My first virgin guide!

Today is my first guiding experience at Pulau Semakau! The nerves were overwhelming and spent the previous night thinking of how to be a good guide and how to interact and updating my little "bible" scripts on what to say.

We were tasked to guide the NUS High Sch students and I had 8 participants with me, 7 students and one teacher.

@ Semakau, fully equipped hunter seeker, Helen and her red flags and containers. (As suggested by Ron, dun be misleaded to associate this picture with my title ok? Diaoz. Faintz)

My group, the seahorses exploring the intertidal critters.

The ocellatus sea cucumber, one of the many sea cucumbers we saw today.

One of the lucky days cos we saw not one but two noble volutes laying eggs!

A small upsidedown jellyfish at the top. It is upsidedown for a reason, becos there are symbiotic algae at its tentacles that can photosynthesize for it. And below, a heart cockle, the symbol of love.

The tide finally falls fully when the sun is setting and we were in a hurry to finish the walk before night falls, since alot of the participants din have torchlights.

And the semakau icon, the knobbly seastar and the traditional group photo with it.

Back to the jetty, July proudly showed me his love bites from female mosquitoes, that love him so much that they even bite through his clothing. haa...

Din take as many pictures as I will have normally, since I tried to be more focused on guiding. Sorry for not writing more on today, cos I still have a test to prepare for. And hey, its a pretty enjoyable and satisfying guiding session for me, largely becos of my enthusiastic bunch of participants. Thanx for making my day! Hope can see u all at other trips.

Group seahorse filling up the feedback form

And lastly I was graced by a group photo with the seahorses.

Can't wait to do more guiding now, heh.

More on group
Octopus on July's Discovery blog
Clownfish on Juan's ashira blog
Nudibranch on Ron's Tidechaser blog

Samson's MantaMola blog
JC's above and under sea

A different perspective from participants
Lynn