August 2017

This month the world saw a solar eclipse (it was not visible in Penang) and some varied local action.

This month saw another milestone on the personal calendar. The 14^th also happened to be pub quiz night. I was treated to a cake that Helen had ordered at half-time interval in the quiz. Most quiz participants ended up with a piece of the action…….and very nice it was too. We capped off a good night with a win. 

  We were on the podium at other times during the month with a second and a third and another win.

In the above image taken on the 21st August...John is away.....from the left, Liz, Helen, Mike, G, Carol

My photography was again limited with the only action occurring while taking a nature photographer from Adelaide on a morning excursion. I had earlier got him and his partner into Stephen’s Place at Fraser’s Hill. which they thoroughly enjoyed.

The George Town festival is currently on, Helen has been to a number of events. We had lunch in town one day and saw two photographic exhibitions. One was centred on local wildlife by an ex-pat Dutch photographer. I have not come across him but I am afraid to say I and others were rather critical of his abilities. The other exhibition I enjoyed …it was by Jimmy Nelson who specializes in taking ethnic images of cultures that are likely to be heading towards extinction. He has a photo book entitle, ‘Before they pass away’. 

The book has attracted a good deal of criticism ‘https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/29/jimmy-nelson-indigenous-people-survival-international. Nelson travels to various locations and poses his subjects in ‘their environment’. He lets them choose what they wear even though it looks over-the top at times. It is the kind of exhibition that makes you think and to me it was very good and at the same time rather false looking. He uses a large format camera and some nice lighting. I particular liked his single portraits but some of the shots, including two Maori women near Huka Falls looked very unnatural.

I also liked some of the images in a recent National Geographic image competition. I reproduce two here, the first was the winning image of a volcano at night with accompanying electrical action. The other tells a nice story about the tiered system on the Bangladesh Railway system.

I recently saw a cartoon of my favourite Kingfisher species. It was referring to the variety of protein in the diet of this species. A number of my images certainly support the varied diet……which includes cigarettes.

I am often aghast at the pharmaceutical standards in Malaysia (Singapore was not a lot better). In my training labelling medicine properly was of paramount importance. Helen recently had a persistent cough that required a trip to the doctor. Illustrated below is the labelling on the cough medicine. This is the end point of four years full-time study.

I think it reads 'Take 10mils three times daily'....there is clearly a perceived need to conserve biro-ink.

On the brewing /baking front I have been concentrating on different Kombucha flavours. Brewing Kombucha starts with a mixture of black tea and sugar. A SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) is placed in a brewing jar with this mixture. The bugs consume the sugar and multiply….in this environment this process takes around 8-9 days. The liquid is decanted and put in small beer bottles. Fruit extract is added to provide flavour and sugars for the secondary fermentation which takes around 5 days. The stand-out flavour so far is raspberry. Grape, mango and apple (separately) are OK but not spectacular. Currently there is pineapple, passionfruit, lemon and lemon and ginger brewing.

On the subject of food and beverages, Straits Quay was the focal point for an attempt to make the Guinness Book of Records for the most food stalls in one place. It was not advertised or promoted locally but they did seem to get the numbers.

Finally, August saw the start of the 4 Nations rugby competition. The All Blacks ran up a big score in the first half of the first game v The Wallabies but relaxed too much in the second half but still won by 20 points.
I had a friend watching the second test with me. We were in disbelief at the 17-0 scoreline but were relieved to steal the game in the last minutes.

I was sorting through some images when I came to the Kaikoura shots.  I wondered what happened to the pool the baby seals swam in so ecstatically before the Kaikoura earthquake. I realise there was a major slip over the highway at Ohau Point. Recent information estimates the highway could re-open by the end of the year. One local lad managed to get to the pool and says it is intact but the public track needs some clearing and there are a few obstacles for the pups to overcome but not all gloom and doom. I checked Youtube for a good record of the phenomena before the earthquake.  I found a short but professional documentary that is excellent. Found here

The current status of the road at Ohau Point.

On the last day of the month....being National Day in Malaysia...together with a few friends we walked up Pearl Hill. Coco knows this walk well and is always very keen to go.

At the start of the walk I noticed a smallish raptor land in the tree above carrying a mouse. Another bird of the same species came in later. I took an ID shot with my small camera and a naturalist friend ID's the birds at Crested Goshawks......as seen in the pic from the internet.

