another pair stolen

After my Havaianas were stolen, I bought a ciplak pair of slippers which I leave outside my flat, but even that got stolen. How sad!

best burger in town

After so many months, I finally checked out my friend’s place, the cutely named Palate Palette. I had dinner there last night where I had the best burger in the Klang Valley: the Minimalist Burger, a burger without the frills and fillers, just the patty. It was utterly divine. At RM23, it wasn’t cheap, but it was worth every single sen; we even ordered a second. The Burger Ayam Special from the Ramly Burger stall outside the 7-Eleven at USJ 4 now trails far behind at second place. What is it about Ramly Burger stalls and 7-Eleven stores?

clean and fair elections

From an article in today’s Sunday Star, a newspaper owned by the Malaysian Chinese Association, a component party of the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional: “Contrary to the lingering perception that KL is a pro-opposition city, the Barisan has commanded the lion’s share of seats for several elections as a result of redelineation exercises by the Election Commission.”

wild kl

KL is one wild city. Like many cities around the world, it has its regular share of urban wildlife like birds, bugs, lizards, frogs, toads and small rodents including cat-sized rats, and of course there are lots of stray cats and dogs. But it’s also common to find monkeys, civets, treeshrews, monitors and snakes in your garden in KL. Not too surprising I guess, as these are generally small and generalist animals. What makes KL truly wild is the fact that you get tigers roaming in your neighbourhood, pythons and king cobras slithering in your backyard, tapirs wandering into swimming pools and getting hit by traffic, serows joining the morning traffic, leopards sprinting across race tracks and crocodiles swimming in rivers in the city centre. It’s a modern capital city alright, but it’s a jungle out there! Does anyone know of any other concrete jungle which supports such a gamut of wildlife?

victim of crime in singapore

I’ve fallen victim to crime in Singapore! Someone actually stole my old pair of Havaianas which I bought in Rio the first time I was there.

delhi

IMG_3260a, originally uploaded by dckf_$êr@pH!nX.

I was in Delhi recently. This time I had the opportunity to visit the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid and to take a lot more photos than before.

11 days off! balik kampung…

Woohoooo! I have 11 days off for Chinese New Year! I’m still unable to make it for Reunion Dinner, but I’m still trying to work something out. As of now, I’m off from the 8th till the 18th of February. It will also be my first balik kampung experience for the festivities, having lived in KL all my life before this.

a380 airborne

I’ve seen the A380 quite a few times, but I saw it airborne for the first time a few days ago from the train when I was going to work as it was about to touch down in Singapore. I'm thinking of photographing it airborne, now that I know of a vantage point to do it….

snail in singapore

I just saw a snail. “So what’s the big deal?” you might ask. The thing is I believe this is the first time I’ve seen a snail in this sterile biodiversity coldspot that Singapore is.

trying to be home for reunion dinner

I’m on standby on the second day of Chinese New Year. If only I could give it away, I can be back in KL in time for Reunion Dinner….

2 days off

Finally, after over a month, I’m getting two days off after my five-day Penang-Christchurch flight. The last time I had two days off was on the 2nd and 3rd of December after Cape Town, but I took the opportunity to go back to KL, so it was very hectic. The last time I had two days in Singapore was the 27th and 28th of October!

tapir torch

malayan tapir, originally uploaded by dckf_$êr@pH!nX.

Someone on Flickr asked about this photo recently and I thought the story behind it is quite interesting, so I decided to blog about the incident.

This photo was taken on a trip to Taman Negara in 2003. There were four of us on the trip, but only three of us made the trip to the hide where this photo was shot, as one guy left us for KL a day earlier. It was our last full day of the trip. We had to leave the next morning.

A guide had told us that Malayan tapirs (Tapirus indicus) had been spotted recently at Kumbang Hide, so we decided to spend the night there and check it out for ourselves. Kumbang Hide was supposed to be an easy 5-hour hike from the park headquarters or an even easier 45-minute hike from Kuala Trenggan. Since we did have the whole day, we decided to hike from the park headquarters and arranged for a boat to pick us up at Kuala Trenggan the next morning.

The day started off well; the weather was good and we found out that it only costs RM5 per person to spend the night in the hide and there were vacant bunks for us. We started our hike late in the morning and soon came across a crested fireback pheasant (Lophura ignita) in our path. We had only been walking for about an hour when we decided to stop for lunch at a little jetty by the river. I can’t remember what we had, but it must have been something simple we had packed earlier.

After a refreshing rest, we continued on our journey. If I remember correctly, it only started raining after lunch. Soon, the hike became torturous in the rain and our backpacks started to feel like they weighed a tonne, and we were getting bitten by lots of leeches. I don’t usually get bitten by leeches as I can usually feel their cold bodies crawling on me, but I just couldn’t feel them when I was drenched in sweat and rain.

There was some occasional reprieve whenever the rain stopped momentarily, but the mud and leeches were still annoying. Our spirits were really lifted when we came across some tracks left by Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), including juveniles. At that time, that was the closest thing to a wild elephant any of us had ever seen.

The map that we had was very straightforward, showing a single trail along the river which veered away from the river and crossed a little stream. However, the trail we were on split occasionally and was sometimes ambiguous. We were definitely not very sure that we were on the right trail but were fairly confident that we were walking in the right direction and just made guesses whenever the trail split. We thought we had crossed the stream until we came across another stream, and then another. By now, we were getting a little worried that we might be somewhat lost as it was going to get dark soon.

Eventually, we came across a river and realised that that was the ‘stream’ in our map. It qualified as a stream I guess, but what I had in mind was more like a brook. I remember it to be about thigh deep and about 10 to 15 metres wide. I think there was a rope to help us get across. It certainly wasn’t an easy task, but not altogether life-threatening.

Now, if the trail before the river was ambiguous, the trail after the river was downright puzzling. If memory serves me well, the map showed a straight trail broken by a stream. However, after crossing the river, there was little clearing and two trails leading to completely different directions, none of which were straight ahead relative to the trail before the river! Suddenly, we were again unsure if we were on the right trail. I can’t remember which trails we took but we did eventually get to Kumbang Hide, albeit via a different trail, we suspect.

When we arrived, after 7 hours of hiking, I counted over 30 leech bites on my legs, which were oozing with blood all over. As expected, the shower was cold, but the door was missing, and it faced the steps up the hide, i.e. the first thing one sees when climbing up the hide is the doorless bathroom, and perhaps a naked bum. However, we were covered in sweat and blood, at least I was, and badly needed to shower, so we took turns to shower and no one walked in on us up the hide.

After we had cleaned up, a family arrived at the hide. They had come from Kuala Trenggan and had taken the correct shorter trail and gave us directions on how to get to jetty at Kuala Trenggan.

We were seated at the viewing window of the hide and waited in the dark. We were not sure if we were supposed to be shining a light around or just wait to see something in the dark. I already had on hand a rather large torchlight which I had bought for the trip. We were sure we weren’t going to see much in the dark but thought that perhaps light would frighten any animals away, so we waited a little while.

Hmm…to shine or not to shine, that is the question. We finally decided to just try shining some light around just for a while, just to take a look. So I turned on my torch and shined it in front of us. Lo and behold there stood a tapir before us, completely unbothered by the light. It didn’t stay long after we spotted it but soon another came along and this one stayed for over half an hour. This is the animal photographed above and the light was supplied by my trusty torch now christened the ‘tapir torch’.

photo (as yet untitled)

IMG_2291a, originally uploaded by dckf_$êr@pH!nX.

This photo was from my recent flight to Cape Town. It was taken at Hout Bay.