Abalone, no baloney!

Hello!! How's everyone doing? :D The weather here is quite nice now, it's cooling down (into autumn already) and the maple trees are beginning to shed their lovely crunchy brown leaves...mmm... :) And i realised autumn is not only my fav season but it makes me think alot. Haha i dunno, there's something very lyrical and thought-provoking about autumn scenery and falling/fallen leaves.

Anyways woohoo! On wednesday we dissected abalones! Yep, no baloney - ABALONES!!

Note: the abalones were already dead when we dissected them, so don't worry they didnt feel any pain...

This is an abalone with its shell on:

This is its side:

This is its front (see the dark brown head like a snail head?)

You cut out the shell...

And ta-da! Hello abalone!:

Lynnette & I performing surgery on the abalone:

Well and wha'dya know? You can tell apart a boy abalone and a girl abalone! On the left we have Mr. Abalone with cream-coloured reproductive tissue and on the right we have Mrs. Abalone with the prettier (of course) blue-green one:

Haha yea so u know how we singaporeans are quite deprived and only eat abalone on special occasions, and even then it's CANNED abalone. YA so i never knew how FRESH abalone tasted...until wednesday! Our awesome invertebrate zoology lecturer Jane cooked up some of the live abalones in the tank and we got to eat them! Ahaha we broke lab rule #1 that day - No eating or drinking in the laboratory. But wow fresh abalone is really good! Like it's so different from the canned ones I dont think i could ever eat the canned ones in the same way again. Canned abalone tastes like chewy canned button mushrooms. Fresh abalone tastes like...what abalone should taste like. A shellfish. Haha. Btw the part of the abalone we humans eat are the FOOT and the SHELL MUSCLE. hehe.

Jane serves up a welcome treat (especially for hungry Lynnette who doesn't eat lunch on wednesdays, and for bao-yu deprived people like me and Brian) HAHA you can see the microscope in the picture! Evidence of lab rule breaking:

Yeaaaaa what a refreshing week, somehow...even though it was my busiest week yet. Gotta praise God for His strength and joy and also for the many people who were keeping me in prayer this week. Only thing :( was i lost my thumbdrive this week :( BUT it's ok...will get another one and ya most of my files i managed to retrieve so *phew*...

Tomorrow i'm going STAIR-CLIMBING with shuying!! YAY :)