Oriental Pied Hornbill

This is the pair which I saw again last Sunday in Ubin.
I live for moments like this. Yes

From Buena Vista Social Club

From Buena Vista Social Club -

On the trunk of a tree
A young girl carved her name,
Overcome with happiness and joy,
And the tree,
Touched to the core
Let fall a flower for the girl
I am the tree.
So sad and moved
And you are the girl
Who hurt me so
I’ll always treasure your dear name,
But tell me
What became
Of my poor flower?


Since June, a whole host other things have filled in, so now one wonders whether if life in the past when you are focussed on one major thing is better or now when others things of equal importance all come swarming at once.

Kayaking

A quick post before i disappear for retreat at Changi. Went kayaking with the odacians yesterday and as usual one find out the limits of your strength and endurance in a short 2 hours out at sea. We started off quite happily, fine weather, amazing beautiful cloud formation where the sun was peering through the cloud's edge thus creating this amazing iridiscent rainbow that is circular. Moving in a loose diamond formation, we paddled our way towards kallang and back.

That was when the adventure began. I was happily capsized and surfaced without my spectacles. In trying to right the canoe, I foolishly turned it upright while it was still submerged. Lesson 1 which I forgot after so many years, never upright a over turned kayak. Drain the water first. So we rafted and tried to haul the water logged doubles up. The students could not do it, so I took my turn and heaved with every ounce of strength I could master. Only managed to get the bow up before the kayak I was sitting in started to submerge and take in water too. Had to let go of the boat and try again. This time Kenneth took his turn. He can't do it either.

So we had to re-arrange the seating arrangements. 2 odacians had to hang on the bow of the boat and be transported back suspended on the bow. I took a doubles while Kenneth hung on to the submerged kayak and the plan was to tow him and the kayak back to shore. Losing my specs was good, I have no idea we were really far out. I started paddling and every stroke used up every muscle on my upper body. After 20 hard strokes, I had to rest and pull on the water, dragon boat style. I think we just moved the boat by 50cm with all my exertions. Still I kept trying knowing that we have only 30 minutes of daylight left. While we are trying to move to shore, the other singles boat capsized. So we had to detach the submerged kayak and row over to help. Came into dange of capsizing my doubles while doing the rescue. In the end we changed arrangements again, now with myself and kenneth rowing the doubles towing the submerged boat. Rachel is now the towing it while holding on us. Even with both of us rowing, progress was really slow.

So it went, a doubles kayak half filled with water, towing a submerged kayak held on by rachel.

Daylight was fast going. Without specs I had trouble making out where the shore was. Every stroke was a struggle and I was gritting my teeth and just trying my very best to keep on going.

This was when help came. Siti arrived with a tow line and a pump. We quickly tried to recover the submerged kayak and this time round, it worked. Half the kayak was out of the surface and we franctically pumped water out of the bottom half of the kayak. Suddenly we had 2 doubles kayak and can tow in the spare singles. The feeling of rowing without resistance was really good. It was amazing I could row at all after all the hauling and straining.

Without the added weight, it took us 20 minutes to row our way back to shore. It was when the possiblity of being stuck there for the night hit on me. I was so glad that all of us made it safely back.

After cleaning up and returning the kayaks, we went to change. Found that I had trouble pulling up my shirt. The arms felt like lead after all the rowing. The last time I felt like this was 16 years ago during dragonboat training. Despite the ache, it was a good familiar feeling. Shows that I need to shape up more too, heh.


Thanks to all the odacians for helping us recover the canoe and pitching in to help. Hope to be able to come along for future canoeing sessions.

Ok, lets hope I am awake enough for the retreat.

Oriental Pied Hornbills

Update from ubin trip. We arrived mid morning and the first the thing I did was to cycle down the path where I sighted the hornbills.

Was really really lucky, just as I entered the path, the first hornbill glided down from a tree to my right and swopped across to the rambutan tree on the other side. It casually hopped from branch to branch, picking up rambutan fruits and have a nice morning feast. Just when I was grabbing my camera, two others glided across and joined the first hornbilll for breakfast. The birds did not seem to mind our presence and continued hopping from branch to branch searching for fruits. Eventually 2 left for the durian trees and fish tail palm further away from the path. And 5 minutes later the last hornbill joined them.

Went back and finally found the proper name for the hornbill in Prof Wee Yeow Chin's bird ecology study group Blog. Anthracoceros albirostris convexus. Apparently the original nucleus came from Johor in Malaysia and was since sighted in many areas including Kent Ridge and Bukit Timah. From my own experience, there is at least 6 of them in Pulau Ubin.

Chek Jawa was closed for maintanence, there was this big barrier erected over the cycling path with someone guarding it. So we detoured and went to the beach south of it. This small stretch of sand was covered with a layer of Ulva and lots and lots of litter. A friend commented that we should organise cleanups for these beaches and I said we are. Once a year the International Coastal Cleanup group gets everyone together for a massive beach cleanup and data collection.

On the way back to the jetty, met grace and blue water volunteers getting people for a Chek Jawa beach cleanup. Happily pointed that to my friend. Yes, in small urban Singapore, we have people who devote their time to keep whatever nature we have in good condition.

Good day this is. Photos of hornbill soon.

Ubin

Nothing noteworthy to blog about so far. Been caught up with overseas learning and work in school. Not much photos also. Perhaps this is how I am adjusting after slogging at my dissertation for 1 year. The mind just wants to relax a little. Time to start gearing up again, still quite a number of things I need to clear.

