educational: the collective noun for jellyfish is smack. this i learnt while babysitting today. but what is the provenance of "smack" though. i don't consider ariel's library book about sea creatures a good enough authority. dites-moi.

and while on the subject of watery depths, on the homely name of the threadfin, von says:

it's an ikan kurau lah -- honestly.

(notice how he is always rude to me when i ask a perfectly simple question. somewhere in the distant past, there is an email from von saying that for a mean person, he's quite nice to me, and for a nice person, i'm quite mean to him. i ask you, is it not the other way round?)