A week or so back I was real happy to come upon a pair of otters eating fish near the shore. Again I did not have a big lens with me but shot them on video on my phone.  The video can be seen here

....and finally my perturbed booking via Expedia and Malaysia Airlines has been resolved....I have had my fare returned to me. It is noteworthy that neither company decided to tell me though and both will remain on my blacklist.

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July 2017

July has been a month of visitors and guests. It is the month when nature photography diminishes to nothing as the wet season and usually the forest-fire haze approaches.

First John and Carolyn Grey came to stay with us for several days. Their son’s wife is the newly appointed deputy High Commissioner to Singapore. They visited them then on to us and then by bus back to KL then return to Singapore. John was a year ahead of me at Pharmacy School and bombed his exams so we ended up there in the same year. We both did our apprenticeship in Dunedin. John had a successful pharmacy in Hokitika and we stayed with then for 2 nights after Nikki’s graduation. John has retired and has an apartment in Wellington and a house in Wanaka. While they were here they were shown some of the culture. John joined us in the pub quiz while the girls explored a lesser cultural event. We had an interesting morning in an art garden in the hills where a glass artist has tried to blend his craft in a natural setting.

I took John, who is a keen photographer, to see the Bee-eaters. There were some still feeding nests but you have to be quite discriminatory as the adults all look a bit ragged from many trips into the hole.

 I was tickled to see a recent fledgling...flying (and perching) freely (they have mainly green heads where the adults have a brown (chestnut) colour. Also has not grown the long tail feathers.

Several days after the Greys left David and Lyn arrived for several nights. They skilfully avoided the pub quiz but the brothers did get to criticize some referees while the girls got as far away as possible. We had one outing where we crossed to the mainland on the ferry and witnessed the silent auction as the fishermen brought in their catch for the day. D and L had a very early start on a Saturday morning to resume their tour of Southeast Asia.

We have continued our good run in the pub quiz. We have had three firsts and two seconds in July. We had accumulated enough money in a pool derived from the jackpot questions to have a dinner out. We chose to go to the elegant Suffolk House where John and Baby, Helen and I and Mike had a nice evening.

We had a jealous dog for a day. On my way to the supermarket I noticed a fledgling crow was by the side of the road. I escorted him to a better shady place and hoped the two adults squawking above would take care of him. I thought he may have dropped prematurely from a nest but he was well developed. The second theory was he had been hit by a car. He was still there in danger of being a cat’s dinner….so I picked it up and placed it in the empty glass aquarium at home. Coco gave a rumbling growl for about 4 hours. The fledgling flapped around after an hour or two and escaped the glass confine. He fluttered to a shrub and on later examination, like Elvis, had left the building.

A week or two after the film Dunkirk was released …the quiz team went to Gurney, had lunch then watched the film. It was shot in film on an Imax camera and the recommendation is to watch it in an Imax cinema. We managed to do this and were all most impressed. The film has been getting rave reviews from around the world. Directed by Christopher Nolan who claims it is not a war film but a story of survival. It has a PG13 rating which means there is not a lot of blood and guts. There are no lead actors or actresses and very little dialogue. There are three points of view taken….from the land, the sea and the air. Overall it is a masterpiece of cinematography with 13,000 extra being used on the beaches of Dunkirk. In reality there were close to 400,000 men evacuated in less than a week in 1940…..which meant the war did not end in 1940 (the first image is from a painting which give an impression of the chaos and numbers).

The boat 'Moonstone' actually took part in the evacuation.

Helen has had quite a few or her students away so has had a light teaching month. We have had a number of AirBnB guests in between. The one that stands out was a bubbly Chinese female who called herself Woody. Not named after the woodpecker but the lead character in Toy Story. She left us a very nice note. Currently we have  Elizabeth from the US, who is a journalist and has a PhD in Educational Psychology. She is looking to rent here and move to Penang....she also joined us for the pub quiz.

The small goods and brewing industry continues. A recent derivation was dog-biscuits. Coco has an order of favouritism; meat, Baileys, peanuts, ice cream, human biscuits, dog biscuits, dog chow. I have been making a nice Mango Kombucha for the last month. Recently I got hold of some Raspberries and made some raspberry Kombucha…..it is really nice