California Academy of Sciences..oooo

Kevin and I are not ashamed to be called nerds. We actually like museums, classical music, opera, etc. I also like the Malaysian classical cultural activities too, thought I should put that in before someone thinks I'm only into mat salleh stuff. :)

I think we both started to fall in love in one of Malaysia's nature center actually, the Malaysia Bird Park in Lake Gardens. He thought it was cute that I was so excited over the peacocks running around, and I was so glad he enjoyed learning about the animals even though we went in the middle of the day and he was wearing a velour long sleeve shirt, sweating like crazy.

Back to the present time, we decided to become members of the California Academy of Sciences. The building underwent a 10 year renovation for USD 500 million and re-opened its doors in 2008. I actually remembered when it was closed down in 1999 coz I went there as a student. They started again from scratch! Well, it's now a smart green building with a living roof! I don't mind going there to just admire the architecture.

Anyway, enough chit chat coz as you know, I don't have much time nowdays. I am actually making Nurilham's baby food myself! Friends who know me, totally knows I'm NOT a Martha Stewart kind. ha ha!

We arrived about 10 minutes before the doors opened coz we heard the crowd can be crazy.

This is bones of a T-Rex.

An albino alligator. It's alive, just don't move much to conserve energy.

Gar Fish. It's big! Maybe 3 feet long.

Phillipine coral tank with tropical fishes.

Nurilham is just fascinated by the fish zooming past her. She kept quiet during the whole trip until her nap time.

Rock fish lying on the stones just resting, too lazy to swim I guess. :)

OMG, this one scares me half to death. I saw it coming towards me and kept calm but then the size and scary look just makes me jump up. Kev thought it was very funny. It's one of the many species of giant catfish from the Amazon.

This is the Amazon flooded river (fresh water) exhibit and there's a tunnel for us to see. The fishes are HUGE! I don't think I can swim in a river again!! I have a fear of big fish.

Electric eel. (also can be found in rivers)

Anaconda - biggest snake in the world. I couldn't see it at first coz I was too close and thought it was part of the tree roots.

Aaah...now we go to cute animals like butterflies. :) They have a rainforest exhibition. It wasn't that humid but we were sweating at the end of the walk. There's three levels, the first one is the Borneo rainforest, second and third are from the Costa Rica and Amazon. It was my favorite exhibition by far. There were bats from Borneo (yay!) and there's this HUGE black frog (as you can probably tell by now, I'm fascinated by HUGE animals or scared like hell). But the butterflies are so sweet and they fly free with the birds around the compound. There's so many things to see there. Above is the butterfly feeder.

Miss Diva here gave me pose after pose when I took its picture.

Do you see the frogs? They look like crabs!

The rainforest exhibition starts from the Amazon Flooded River (underground) all the way to the top of the trees. They want to show that each level has a different ecosystem and animals.

Two of my most favourite people enjoying the exhibition. I hope Nurilham won't mind being a nerd too! :)