For the island of Penang September is the
second wettest month of the year and it has been true to form with regular
rainfall punctuated by some quite hot days reminiscent of January and February.
This is the time of the year when we can be enveloped by smoke haze from
Indonesian forest fires. The rain however scrubs the atmosphere …..so we get
clear and rainy or fine and hazy.
Life in these months tends to gravitate
around the house and the immediate environment. Helen is training for some
upcoming running events while I have a daily session in the gym to get my
fitness level up. I enjoy my walk to the gym along the waterfront. Although the
waters are grey and greasy with a regular sprinkling of flotsam and jetsam
there is always something to see and connect with. I have not seen the Otters
for a while but there is a regular supply of Monitor Lizards of varying
dimensions. Little Herons sit poised to nab a small fish while Sandpipers
nervously twitch their tails and walk ceaselessly. Local fishermen set a net
parallel to the shoreline and were hauling in some large fish. These are Asian
Seabass that some enterprising advertisers called Barramundi in the 1980s in an
effort to sexy them up a bit to consumers.
In the weekend mornings I see a dragon boat
racing team training offshore as the floating Casino boat returns to base.
Helen is getting back into a full book of
students after various school holidays saw them scatter somewhat. Our in house
people greeter ushers them upstairs on each occasion.
It seems to be a month of physical activity as Helen and Dani independently train for runs ahead while I sweat in the gym.
During the month we have had regular sorties
to the pub quiz on Monday night at the Irish pub. We have registered a first,
second, third, forth and fifth. Further on the entertainment scene, together with some
friends we attended a concert by two German guitarists who live in the home of
the Beatles. The identical twins were very accomplished and played music from
the classics, throbbing Spanish to numbers from the Beatles and Queen,
including Bohemian Rhapsody http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqWMoB0ZVtg.
Our local ‘shopping centre’ is Straits Quay,
which is adjacent to an atmospheric marina that is mostly full to capacity.
Many of the shops and restaurants have regrettably failed and closed or moved
elsewhere. I guess since most businesses don’t succeed in the first two years
it is not surprising. I would question
the savage rent charged by E and O and the apparent lack of market research
potential business people fail to carry out. The problem with the centre is
that it is very quiet during the day and struggles to come to life on
weeknights. Two weekend nights of good business are not enough to sustain life
in a business. The gym has lost a lot of members since I was last a member.
There has been some new life with Sam’s Groceria opening and a large
Chinese-style Seafood restaurant also starting up. Sam’s, a Malaysian
enterprise, is like a large dairy….not as large as the supermarkets of Tesco’s
or Cold Storage but they have a delicatessen which seems very popular. The
great success story in the food line has been Healy Macs Irish pub that has
found the magic formula.
My field photography has not been very
active this month but the downtime has enabled me to sort old files and get
systems tidied up properly. My Sony point and shoot is with me most of the
time. I note that the northern migrants have begun arriving on the foreshore....with several Whimbrels with there curve-down bills now foraging along the waters edge.
I guess it is a form of flattery but I notice that some of my shots have appeared on various website....without any permission including Yahoo
I will end on a rather depressing note as today a study was released that said we have lost half of the world's wildlife in the last 40 years. While picturing our surroundings often as blue skies and fluffy clouds this is mostly the exception and not the rule. Sometimes all the plastic bottles seem to swim in a school and show us what a mess we have made of the oceans.
Click on any photo to enlarge them
