The heart of MacRitchie...

After the initial rains, I've finally surveyed a total of 12 sites around MacRitchie reservoir and even finding time to take a walk along the canopy bridge. Guess what I found sleeping in the hollow of a dead tree...


Collared scops owl (Otus bakkamoena)

...during noon time! It seemed totally unaffected by the blazing sun beating down on everything. If only I had this owl's capability to sleep right through everything during NS...

Right now, I'm dead tired from all that walking, bashing and tree-hugging. Need rest, before heading to Upper Mandai forest, somewhere between Seletar and Upper Peirce reservoirs, with 12 more sites. Getting the GPS readings for the actual sites were tough, with all that canopy cover. So much for modern technology, stumbled by simple cloud and tree cover...

Things will start to get hairy from tomorrow and over the next 4 months as I begin the much-awaited field study component of the grad project. Enough of pilot studies, recce trips and background study, this is the REAL thing/deal/mccoy, whatever... Tramping around the Central Catchment Area is fun but not exactly a conventional way of spending hot and balmy days although it's much better than doing that during the northeast monsoon season when daily rainfall can go up to 2 metres in a single day...

Well, I hope to cover 12 study sites around the MacRitchie drainage area during daylight hours tomorrow, followed by 8 sites along Pierce Track the following day and rounding things off with 6 more sites west of Upper Seletar Reservoir on Thursday. Phew... just thinking about them makes me sweat. Now if I can only remember to take the relevant equipment along. For anyone who happens to read this and think that I'm rambling on due to high fever, no, this is really what I do as a routine. There are forests and wildlife to be found in Singapore if you go off the beaten path. There are other things besides the stock exchange, orchard road and the nicely manicured Botanic Gardens...

I'm thinking of starting a guided tour of the Central Catchment Area on a regular basis. Some teachers whom I've spoken to have expressed interest and even friends like CK have been asking. Think it'll be ok with friends but it gets a bit touchy with school groups, what with the litigation-oriented attitude of parents nowadays, think "I'll sue you for allowing the mosquito to bite my boy-boy's arm", hope you get the drift...

Remind me to take lots of pictures of my walks. Will post them up as and when I get cleaned up after the trips...

of instant noodles, sunny side-ups & boiled water...

You know, they say a man's not a man until he does "something great". I never understood that until recently when I had the chance to cook for G. In a momentary lapse of her usual lucidity and logic, she allowed me full rein of the kitchen (with apron courtesy of junk food supplier alternate choice provider and target of Morgan Spurlock's contempt). The "something great" was definitely NOT whipping up a gourmet storm (much as I had hoped to...) but in persuading G to actually taste my misguided creation.



Oh what horrors a determined deluded man can conjure up! Especially using an old wok, a broken egg-beater & a microwave oven with a non-functioning LCD screen...

Easter morning...

Just did my first ever duty as a church usher last night. Mostly boring stuff, handing out the bulletin at the door although I did try my best to get face cramps with all that smiling :-) Oh yeah, got to handle the collection, too, as I had to escort the week's offering up to a safe and secret location *heh*. All I can say is that, it was heavy.

Meanwhile, M&J showed up at church, too, with J having labour contractions every 5 minutes. Living life on the edge *shudder*. Anyway, they had to rush to the hospital halfway through the church service. Just received a text message from M that their new baby daughter, O, was delivered safely at 9.15am just. Congrats *clap clap*

Looks like I'll be following in their footsteps with wifey come this Advent...

of babies, parties & life...

This is Baby at 3 weeks old...



...and this is Jamie (right) and friend at many weeks older...



We had a party yesterday and there were more kids than monkeys adults. Too bad I didn't manage to get a snapshot of the whole bunch except for the gang here with some feeding material...


Left (Clockwise from left):CK, CQ, M & J in motion. Right: N guarding the feeding ground.

It was fun watching the whole range of personality traits displayed by the little ones. They're reflections of their parents'. I wonder how mine will turn out. You know, it felt funny when CK asked me what my fears were (about bringing up baby) and I replied it was over education. He probably took it to mean the financial cost of it all but I was thinking along the lines of how inadequate the state-of-affair is in local public schools (bug me over this, I have lots to say about MOE).

