The psychologist shared with me that she read an article yesterday about how people kept pushing a “boost” button to keep themselves going, and failing to realise that each time the button is pushed, it depletes our energy significantly.

Nickelodeon

Our mind and body is like the battery of a mobile device. We kept pushing it, depleting energy from it, but never seem to be able to properly recharge the battery to 100%. Overall, it is a net energy deficit.

While that moment of pushing the button to spur on may have provided additional usage time of that limited energy juice remaining, it cannot last for long. Eventually, we feel the burnout as the battery indicator tries to tell us that it’s at critical level while we are still attempting to run multiple apps at the same time.

It was a good exercise today in exploring what the events and activities that are depleting my battery juice, and at what rate they are drinking the juice. At the same time, we also explored the activities and factors that helped me to recharge. It was no surprise that I have a net deficit energy of about 50% – I have been taking care of others too much that I am not taking care of myself.

It’s difficult to compare yourself with others and you can hardly find someone who does almost identical activities as you or one who is just as active as you are, and at the same time living with diabetes.

I feel some happiness after the session as we managed to find a section of the path to lead my troubled mind out of the dense jungle. I also felt assured that I have made the right choice to take a break from some of the things I have be doing.

Time to reorganise myself and find back my direction.

1. TED speaker
I think this is inspired by my Friend, Mei Lin. She is a marine biologist and a strong advocate for science communication. Mei Lin was named a TED Fellow in 2017 and that was inspiring for me.

2. Doing a PhD in Science Communication
It was a crazy thought I had right after obtaining my Masters in June 2016. The idea pops in my head once in a while, but the intensity involved in having a good topic to work on and the expectation involved in PhD work kind of made me consider many times whether I want to embark on this journey or not. I do have some ideas of what I can work on. Unfortunately, no local university is offering PhD in the area of science communication. Maybe I’ll just collaborate and possibly have a paper written.

3. Perform at the Esplanade Concert Hall

Image of Esplanade Concert Hall by Esplanade

Learning the violin for close to 8 years and being able to join a late starter’s orchestra (LSO) for a year, I must say that I have learnt quite a fair bit of musicianship. Due to constrains and number of players, the LSO usually plays for family and friends after a season of about 3 months. The biggest group I have play with was for an open house last year and a play date recently. For a few of us in the LSO, it is a dream for us to be able to perform at the Esplanade Concert Hall. Ok, maybe I’ll start small at SOTA first.

I may have more dreams hidden somewhere…

Are there any completed dreams? Definitely.

• Obtaining a Masters (in Science Communication)
• Speaker at conferences
• Obtaining certification in scuba diving
• Join an orchestra

Things, experiences, people around me inspired some of my dreams.
Dreams can change, but everyone has at least a dream and that may take some time and wondering to locate where you had stored your dreams in your mind.

What’s your dream?

It is good to check in with people around you from time to time.

A positive response does not mean that all is well.

It’s a big jump but I’m glad that I now have a safe channel to uncover things that I have kept hidden for a very long time. It’s not easy but it’s baby steps to make myself feel better and be a happier person.

Spawning Galexea sp.

The location we went to was Pulau Satumu, where Raffless Lighthouse is situated. Proper permit was obtained prior to the trips.

Corals spawn after sunset, with many of them spawning later in the night. So while waiting for the corals to spawn and also to catch the early spawners, we started diving from dusk.

There were many other interesting critters to see as well.

False clown anemone fish

Shallow reef scape of Pulau Satumu

Echinothrix urchin

Coral crab

Hawksbill Turtle

Later in the night, some pretty egg-citing spawning happened.

Coral releasing sperms

Remnants of egg bundles left on the coral after a burst of release.

Coral releasing egg bundles

Galexea sp. coral with a released bundle of eggs.

If you are wondering how to take photos of coral spawning underwater, here are some tips:

1. Lights

Corals spawn later in the night, so the reef will be dark. You will need lots of light in order for your camera to detect the eggs. However the corals are very sensitive to large amount of lights, so it is best to have lights with dimmer options to allow the corals to start their spawning activity.

2. Macro function on your camera

The eggs bundles are very tiny, so a camera without macro mode would be of a challenge to use if you want to document individualised action. If you want to capture that burst of release, then it would not have a problem.

3. Follow that pink blob, backwards

Experienced coral spawning watcher, Chay Hoon, told me that there are no tricks to coral spawning. You just have to look out for bundles of egg floating in the water and trace them back to the coral that is releasing it.

