blogged nose...

hello ladies and gentlemen!
i was asked to contribute to our blog and shall offer you my thoughts on our expedition so far, so here i go!

before i start, excuse me for my running and blocked nasal passageways (unfortunately i sniffed too much london dirt and dust before adventuring over here!).
I'm still amazed that it's even possible to obtain a "cold" in these warm countries! it's soo bloody hot that i don't even dare to touch the touchy mousescreen thingy cause it would boil the first skin layer of my fingers! also i have a small reddish/brown ant running wild across my keyboard which risks being drowned by the droplets of sweat  dripping off my forehead. well, actually it's not that bad, i'm not really sweating buckets yet, wait until we start the actual work :P
had our first little walk across the mangroves today and i must say i'm overjoyed to be able to conduct research here! (if it wasn't for that blocked nose... seems to affect my hearing as well,... maybe that's a good thing considering the music here)we went out at high tide and walked along the boardwalk admiring the beauty that these mangroves display! trust me, it's really cool! :D the weirdly shaped trees, the even more weirdly shaped mudskippers and their habit to run over water, the "fish-fingers" (eloooongated fish), the cool crabs, birds and just the variety of life forms that i've never seen before. as you can tell, i'm pretty excited !!! :D this is like a massive playground for me with undiscovered treasures (undiscovered to the extend that they don't know much about the ecology of most things here) no one some peops stay here for long after their actual work is done. if i wasn't stuck in uni i would do the same ;P
that brings me to my relatively poorly dissertation which has to be tackled very very soon (now?!). can't wait to work with the beasties here, although i'm not sure which ones yet. there are some really really tiny white/yellow/orange crabs. they have a so called nursery here only that the little crabs are actually everywhere. they have tiny burrows and make wee mud balls. the males do this little dance (will try and document in a more visual way at some point!) where they lift their larger claw and wave it :) have only seen a couple of large crabs and some hermit crabs sitting in their coneshaped shells. what other amazing stuff have we seen? a small sea-snake taking a break on a wooden log, brown little thing and i hope we won't get a chance to bond with these fellows too much. the most peculiar things however are those mudskippers! muhahaha! amaaaaazing! gotta absolutely love them! they are so funny with their eyes on the top of their head and their fins which magically seem to glue them to even the most vertical piece of wood! they also have the tremendous ability to jump/walk/fly over the water!
also seen quite a few birds in the morning like the massive kingfisher ( alot taller than ours), a sunbird, that fantailed birds (huge tail!) and sparrows (i wonedr if they were introduced here?) oh and that stupid rooster that just crowed now! (i bet he knows when i am planning to have a nap!) i shall keep my eyes and ears open and discover further peculiar and new lifeforms :D

for now i need to wash that grimy sweaty layer of ehm sweat and salt of my face (the feeling of freshness only lasts for approx 2 minutes only) before venturing to town to meet even more people :)

anyhow, i've written enough so i'll bore you a bit more later on with the discoveries of one that goes shopping in a filipino market ;)

until then, cherio!!!
 L

PS: sorry for any mispellings, grammar mistakes and such likes, comes with being a foreigner ;)