May 2018

May has been a diverse but wet month. Locally a political tsunami took place early in the month when a coalition led by a 92 year-old ex-Prime-minister beat the party that has ruled Malaysia for 62 years. The public were somewhat annoyed by the ex-PM seemingly stealing over 4 billion $ from a public fund. The common folk also objected to GST which has now been eliminated but has left a huge hole in the budget. The Chief Executive Minister of Penang is now the Federal Government’s minister of finance……which should be good for Penang. The ex-PM’s wife, by all accounts as avaricious at Imelda Marcos, has had a zillion designer bags confiscated in police raids along with suitcases full of jewelry and cash. She and her husband complained that the police took some chocolates from their fridge!!!

Pakatan Harapan

The Manchester United team.....oops I mean the Malaysia United team did not do too well

 Here is a map of the voting distribution and the seats in Parliament. Pakatan Harapan...the light blue good guys have been sort of in charge of Penang for a while now as the DAP party which formed an alliance to  be part of PH and win overall power. The old Government, the BN party are in dark blue. Even their extensive gerrymandering and  blatant bribery did not work. The Green colour is the Muslim Party and the yellow fragments in Sarawak and Sabah.

More importantly May saw Nikki’s and Helen’s respective birthdays.

On the home front we have had a handful of folk look through our house. There is some evidence that people were holding back in the lead-up to the election. One wife was interested in the house but the husband did not like living near Indians and middle Eastern people. I have not seen anyone answering the latter description.

While we wait the Fantails are happy to come and swim and dance.

May should be a month at the sharp end for action with the local fauna. It has been up there with the action but the weather also has an input on various missions.

The temple Bee-eaters have been in full swing feeding their broods in the plastic pipes. It is a big and very active colony. I was delighted to record the forcible extraction of one dominant chick who was hogging all the incoming food at the expense of its siblings.

 

The extraction of the chick that took 0.6 seconds

Elsewhere I have got closer to the Kingfishers at Penanti. It was a different pair from previous years and they were rather camera shy. I thought stray dogs had destroyed their nest hole but was extremely pleased to see three young chicks that had fledged and were being fed by the parents. Three weeks later the chicks were still shadowing the parents….who seem a bit annoyed sometimes at the close attention.

The kids

 

Dad's dilemma...small bug and two hungry chicks

Go away and stop annoying me

Sometimes the parents have a sneaky meal without the chicks seeing them.

The Blue-tailed Bee-eaters have arrived to do their nesting but do not seem to be in a roaring hurry.

Overseas Dani has been busy running another marathon in Edinburgh where boyfriend Rob was also subjected to the Gerry-test.

Nikki is currently doing her training in Masterton and is staying with friends Gary and Di……they helped celebrate her birthday.

On our pub quiz front my records show we have had one win, two thirds and one 4th during May.

On the indoor construction front, I have been making bread for about 3-4 years now but it constantly needs tweaking to get consistency. One of the hardest parts is to get it cleanly out of the tins. Most home bakers do not have the ability to cut the bread evenly.....I have seen some real doorstops. I made up a simple cutting device that cuts evenly. We make up two loaves, cut them and freeze it for later use. We are not big bread eaters having a sandwich each for lunch. I only use the bread machine to mix the dough and do the first rise. They are hopeless at baking unless the element is on the top.