 23-28C, and a pH rane of 7.0 – 8.0. In Fiji, when the word “duna” or “bham” is used, it is certain that the fish referred to is the so-called common eel, Anguilla, which occurs in most of the islands.

For pond-based aquaculture, the best site is one with a constant water supply. Eels are consumed in PICTs and particularly in Fiji, where it is an important source of protein for the rural indigenous population. In some localities, high demand has led to the collection of young eels from the wold for culture in tilapia ponds.

In Fiji, elvers and juvenile eels are caught from estuaries, mountain tributaries, swapms and ditches using various types of local gear. These eels are grown to marketable size in ponds designed for tilapia culture and solic live at Fj$ 10.00 per kg at Suva and Nausori markets.

In PICTs, eels are caught with hand lines, spears, cane knives and push nets. This gear is designed to capture a wide range of fish and crustaceans and is not specific to capturing eels.

Eels feed on a variety of feeds such as fish, molluscs, crustaceans, and terrestrial and aquatic insects.

Fishing methods and gear
The catching of eels in Fiji and other Pacific Islands normally involves inexpensive and very simple gear, which includes: baited hook and line, spears, push nets, hollow bamboo piece or PVC pipes, baited trap and seine nets. There are 3 commonly used methods, depending on materials available in villages, to catch eel.

• Baited line
• Eel spears
• Push net

And here are the famous Japanese Eel (Unagi) Recipes.

# Unagi – Japanese Eel Dishes
# Unagi (eel) Salad Recipe
# Unagi (eel) Stir-fry Recipe

I guess, that’s enough facts about eels. Interesting isn’t it? Well, at least it is interesting for me. Thanks Jachin and Alisi for the photos, my bossy sis for some fixes and you can read the prologue too.

This is really something…I’m checking out mayvelous and a few other sites in graph format.
This “website as a graph” site (via: weblog tools collection) generates a graph format for your websites or blogs. You just have to type in your site url and it’ll create node based sitemap graph.

Check the formation effect as well, really cool one. Something like chemistry molecular structure of your website showing links, tags, images etc in different colors.

What do the colors mean?
Blue: for links (the A tag)
Red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
Green: for the DIV tag
Violet: for images (the IMG tag)
Yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
Orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
Black: the HTML tag, the root node
Gray: all other tags

Check out the difference between my two sites, mayvelous vs 7ven.net. See there is no red dots in mayvelous. Yah cool isn’t it? Tableless. All thanks to the squible theme developers hehe. Well, I’m planning to revamp 7ven.net soon with proper webstandard.(when I feel like it, which probably never LOL)

I’ve checked out one of my favorite sites, Fijitimes.com and it generated some cool graph for it. My bro tried google.com and the results is as followed. I was hoping lots of nodes to be generated from google but to my dismay only few nodes there, my bad, I was mistakened by google search results as site structure. Google site by itself is a very small one.

Some of the cool graphs can be found here. It’s a flickr tag page which collects all the images tagged with “websiteasgraph” keyword.

So you can check out your own sites to see in graph format and upload it to flickr tag with “websiteasgraph”.

Technorati Tags: websitesasgraphs, Graphs, Screen Shots, mayvelous, 7ven.net, Fijitimes, google

I’m abit disappointed in Flickr. Don’t take me wrong. I love flickr and its amazing service. I’ve been trying to buy pro account since I got lots of photos up in my free account which like to organize them with proper photo sets.

What you get:

• 2 GB monthly upload limit
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited photosets
• Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
• Ad-free browsing and sharing *

Which account would you like?
– A 1 year account (US $24.95), or
– A 2 year account (US $47.99)

The problem is, when I try the payment processes, everything is fine except for the country part where there is no “Fiji” to choose from.
I could leave it as default “US” but my credit card address below would be “Fiji” and it’ll be confusing…

They do have an option to pay offline via cheque or money order I think, but it will take a while to process and I don’t like to send my money like that and wait. Well, abit of user unfriendliness in payment process which put me off from buying the pro account.

I don’t understand why they can’t add all countries in the country drop-down list. They’re thinking people from Fiji can’t buy or something? Well just a bit of disappointment to see the third world countries are not included. So sad!.

Technorati Tags: Flickr, Photo Sharing, Services, Pro-Account, Payments, Countries

Just notice there is a few makeover on my flickr account.
They’re now in Gamma stage (which I don’t know what exactly mean) and done some neat layout there.

Beta » Grandma Gamma » Omega » Yada Yadar…

They’ve added those top dropdown menus and also placed the photo sets to the right. Alot neater.

Oh yah yesterday skype announced that there will be free skypeOut to landlines and mobiles in US and Canada, till 31st December 2006.
Why not others? Australia atleast. C’mon Please!

So that’s my aside news…oh yah one more news, I broke my glass and I went blind.

Technorati Tags: skypeOut, Flickr, News, Aside

Hey there is a new feature on gmail called “Gmail Pictures”.
Instead of seeing custom photos of your contacts on gtalk program, you can now see their photos and update your photos on gmail itself.
I think it’s kinda like small pop up showing when you rollover an email or on contact names.

To enable that you have to upload your photo in Settings » My Photos and follow the steps here: How do I select my own Gmail picture?.

What are Gmail pictures?
Gmail pictures allow you to put a face to a name, by showing user-selected pictures when you roll over a name in your inbox, Contacts, or Quick Contacts list. You can choose your own photo for yourself and for your contacts, suggest a photo for a contact to use, or see what your friends have selected for themselves.

Gmail pictures can be configured to show to all users who you email or who email you, or they can be limited to only those users who are able see when you’re online. You can see a full list of users who can see your online status from the All Contacts tab of your Contacts page – they’ll be listed with a colored ball next to their name.

They’re still in the process of rolling this feature out to all users, so keep an eye out for it in your account!

I haven’t seen “My Picture” option in my mail “Settings” yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time…Looking forward to that.

Updated

Just now check my account and the feature is enabled, you can see the screen shot of it as followed.

Technorati Tags: gmail, pictures, gmail picture, new features

You don’t see them often, better take a look. Some nice shots there.

Via National Geographic
March 29, 2006—Thousands of people flocked to sites between North Africa and central Asia in search of the best place on Earth to see today’s total eclipse of the sun. But the coolest view might not have been on Earth at all.

Members of the Expedition 12 crew aboard the International Space Station were treated to this one-of-a-kind sight early this morning: a view of the moon’s shadow passing across the Earth.

Links:More Eclipse Photos at Flickr
Via Flickr Blog