Monthly Archives: February 2014

Nature, Nature Photos, Photography

Flowers Around Malaysia

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Flowers Around Malaysia

Update: 17-April-2014

We visited Janda Baik on 13-April-2014 en route to Genting Highland. Janda Baik is at an altitude of 600-800m above sea level, with a cool 22-28 deg. C climate. Here are some of the beautiful flowers found there.

Here is a gallery of flowers around Malaysia; some are common while some are not so common. You may recognise some of these from your garden, while some are usually found in the wild.

I will continually update the gallery, adding to the collection as I go around Malaysia. Hopefully this will in time become a useful gallery of Flowers Around Malaysia.

 

That's Life

Childhood Games of Baby Boomers – Rubber Seeds

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In the ’50s and ’60s, there was hardly any palm oil plantation (maybe none at all) but we sure had many very neat and tidy forests, a la our rubber plantations. The rubber trees (Hevea Brasiliensis) were grown in neat rows and were favourite playgrounds for children then. Somehow conditions seemed so much safer then, and parents did not care that the children routinely ran into rubber estates to play.

Hevea_semillas2_360
Rubber Seeds. Photo from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hevea_semillas2.jpg

The mature rubber trees bear flowers and hence seeds once or twice a year (I forgot. Does anyone remember?) and gave rise to the seasonal “fighting rubber seeds” game. The idea was to find a seed that could outlast any other seed when squeezed together. The two competing seeds were held in the palms of your hands and squeezed together using your thighs for leverage. The one that cracked and broke, lost. It’s somewhat like the British children’s game of conkers  using the horse chestnuts to “battle”, except in conkers, the horse chestnuts are threaded and then swung at each other, while the rubber seeds are actually squashed together until one broke. How do I know about “conkers”? From Beano, Dandy, Topper….children’s comics of that period!

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A rubber tree tapped for latex. Photo by Wang Sun Chan.

The rubber seeds were picked from the rubber estates (it seemed as if there was always a rubber estate near wherever you lived).  I recall a rich variety of seeds; there were large ones, small ones; generally rectangular but there were also triangular ones. Generally, the smaller seeds were the tougher ones. We would break an unwanted seed to use its core  to rub and polish the favoured seed until it had a wine red sheen. Then it was time to do battle. There were cheats, of course. A common method was to make a small hole at the top and to squeeze in additonal core material to compact the interior of the “fighter seed”. That way, it would not break so easily. A more insidious way was to pump glue into the fighter seed.  The “super glue” (cyanoacrylate adhesive) was not available at that time, but even the ordinary glue was enough to give an unfair advantage. Great care had be taken to ensure that the hole was well disguised so that the opponent did not know.

Another simple game of the baby boomers. They were all seasonal games. A time for “Kotak”, a time for “Rubber Seeds”, a time for “Kites”, a time for “Marbles”.  Do you remember?

Photo Credits:

Header photo of a “rubber estate” and photo of a tree being tapped for latex were taken by Wang Sun Chan at the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia, 17-Feb-2014. 

The photo of the rubber seeds is taken from Wikipedia, reproduced here under the Creative Commons Licence.

 

 

 

That's Life

An Inspiring Poem – A Psalm Of Life

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Proverbs, anecdotes, poems and quotations influenced all of us to some extent when we were growing up, whether we knew it or not and whether now in later life, we care to admit it or not. Some of them would have shaped our outlook, attitude and even our personality, hopefully for the better.

A poem which greatly influenced me is
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm Of Life”.

I’ll first reproduce the poem in its entirety here without any distraction, and then below it is an annotated version to help explain its meaning (to me). Maybe it will also inspire someone else who reads this now.

A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Hover your cursor over the highlighted text to get its annotation. Hope this will help you appreciate the poem better.

A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

I was inspired by this poem when I was 15 years old and to this day, this is the only poem I can still recite by heart. Not counting “Ba Ba Black Sheep….” or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star….”

Over to you. Which poem inspired you?

Music

Where were you when the music died? 3-Feb-1959

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You may have heard the phrase, “The day the music died”, immortalized by Don McLean in his signature song “American Pie” (8 minutes, 33 seconds long). The day the music died was 3-Feb-1959.