Sometimes, I find that my actions are too slow and by the time I found the coral, I’m already towards the end of that action burst. So I have to wait some time for the coral to build up energy for another round of release.

4. Keep yourself warm

As coral spawning dives are pretty shallow, we can almost stay up to 2 hours or longer on a tank of air. It will start to get pretty cold, the longer you stay in the water. So it is important to keep yourself warm in the water. (Peeing also help in some way.)

5. Be aware of your surrounding

For new coral spawning watchers, it is a real excitement to see a coral colony spawn right in front of you. However, I need to constantly be on the lookout for those sneaky long-spined sea urchin lurking everywhere along the reef. Always sweep around your area before you decide to park yourself near the corals.

Here’s a video of the egg bundles in water column.

Alternatively, if you feel lazy, you can see the egg bundles float on the water surface from the boat.

Brooding male cardinal fish (Shot on Nikon D200 with105mm macro)

Well fear not, the marine animals are out there waiting for you at many locations. All you need to do is to spend some time to find out more information before you grab your camera or mobile phone and head to the nearest beach.

1. Do your homework

Where can I go?
There are a few easy to access places that you can try if you are new to this and want to explore. These places are easy to access and are located on main land, so that you don’t have to spend time and money travelling on boat or ferries.

Pasir Ris Beach
Different parts of Pasir Ris Beach has different kind of environment. Some places are sandy, suitable for fiddler crabs, while others can be seagrassy or soft and muddy.
[Photo: WildSingapore on flickr]

Changi Beach
Well known for beach goers crowd on weekends and public holidays. Good location to watch bumboats travelling in and out of Changi Point Ferry Terminal or aircraft descending into Changi Airport, or queue for that famous Changi Village Nasi Lemak and Chendol. There are many marine critter to find along the beach.
[Photo: WildSingapore]

East Coast Park Beach
While this beach has very high human traffic, marine life still exists. If you are lucky, you might even find turtle tracks as there have been turtle and hatchling sightings in the past (link 1; link 2)

Coney Island
Great location to cycle to or get your Instagram photo/story, but did you know that marine life has been spotted at the beach of the island?
You can read more about the marine life on Coney Island here.

When can I go?
Now that you have decided location to explore marine life, the next step is to know when you can go to this location.

The best time to look for marine life is during low spring tide period (coincides with moon cycle) in the intertidal zone. Next is to check the tide table on the window period the low spring tide will happen (you won’t want to be caught away from the beach while the tide is rising fast or to find yourself at the beach with high water level). You can refer to the tide table for Changi via Changi Sailing Club’s webpage. Our low spring tide usually happens pre-dawn with some after sunrise, or in the afternoons with some after sunsets.

[Image from NOAA]

2. Equipment

Footwear
As you will be exploring the intertidal area, there will be parts where it will be damp, wet or with shallow pool of water. Normal flipflops or sandals provides little protection and walking comfort to your foot. Leave these shoes for after activity and use a pair of booties instead.

Booties such as this can be bought from the Army Market and can last you a long time.

Lights
If you are heading out to explore the intertidal area before sunrise or after sunset, make sure you prepare a torch light to light your surroundings.

Camera or mobile phone?
It’s completely up to you. If you are a beginner, I suggest to stick with mobile phone first to have a feel of what it is like to take photo in the intertidal area, or you can bring along a digital compact camera. Do be careful with your electronic devices as sea water will kill them.

The benefit of mobile phone is that you can share your photos instantly on site.

Eye stalks of conch (gong gong), taken using Olympus TG3

3. Know your subject

Read up on the types of animals you can find in various habitats and their behaviour.

Hermit crab seen at Changi Beach

One suggested webpage is Wild Shores of Singapore by Ria Tan, where you can read about all the intertidal trips Ria and her friends had gone on. A quick google of the location with “wildsingapore” included in will lead you to Ria’s blog on one of the top few results. If you are unsure of the animal you have spotted, just take a photo first and you can try referring to Ria’s Wild Factsheet to help you get a close identification of the animal.

4. Patience is the key

Some animals are very sensitive to movement and will disappear into hiding when they sense human presence. If you become still and wait for some time, the animal might reappear and back to doing it’s normal activity.

Soldier crab feeding and creating sand balls

Most of the time, I find myself doing the asian squat while waiting to minimise my movement. You don’t want to find yourself having to wait again when your squatting motion send the animal into hiding.

