Davao City wanderings November 7, 2009
Posted by Macy in animals, photos.Tags: davao city, philippine eagle, philippines, Pithecophaga jeffreyi
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Went to Davao City last October 21-25, 2009 for the 10th Philippine Association of Marine Science Conference. Since the conference proper was on Oct 22-24, we decided to arrive a day early in order to explore the city. This was taken in the Philippine Eagle Center:
Meet Pag-asa. He was the first chick born in the center. He’s now 17 years old and still going strong. Thank you very much to Tatit (Communications and Fund-raising specialist for the Philippine Eagle Foundation) for the great tour 
A more coherent post when I get my thoughts in order! ^-^
yay more writing :D September 18, 2009
Posted by Macy in awesomeness, photos, travel writing.Tags: contest, el nido, travel writing, website
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I entered the Philstar.com “I Love Philippines” Year 2 contest last August. They asked people to submit stories about best Philippine travel experiences in the form of websites, photos, songs, or videos created using Apple’s iLife ‘09 software. The grand prize? A 13″ MacBook Pro. As someone who’s been dreaming of a Mac for some time now but never had the funds, how could I pass this up?
My project: a website featuring my almost 2-year stay in the paradise known as El Nido, Palawan created using iWeb ‘09. I didn’t win the MacBook *sob* (but the winning video really was kick-ass and deserved to win) but my entry was among the top 4-10 entries (they never mentioned my exact standing) so I got the 3rd generation iPod shuffle. It’s so tiny!
Screenshots after the jump!
finally! some breathing room. August 26, 2009
Posted by Macy in animals, grad school.Tags: cool trivia, going insane, grad school
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Yesterday’s discussion in my Marine Ecology class on order and patterns in nature was fun. We got to reproductive patterns and everyone started contributing anecdotes 
From Pat: young dolphins group into all-female and all-male pods. Once they hit puberty, they (meaning female-female and male-male) practice having sex with each other so that they know what to do once the two pods merge for the real thing.
From Ella: before a male cockroach mounts the female, he scoops out the sperm of the last male to make sure that the female’s eggs are fertilized by his sperm
From me: crabs do that too
From Fleur: after copulation, male rats plug up the female’s vagina to make sure that other males don’t interfere.
Dr. Yap’s comment? “You guys sure know a lot about sex!” LOLOLOLOL.
The discussion on order: Dr. Yap told us about a study Dr. Saloma (the CS Dean), his wife (a molecular biologist), and a group of graduate students did on rats and complex systems. When they induced panic in rats, the rats actually got more organized when there were fewer exits. When there were 3 exits, the rats moved about chaotically. But when there was only 1 exit, they actually lined up and exited without any fuss. Huh. If that happened to a group of people, instead of order, there would be a pile of dead bodies blocking the exit.
