June 2013

June 2013 seemed to be a month  that was challenged by natural and made-made disasters. In New Zealand with winter around the corner a super-cold cell with storms settled over parts of the country and at least temporarily thwarted Nikki’s attempts to take delivery of Craig’s car.  Singapore last week experienced some of the worst levels of smoke haze……compliments of forest burning in Indonesia. This being a sad indictment of corruption linked  to primitive land use by thousands of poverty-stricken peasants and their families; a situation and a solution that seem light years apart. 

Smoke from Forest burning in Indonesia

In Penang the ramp on the new island-linking bridge collapsed and killed several motorists. 

A week or so later a violet storm knocked over many trees and pushed over billboards.  Unfortunately a large section of a building fell into the street and pushed a car forty metres into the earth. Only parts of the car have been recovered. A video showing the car being hit can be seen here

Helen and I were going to a function soon after the storm and drove past many fallen trees and a carpet of green on the roads. The Botanic Gardens remains closed. Fortunately Penang is not currently subject to smoke haze that has reached Kuala Lumpur. It has happened here briefly since we arrived 22 months ago.

Other than local disasters June seems to be a month for travel. Craig and Eve are in Mexico, David and Lyn in a boat off Alaska and others due to head home or off to South America

Dani has finished her second year in Cambridge with good results. The next year she will be in Spain as part of her studies and she will return to Cambridge for a final year. After the frenetic exam period the students have loosened up with the ball season. She and her boyfriend Jack  arrive in Penang for a well-earned break.

Nikki continues her medical studies and has just had a two-week break part of which she spend in an old-folks home as part of her field-work. She and her friends have started a small business featuring colourful sweets (lollies) as an adjunct to various functions.

Helen continues teaching English to some Japanese women. The number of students continues to expand. She also has an involvement with the Botanic gardens and the International Womens Association where she is a board member.  We were able to slip off for a few days this month to Fraser’s Hill where Helen explored some of the hill-trails. The accommodation is rather limited and we had some problems with mal-functioning toilets. We did investigate one location for any future visits. Helen and I also had our 24th wedding anniversary mid-month.

Coco continues to keep us amused and on our toes. She is a lovable little dog but also likes a fight and a game before bedtime…where she is determined not to let me on the bed.

 We have had several visitors this month in our home as participants in the Airbnb accommodation program. It would be more correct to say we have had one person twice with a mostly different retinue each time.
On the photographic front things continued to be enjoyable and varied. The Blue-throated Bee-eaters are in their final nesting stages and an army of helpers in bringing insects to the nests to feed the young……sometimes they play with the food.

I have also investigated other locations around mainland Penang for shooting opportunities.

Bund at Air Itam Dalam

Look-out tower at Air Itam Dalam

Green-Billed Malkoha

 Shortly before the storm hit I was in the Penang Botanical Gardens checking out a fruiting tree. 

Asian Fairy Bluebird (male)

Thick-billed green Pigeon (male)

One supply truck had it’s own mini-disaster when the breaks failed coming down the hill…the driver may or may not be grateful that Botanic Gardens have trees.

As mentioned Helen and I had three nights at Fraser’s Hill. The variety of birds seemed to be lacking this trip but I was happy with a few shots of some of the more regularly seen species.

Magpie Robin (male)

A pair of Silver-eared Mesias

 It was quiet on the hill even though the traffic police recruits chose to make it a venue for an ‘away’ day.

Several of my images have been chosen as ‘Editor’s Pick’ on the Naturescapes site. Another was used in a gameshow on English TV.

The following is the email concerning the game show;

Hi Graeme,

Many thanks for getting back in touch.

I am working on a new comedy gameshow called "Was It Something I Said?" for Channel 4 in the UK. We would like to do a round where we show contestants Instagram pictures and we ask them to try and guess the hashtag that links them all.

Your photo was posted on Instagram with the caption: Talk about a serious #trafficjam. I dare you to get out of the car with your #roadrage and see what's causing the back up

On the show we show the contestants 3 pictures posted on social media with their captions, but with a hashtag blocked out. They have to try and guess what the hashtag is that links them all.

We are also doing a live play along on Twitter, are you happy for us to use your picture in this context also?

Thanks so much,

Conor 

.....and to sign the month off ...a tribute to Guygirlz whether temporary or permanent and from 1 to 90

Take care

Graeme

May 2013

Last months report started with Bee-eaters in the sunrise. This month we start with the call of the Kingfisher. Shooting actually seemed very quiet after all the action of the Kingfisher nesting last month.
There seemed to be a lot of preparation for the Print Exhibition at the G-Hotel through May and June. There was the selection of suitable prints, getting them printed and matted and devising a way to hang them for two months. I printed them myself on my Epson R3000 printer. This is an excellent professional-type printer but the ink costs an arm and a leg and you cannot be too experimental with printing variations.  I have a small Epson agency in George Town I get ink and paper…….and that is like extracting teeth at times. Twice I have had to enlist Helen’s friends from Singapore to bring printing paper when they come for book group. Currently with a month to run the prints are still hanging.

The opening of the exhibition was on the 8^th of May. Helen was busy enlisting friends she has met and we had 30-40 at the opening which went well. So far three prints have been sold with several more sales promised. The gallery is on an internal link bridge joining parts of the hotel above the hotel lobby. It does not have a high traffic volume and the light is not the best as there with bright light coming from behind the boards the prints are on. Two newspapers covered the opening and have printed reports since then (not the best photo ever).

At the time of writing seven prints have been sold and I am running around trying to hang replacements.