Squatting also helps you to spot small animals that are hidden among the seaweeds or seagrass.

Tiny pipefish spotted among small spoon seagrass.

5. A dash of luck might help you

Some animals are pretty rare and difficult to come across. It’s your lucky day if you spot one.

If you have any other tips or suggestions, do share them with me in the comments.

There are three themes and two sub-themes, each featuring an open and Instagram category:
Theme 1 – Gardens and Landscapes
Theme 2 – People and Nature
Theme 2A – Fort Canning Park (People and Nature)
Theme 3 – Our BiodiverCity
Theme 3A – Marine Biodiversity (Our BiodiverCity)

I had stopped entering photography competitions for many years but I’ve decided to give this local nature photography competition a try, since there was a theme for marine biodiversity. It was out of fun and just to try since it was a new sub-theme introduced this year.

Never had I thought that I would take the first prize for this sub-theme (out of the 10 photos I submitted).

I received my prize from 2M Desmond Lee last week at the commemoration of the International Day of Forests and prize presentation event at Fort Canning Park last Saturday.

Receiving the prize from 2M Desmond Lee

There is currently a nice exhibition of the winning entries of the open and Instagram categories from the five themes at Fort Canning Park. Alternatively you may view the winning entries (only) from the SGPY website here.

After the prize presentation, I got to share about my photo to Minister.

“Welcome to Fatherhood by Heng Pei Yan. MSF likes this! :)” – 2M Desmond Lee [Image by him]

“Welcome to Fatherhood”

This is a brooding cardinal fish. The male cardinal fish use their mouth pouch to brood baby cardinal fish. I was lucky to spot one brooding male cardinal fish during one of the intertidal trips.

I won a Nikon COOLPIX camera, a guided walk for two to Sisters’ Islands Marine Park and marine park dry bag.
(I joking told my friends that I am going to guide myself for the guided walk since I am a volunteer guide for the marine park.)

Shall I say that this was an early birthday present for me.

Thank you for reading and following my adventures through intertidal, drone images and travelling around the world.

There will be more exciting adventures in 2018 with International Year of the Reef (IYOR), more drone images, and travelling.

Here’s a photo of Conus and I in Copenhagen earlier this December. 
(No, there wasn’t any snow in Copenhagen. It was decoration at Tivoli.)

Pulau Tekukor

On the map, Pulau Tekukor is the longish island located south of Sentosa, before St. John’s Island.

With the violent past set aside, or very much forgotten among majority of citizens, let us visit this now tranquil island from above.

The island is not inhabited and the development plan is rather uncertain. Rocky intertidal area pretty much covers the whole stretch along the eastern side of the island, with some sandy beach area. While the western side showed reclamation with seawalls and a jetty. The sea area on this side of the island is now part of Marine Park, together with the western part of St John’s Island and the two Sister’s Islands. Vegetation covers the hilly terrain of the island.

Eastern side of Pulau Tekukor [Aug 2017]

Northern tip of Pulau Tekukor [Nov 2017]

Western side of Pulau Tekukor [Nov 2017]

Storage facility 1, northern tip [Nov 2017]

Storage facility 2, western side [Nov 2017]

Storage facility 3 [Nov 2017]

Storage facility 4 with jetty in front, and storage facility 5 next to jetty, western side [Nov 2017]

Recently, I attended a diabetes children camp as a young adult volunteer, SugarRush, in June and got a chance to try to FreeStyle Libre sensor. After much wait, the flash glucose monitoring sensor was finally approved and available in Singapore.

If you are residing in Singapore, you can order the sensors (and reader) from www.freestylelibre.com.sg

At the diabetes children camp, I got to try the sensor (reader included).

Inserting the Libre sensor.

Unfortunately, the sensor from Singapore does not work with the LibreLink app, which uses the phone’s NFC function to scan for readings. It requires the Singapore reader.

Reader for Singapore Libre sensors.

Sensor inserted and I am ready to use it.

This would be the third sensor I have tried, having gone through two sensors from my UK order. Alas, it seems that the flash glucose monitoring sensor don’t work well with me as the readings were constantly inaccurate.

Values from three devices (L to R): Pump with CGM, BG meter, Libre sensor.

The flash glucose sensor may not be suitable for me, but the glucose trend graph I get allows the user to have some information about how your food intake and daily activity can affect how your glucose trends.

