guyznewz: 2019

2019 opened as usual in Penang with the fireworks from Straits Quay.

The festival of Thaipusam early in the year has crowds and colour.

After a quite a few frustrations 2019 has marked a milestone in our lives. At the end of July we finally signed out on our house. No more non-communicating agents, no more feng shui excuses and no more ‘home invasions’. The ensuing four months have seen bumbling lawyers, slow civil servants and snail-paced action. As I type this we have not had an official hand-over date nor have we seen any money of significance. We have in the last week vacated the house, tossed out a lot of excess possessions and shifted to a rented apartment.
One thing is for certain I know what I want to do with all estate agents and particularly lawyers.

The environment around the house had changed a lot in 12 years......we think for the worse. A number of high-rise buildings now surrounded us and one monstrosity, not far away, was never on any plan we saw and we were the beneficiaries of a lot of building noise that went 6 days a week and 12 hours a day. There is also a planned highway not far away.

The image below shows the location of our house (yellow arrow). The only high-rise that was present is the building indicated by the blue arrow. The monstrosity (there are two towers) clad in blue is dubiously called 'City of Dreams'. The image above shows how close it is to townhouses on the estate. In the image below the three-towered conglomerate is called Santorini.......why?..... because they have painted it blue and white.

We owned the house for 12 plus years and lived in it for just over 8 years. It was a nice house. We encouraged nature around us and delighted at the sunbirds, fantails, orioles and bulbuls that visited regularly. The most recent visitor walking along the wall adjoining the neighbours was a Common Palm Civet. We had our daughters stay, many friends, and close relatives plus an assortment of guests when we were AirBnB hosts. We will miss our wildlife;

Our new accommodation is a 3000 sq ft apartment on the 21^st floor of a hillside tower. We have a gym and a swimming pool with a far-reaching view of the Straits of Malacca at the front and a hillside forest at the back.......there are two species of monkeys in the forest. From the balcony schools of fish can be seen and White-bellied Fish Eagles glide past the window. I have about 20 plants to tend to rather than 200 plus. I will also point out that these Straits are the hottest areas of sea piracy in our current world.

We invite you all to share with us in your travel plans.

The Queen herself passes by in the early evening.

Quantum of the Seas...... I believe for export of live sheep)

Helen has been the cornerstone of the Penang family as always and in the last few weeks has been great and worked really hard. She enjoys her reading, hill-walking and local history. We both enjoy the weekly pub quiz where our team have had another good year currently with 21 wins this year. Helen and Nikki enjoyed a gastronomic trip to Bangkok and a much-awaited trip to India in July. Most importantly Helen and I celebrated 30 years of marriage during the year.
I started the year with a Fitbit and lost significant weight. We both enjoy good health.

Helen and I are immensely proud of our two daughters. The girls have had a busy year. Nikki has been a house-surgeon in Lower Hutt hospital for most of the year but is now in Masterton hospital in a similar role. She is loving her chosen career.

Dani is also doing really well in her sports administration roles. She started a running group for women that has prospered and won her another award recently. She and Rob have just moved to a new rented house in Cambridge and plan to visit in the New Year.

Our third daughter is also doing well. Coco has a penchant for running on the beach each morning. As usual all the fishermen know her name and she collects friends everywhere. Helen and I are ‘the people who walk with Coco’. We spent many daybreak hours on a fishing beach that had many moods.

The old beach

Earlier in the year a waterspout came ashore on an adjacent beach.

There was even a face-off between the Otters and the stray dogs. You will never beat the otters in their domain.

Coco was briefly attacked by a stray dog on that beach and refused to go there again. We chose a smaller, quieter beach nearer the apartment where there are no strays but often two energetic Weimaraners brought to the beach by their Swiss owner. The little girl loves playing with her big brothers. It is so nice watching a little dog going flat out......because they are free to do and because they can.

The new beach

A short but relatively clean and wide beach at low tide.

When I came to Penang I was given 5 locations that were good for bird photography, sadly four and a half of these have gone. My main spot where I made well over 200 visits in 7 years was a disused motocross track on the mainland at Penanti. I have a large collection of images from there and became an expert on species of Bee-eaters, Kingfishers, parthenogenic lizards, poaching methods and the sleeping habits of policemen. It is now a big divided vegetable garden.

A composite of some of the many images taken at Penanti

Sundown on a remarkable species

The nesting grounds have been flattened and ploughed

My secondary location was at a ‘nature reserve’ not far from Penanti. It consisted of a scruffy mangrove forest remnant alongside a meandering river. There are two monkey species there, otters in the river, several owl species, several raptor species and many Asian Open-billed Storks. Early in the year I had monkeys cavorting in nearby trees and kingfisher pair looking for a nesting site and Spotted Wood Owls nesting in a tree hollow. Sadly the kingfishers gave up and monitor lizards ate the owls eggs.....twice and I was there both times it happened. Later in the year a severe storm knocked over many trees and damaged the walkway above the mangrove swamp.

Flameback Woodpecker pair

Long-tailed Macaques

Spectacled Leaf monkey

Asian Openbill storks

Yellow-bellied Prinia (always singing ihe morning)

Long-tailed Macaques

Stork-billed Kingfisher with supper

Spotted Wood Owl

Attacking the egg robber

Both attack at once

While Helen and Nikki were in India I had 9 days in the Cairns/Atherton Tableland area in Northern Queensland. It is my favourite location in Australia with its many diverse eco-systems. I hired a Jucy van with an upstairs boudoir and enjoyed by trip around the area. As usual I was after action and behaviour but missed the Victoria Riflebirds mating displays. While the rest of the country was toasting I had mornings with light rain.

Sacred Kingfisher

Rainbow Lorikeet

Blue-faced Honeyeater feeding on nectar.

......and feeding the chicks

I have sold half a dozen images to an agency during the year and was shortlisted in both the British NHM and Australian Wildlife photography competitions.i also constructed a new website. I was going to drop one but now have two. Site A and Site B.

Nikki spent some time here as well as several old friends (in both sense of the word). The highlight was the brief visit by my two dear sisters en route to a milestone birthday celebration for Alison in Vietnam. We did celebrate the birthday here and had a trip to the fishing market on the mainland.

An old salt

My old pharmacy mate John Grey also paid us a short visit and joined us in the quiz.

Helen and I both enjoyed some of the main games in the rugby world cup shown at the Irish or pseudo-Australian pub at Straits Quay. For both New Zealand and England there were important lessons in not playing your finals game before the final. It appears to me that NZ might have a bleak few years are players leave for overseas or have sabbaticals.

TV habits are changing and we dropped our subscription earlier in the year as some of our favourite programs were dropped. Australian MasterChef, all rugby games, lawn bowls and Netflix were all watched via streaming....no adverts no BS and viewing when you are ready.

Speaking of lawn bowls I have decided to take up the game again. I have located a carpet green on the mainland, about a 30minute drive from home. I have been practicing on the AstroTurf on the second floor of our house. Coco would prefer lighter and smaller objects to chase.