We have had three birthday girls during the month, first Nikki then Helen and then Coco. Helen and I went celebrate with two friends to a restaurant at Batu Ferringhi on her birthday. It was a very nice evening and an excellent restaurant with great ambience.

The week before Helen’s birthday Nick Baker, Jeevi and I spent three days at the Merapoh entrance to Taman Negara. Taman Negara is a large park in the centre of peninsular Malaysia encompassing an ancient rainforest. There are four entrances and this is the second one we have visited. It took about 5 hours drive from Penang to get to Merapoh. (the location in relation to Penang is shown on the map)

The route goes along south along the main highway to Ipoh then inland and upwards to Cameron Highlands. The forest covered hills are rudely interrupted by the vegetable and flower growing activities in Cameron Highlands. We were at the back of the tourist centre but I was appalled at the sprawling desecration that this industry has wrought to this once-beautiful forested highland region.

 Masses of plastic hot houses occupy every portion of flattened areas where once proud hills have been flattened. No attempt has been made to blend in these carbuncles and litter is often thrown down the hills. It was like a glimpse of hell in the middle of an arboreal heaven and it is mostly illegal. Recent video can be seen here. A part of the scarring of the jungle can be seen below

The location of the park we were staying was far more pleasant with a pleasant rural panorama with inverted U-shaped limestone hills. The camp was well-maintained and served as a teaching centre for nature guides. There was a group of around 20 were on a course…..which despite the forest environment was spent mainly in the classroom. Our rooms were spacious but like many things in Malaysia not well maintained. Several lights did not work in my room while Nick had a mischievous air-con and a hand basin in the room than sometimes decided to dispense the liquid into the room rather than down the pipes. There were no cooking facilities and the nearest food outlet was 7 km away. I had cooking equipment and food for breakfast and lunch and we went out in the evening for dinner. One evening a lightning strike wiped out a substation and we had an interesting dinner by candlelight.

Nick was equipped to set-up camera traps for mammals and my main target was to lure in the Garnet Pitta by sound and stealth. Neither of us had much success. Rain at night ruined most of Nick’s baiting attempts and the Pittas did not seem to be in the vicinity. These negatives aside this was a nice experience of the sights and sounds of the rainforest. Nature photography is always difficult in this environment with so many places for potential subjects to hide. The misty mornings were alive with the plaintive sounds of the Siamang calling, The Great Argus were loudly calling fairly near camp and we saw a number of fruiting trees that were being stripped by several varieties of squirrels and the fruit-seeking feathered friends. Collectively we sighted Palm Civets, a Leopard Cat, Siamang, leaf Monkeys, Long-tailed Macaques, the surly Pig-tailed Macaques, a number of Wild Boar, Sambar deer, Yellow-throated Martens and an interesting Otter. We could hear the Black Hornbills calling and on two mornings we had a fly-over of a pair of Rhinoceros Hornbills that attacked a fruiting tree and then went into a higher tree to feed each other.

One day we paid for a ride to a learning station at the end of a 10km sealed road. We stayed there for three hours and were picked up again as the day heated up. It was a delightful place with the river on two sides of a triangle. There is another lookout along the way where you can stay the night. There are tigers, tapirs and elephants in the park but they are all infrequently seen.

Other than the exhibition it has been a good month photographically. Here is the cover of the catalog of the recent Australian Photographic Society digital competition. 

I also won a medal and two honors at another Australian National exhibition and the photography of the month in the nature Photographic Society of Singapore.

I had several photobooks printed in New Zealand at the end of last year. The company asked me if they could enter one of my books for the annual national printing awards. They were elated that the images and how they printed them won a number of awards. I have also been contacted by an American photo agency to provide images that they could potentially distribute images to newspapers and magazine globally.

I also had a image selected in Naturescapes as an Editor's choice..............................

.....and another one selected a Picture of the Month (April) on the NPS site.

On the Homestay front we had a group from Hong Kong in the middle of the month for 2 nights. They consisted of a youngish lady and her mother and aunt and her husband…..plus a driver………… 5 people for 3 beds?? They did not speak a whole lot of English but were ideal guests and left the rooms very clean and tidy. Shortly after we had an inspection from and American couple and their 4 year old son who were looking for a weeks accommodation…..but they went elsewhere. They were pleasant and communicative and said they would miss Coco……the little tart always steal the limelight.

On the social front Helen has organized a morning tea in her capacity as social organizer for the Women’s group and she has had the Singapore ladies stay for their book group and hosted the local book group. Earlier in the month we went to a performance by the Penang symphonic and choral groups rendering works by popular Italian composers…Verdi and Puccini and others. It was a nice performance with a slight weakness in the men’s singing.

The other main event during the month was the Malaysian election. The opposition consortium won 51% of the popular vote but although they made inroads in terms of seats on the ruling party there is some glaring examples of gerrymandering for all to see. The ruling party win many of the rural seats….many of these have quite a small voting population. The opposition often win the city seats and these have many more voters but only one seat. An extreme (perhaps) example I saw in the results was where one electorate had 144,000 voters (opposition won comfortably) while a rural electorate had 8000 voters (ruling party won). You don’t have to be a maths genius to work out the inequality. The opposition party in Penang won by a wider margin than the previous election. The opposition coalition has had several big rallies afterwards with everyone dressed in black. Equal treatment of all the races is essential for the future.

After the rainforest experience it was back to the Blue-throated Bee-eaters that were feeding nests. The weather is less predictable than the early months in the year but you can get some blue-sky days. It was back to the motor-cross track to see what was being fed to the chicks.