Singapore’s FreeStyle Libre reader

This would be the third sensor I have tried, having gone through two sensors from my UK order. Alas, it seems that the flash glucose monitoring sensor don’t work well with me as the readings were constantly inaccurate.

Values from three devices (L to R): Pump with CGM, BG meter, Libre sensor.

The flash glucose sensor may not be suitable for me, but the glucose trend graph I get allows the user to have some information about how your food intake and daily activity can affect how your glucose trends. It will be worth a try to understand how your glucose levels reacts to the food you eat and the activities you are involved in daily.

Do remember that the sensor lasts for 14 days exact.

Actually, I deliberately planned my trip to San Diego for this:

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy much of ADA as I do not have a badge for the conference.
However, I managed to visit the exhibition hall with the help of a friend.

The exhibition hall was a huge area for catchups with exhibitors and other people. It was also the place to check out technological developments for consumers and the different organisations participating in the conference.

#2017ADA Diabetes Care, the new technologies are beinging. pic.twitter.com/n1IW1ewZsF

— Dr J. HERNANDEZ (@dr_sxmetabolico) June 11, 2017

With the short limited afternoon time I had in the exhibition hall, I could only walk through about a third of the booths. Even within this short walk, there are many interesting developments happening.

OneTouch (Johnson & Johnson Family of Diabetes Cos):

A new OneTouch product was displayed at the booth – OneTouch Via.
It is a thin, no tubing, on-demand insulin delivery system. There is a trigger mechanism by each side of the patch and each simultaneous click delivers 2 units of insulin. Pretty sleek and no hassle of dangling tubing. The only down side is that it only delivers exactly 2 unit of insulin per click, so sorry, no 1 or half units doses. Only even dose.

Medtronic:

After the clinical trials of the highly discussed 670G system by Medtronic, the insulin pump is officially in the U.S. market. Users of the 630G system will be priority to be upgraded. The 670G comes with an algorithm (when used with the Guardian 3 sensor) that detects glucose patterns of the user throughout the day and then automatically suspends and resumes, or adjust basal delivery accordingly. The display interface quite different as compared to the 630G/ 640G system with the coloured shield display.

Also available at the Medtronic booth is the improved i-port system for MDIs. The i-port Advance system comes with an integrated inserter (similar to their Mio infusion set) which makes inserting the i-port much easier. The product was launched in 2014 (no wonder I find the inserter familiar because we trial it at the children diabetes camp two years ago in Singapore).

NightScout (link)/ OpenAPS.com (link):

OpenAPS refers to Open Artificial Pancreas System. It provides a platform for communication and information for anyone with compatible medical devices who is willing to build their own basic artificial pancreas system. It is quite interesting to see the trend of somebody’s blood glucose on the computer’s screen. It not just show the recent trend, but it also shows the trend of the past 72 hours.

Other interesting new technology in the ADA conference includes new receiver from Dexcom and a soon to be launched device by Omnipod, as reported by diaTribe (Twitter: @diaTribeNews)

New Technology in the #2017ADA hall from @MDT_Diabetes (670G launched) new @myomnipod (Dash PDM, late ’17/early ’18) @dexcom (new receiver) pic.twitter.com/RmiLoNmxcL

— diaTribe (@diaTribeNews) June 10, 2017

We also dropped by booths of Tandem, Ascensia (Contour products), Dexcom.

On a sad note, I was invited to join in the informal farewell toast for Diabetes Hands Foundation (link) as they close their operations and gets absorbed by Beyond Type 1 (link) organisation.

Word in your hand. Love in our hearts. So long, @diabeteshf #2017ADA pic.twitter.com/GHwCQthXiL

— Melissa Lee, PWD (@sweetlyvoiced) June 11, 2017

The atmosphere was less of gloomy but more of a social meet up. I had the opportunity to meet with many people whom I have been wanting to meet face to face.

People/ Organisations met:

• Amy (DiabetesMine)
• Renza Scibilia (Diabetogenic)
• Manny Hernandez
• MySugr team (Scott, Frederick, Kyle)
• The FitBlog team
• Big Foot
• NightScout
• Terry Ackley (Diabetes Education & Camping, DECA)
• College Diabetes Network team

At the same time, it was great to catch up with some of my diabetes friends (Robert Brooks, Jen Hanson, Paul Madden, Mark Barone).

I wished I could stay longer and meet more people, but unfortunately I had other travel plans.

You can catch up with some happenings via Twitter using the hashtag #2017ADA.
There are lots of discussions and text sharing of presentation sessions.