For today, will be doing a little informal guiding for my friends at Ubin. Hopefully some nice photos will come.

Ninki Nanka

A dragon like creature is believed to exist in the swamps of Gambia. 50 meters long by 1 meter wide, with a face resembing a chinese dragon, it is said to inflict death on eye witnesses. A team of dragon hunters from UK is currently launching an expedition in search of it.

This is different from discovering news species of mammals. For undiscovered animals of this size, I'll put my money in the ocean's fathoms.

Coffee

Chinese orhcestra concert yesterday was superb. Nice flowing melodies, grand resounding crescendos; makes one yearn for a nice cup of oolong and maybe breath of fresh air.

Need coffee badly. Week has been intense with long hours.

Shall go get my fix now.

Impermanance

Reading about relics left by past civilisations, which has collasped and died out due to environmental damage which leads to shortage of resources and food eventually leading to declining living standards and starvation or war. Jared Diamond did a really impressive synthesis by compiling data from the Polynesians, Mayans, Anasanzis and even presented case studies of modren day studies in his recent book, Collapse, how societies choose to fail or succeed.

Archeologists found out alot about these past through carbon dating of architecture, palynology, looking at pottery and other remnants of civilisation left behind. These relics survived several thousand years of change and surfaced again to offer us a glimpse of what life was like then.

What do we have?

Terabytes of infromation, pictures, art pieces, all converted into binary which were stored in servers which can one day crash and just become a piece of meaningless metal and plastic. Increasingly our information is in a 'disposable' form. We can simply erase days of with a click of a button. We store our writings onto servers. Our clothing are meant to last only a few years, I need to mention our shoes.

Most valuable items now are insured with hefty sums of money. What insurance do we have for our history? What happens when our era comes to a past? How will we be judged and assessed? Or will we have nothing at all? Just rusting pieces of metal of a civilisation which vanished into thin air and left no records of their language and culture. Or even more interestingly, we might be evaluated on the relics we preserved. So scientists may be puzzling over how we can create such sophisticated machines like air planes but only use rudimentary symbols to communicate.

That will be interesting.

Intense

Today was intense, 4 blocks of assessment plus another hour of discussion about research projects. Then had to complete 3 reports in between breaks.

Only time I could breathe was a ten minute lapse before the last lesson. Plugged into itunes and chose a song, closed my eyes and drifted away. A space of your own can be found anywhere.

Tioman is confirmed. 4 days of bliss awaits. Small group, no fuss, will just have a nice trek, hunt for Rafflesia and chill out under the rock pool.

I can't wait.

New battery

Macbook's battery died on Tuesday during an important presentation about overseas learning. So while my friend is holding fort answering queries, I ran back for my power cord to revive my mac. Fortunately the presentation went smoothly after. But I had to send my mac in to check what's wrong and ended up without a computer for 2 days.

It was strangely liberating, not sitting in front of the computer screen at night. You really detach yourself from work and luxuriate in this space by yourself. Work can wait. But still glad to have my mac back, Ishop was vry fast. Replaced my faulty battery within a day. So now life goes back to normal. So now I know why I was advised to stay offline during the hols. Good advice.

Discovery Team Tour de France 2006

Tour De France happened quietly admist the hustle and bustle of World Cup. The French teamselves were probably more worried about the coming France semi finals match. So there will be more soccer jersey than yellow jerseys around.

This Tour de France is special. Its the first after seven years without Lance Armstrong. I am rooting for Discovery's George Hincapie. The quiet and industrious partner who helped Lance Armstrong to many Tour de France titles. Allez Hincanpie.

Finding your way home, Ant style

How do we navigate from one point to another? Age old method - direction and distance. You check your direction and bearings either using landmarks or compass and estimate the distance using maps or plain simple pacing. Navigation in the jungle during my navigation exercises consist studying the compass studiously and praying that my mind did not wander off when I was studiously counting my pacing.

Now with GPS, the rules of navigation has indeed changed.

How do ants navigate from one point to another? By chemical trails, but when chemical trails are not effective, for example when you are a desert ant, you have to rely on other methods. What other methods? Simple, by bearing and pacing too.

We know that ants can use the Sun for navigation. But as we know in navigation, this is only half the story, ants still need to know that they have travelled far enough to reach home.

It turned out that desert ants, Cataglyphis sp. have very accurate pedometers. How can scientists prove that? Wittlinger et al did, by lengthening the legs of the ants using bristles glued to the ants legs. Those with longer legs went past their nests on the way back. Simple and elegant experiment.

For more read:
Wittlinger, M., Wehner,R. and Wolf, H. 2006. The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps Science 312 (5782): 1844

Ants find their way home using pedometers The Economist

Nursery is finally taking shape

After thesis, another thing which I have been worrying is the state of the nursery. Many of the seedlings have spent to about 11 months cramped in bottles lacking in proper drainage and compacted soil. They need transplanting. The nursery also badly needed cleaning up, something which is difficult just by myself.

So I am very glad for the new team of students who so enthusiatically signed up for the reforestation project and turned up this shady Saturday morning and proceeded to transplant over 40 seedlings into proper planting bags. Not minding having soil and mud on their shoes and uniform, they caught slugs, picked up litter, cleared away old containers and swept up the dead leaves, leaving in their wake all the plants merrily transplanted and a sparkling clean nursery. So despite recovering from fever, it was a really good Saturday morning spent.

Lets hope this team will continue their good attitude. There is still along way to go.