Having Baby around is the biggest unknown I'm going to face (and probably the longest at 18+ years duration), anyway, to be really honest, for the first time, I'm probably NOT afraid of an unknown. Maybe it's because the knowledge that everything is in God's hands, especially bringing up Baby. Perhaps this is the humbling experience that I've been searching all my life. For many years now I've had an inkling that nothing else is worth searching for except Humility. Perhaps being humble is the key to the real things in life. Reminds me of The Little Prince, "...It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye..." How right you are, little Fox... This is going to be out of my (and G's) hands.

Just found out that S blogs, too. Visit her site for more pictures of cute little Jamie who, I think, is growing up to be a person with really deep thoughts...

lovely wife...

my lovely G, without whom I might never know what it is to give without reservation...

The haze...

Woke up this morning to the smell of burnt wood...


8.45am this morning...


later at 2pm.

...and getting rather tired of it happening every day. I don't really need this view...

...out of my home window every morning.

My conspiracy theory friend says that they're burning large tracts of inland forest in Sumatra to house the victims of the Dec 26 tsunami. Like they say, there's no smoke without fire...

Spider lab girls, hard at work...

Quick, the funnel web's missing...

of architects...

Condolences to the family & friends of Kenzo Tange, one of a very short list of truly great post-war designers. Looking through his (and his associates') body-of-works, I was surprised to find that not only was he responsible for Singapore's characteristic skyline...


(source: http://www.ktaweb.com/works/image/uob/uob01.jpg)

...(minus The Monstrous Durian Esplanade), other works include the Nanyang Technological Institute, UE Square and the Singapore Indoor Staidum. Looks like 1984-ville could be nicknamed Tange-san-ville too!

Probing deeper, I suspect the intimate link between Tange-san and 1984-ville could be traced to a more personal tie between him and another architect of sorts, although many would dispute my calling the latter that. In this age where it's almost hip to spout anti-establishment slogans, LKY still deserves his reputation as the architect of post-colonial 1984-ville. Think about it, he brought in Tange-san during the 1970s and flipping through the papers today, it looks like Singapore's landscape would be changing on a large scale again with the damming of the Marina Basin, which was his idea.


(source: http://www.ps21.gov.sg/challenge/2004_12/hot/hot.html)

There is recommendation from the man that the Jurong West area would be modified, too (info source: The Straits Times, 23 March 2005 headline article). Not many know that the 10-year clean-up of the Singapore River was ordered by LKY.

Sometimes I wonder how much of post-colonial Singapore is the vision of one man.

1984-ville indeed...*shudder*...

Film art...

oh yeah, don't forget to check out the film fest screenings, lots of good stuff this year, especially Asian films. On a lighter note, also check out this local production...something you'll never see on local public TV channels, which pride themselves on screening propaganda higher-value stuff...

Lamp posts...

Every now & then I get lost in life and have to find the lamp post...



Probably more things have happened to me over the past few days compared to any other point in my life, especially finding out that I'll become a dad in December. Wow...

Depending on who I hang out with, the reactions range from congratulatory to the usual shaking of heads followed by comments about loss of freedom. After going through an almost screwed up dysfunctional childhood the big challenge ahead is not to repeat mistakes which my abusers care-givers made.

Thankfully G is more than a help meet. She understands children like no other and in a culture that instils fear of having children (I'm sure there's a word for it like "paedophobic" but that would sound rather perverse given the meaning of the opposite) she seems to have them charmed like the Pied Piper. We should give more respect and material rewards to all the overworked and underpaid childcare workers in 1984-ville. The current state-of-affairs is a crying shame and damning indictment on societal values. Maybe we should all stake our money on the success of a casiNO.

of Bach and scientific inspirations...

You know, they say listening to Bach's music supposedly improves brain function. Well, here I am, sitting in front of the PC wasting my life away working on my grad project, which is due end of this year, and plugged into this really cool album of Bach recorded by Yo-Yo Ma. This guy's playing is a genius. Anyway, back to the above hypothesis about Bach's music and brains, after listening and working on my research simultaneously, I've decided that the hypothesis cannot be proven now because of a lack of research material, i.e. a brain...

Back to data entry and more number crunching...

The roundabout way of scratching one's nose...

so now Big Brother's gonna set up a centre for people who will be ruined as a result of patronising the "still-undecided-if-it'll-be-built" casino. the media proudly reports the different ways which Big Bro will help the average Joe overcome problems created when if the casino's built...

whatever happened to the old adage An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure...

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ok, enough of this shit ......