On this day in 1959, rising American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson are killed when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza plane crashes in Iowa a few minutes after takeoff from Mason City on a flight headed for Moorehead, Minnesota. ( http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-day-the-music-died )

In American Pie, Don McLean paid tribute to Buddy Holly in particular. Indeed, Buddy Holly’s seminal songs influenced so many rockers who came after him, including Don.  I do not have anything original to add to the vast amount of information about Buddy Holly ( and Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson) that you can find on the above website as well as on Wikipedia, among others.

What I want to know is, “Where were you when the music died”?

I was in my final year of complete  childhood carefree abandonment, before beginning school the following year. At that age, my music taste was largely influenced by whatever my elder teenage siblings cared to play on the wobbly turntable or whatever was being aired over the AM radio. To be honest, I don’t recall Buddy Holly but Elvis Presley, Neil Sedaka, Paul Anka, Johnny Tillotson, Chubby Checker, Cliff Richard…..Of course in later years, I recalled Buddy Holly and grew to love his songs.

So where were you when the music died?

Nature, Nature Photos, Photography, That's Life

What can a bumble bee (bumblebee) teach you?

2 Comments

Updated 20-Feb-2014

  • News on Bumblebees infected with Honeybee diseases.
  • Additional photos added.

Proverbs, anecdotes, poems and quotations  influence all of us, to some extent, when we were growing up, whether we knew it or not and whether now in later life, we care to admit it or not. Some of them would have shaped our outlook, attitude and even our personality, hopefully for the better.

One such anecdote that greatly influenced me tells of a French entomologist August Magnan and his engineer friend discussing a bumblebee  one evening in the 1930’s.

… because the bumblebee doesn’t know that it is not supposed to fly, it can and does fly …

The engineer apparently did a back-of-napkin calculation and “proved” that aerodynamically,  it was not possible for the bumblebee to fly. But we all know and can see with our own eyes that a bumblebee can indeed fly. That day in my youth, when I first heard of this anecdote, it was not the science (that actually showed a bumblee can fly) that concerned me. The profound idea that struck me and stuck with me to this day was the lesson it conveyed; that just because the bumblebee doesn’t know that it is not supposed to fly, it can and does fly along happily, and it flies very well too, I might add.

_MG_0075_800And that’s the way my attitude is shaped; that one should not be seeking too much advice from others as to whether something can be done, if indeed that something is what you have a strong desire to achieve. Believe in yourself and just go ahead and do it. If the results are not forthcoming, your vision is not worth anything; dreams have no value until the results are achieved. And to get there, be a bumblebee.

Now it’s your turn. Which proverb, anecdote, poem or quotation provided a life’s lesson for you?

_MG_0091_800Footnote:
When was the last time you actually saw a real live bumblebee? For me, it must have been years since I last saw one. So what are the odds of a bumblebee appearing and hovering around me just after I wrote about it? And what are the odds that I’ll have a camera (my iPhone) with a newly installed app “Burst Mode” to snap 100 shots with one click? I wrote the first draft yesterday and this morning a bumblebee paid me a visit. And I shot a few sequences of it darting among my flowers with my iPhone in Burst Mode. Not exactly tack-sharp pictures (I was quivering with excitement), but what a photo-moment it was. Click on the thumbnails below to see the flight sequences.

BBburst1         BBburst2

Learn more about the Bumblebee at Bumblebee.org

According to Bumblebee.org, “Bumblebees are large, hairy social insects with a lazy buzz and clumsy, bumbling flight. ”

Most people like the bumblebee as it very rarely stings anyone. When I was a kid, I thought the large, round, black blobs flying around our garden  was a bumblebee. And even up to when I was writing this article and sharing the photos above  of the unexpected “bumblebee” that visited me, I didn’t think I was wrong.

prat1
Photo courtesy of Laura Smith
www.bumblebee.org
Pratorum queen
Photo courtesy of Laura Smith
www.bumblebee.org

However, I learnt at Bumblebee.org that are six species of bumblebees and the black one is not one of them. See the photo of a “Bombus Pratorum” queen shown here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it here in our country.
Another view of a “Bombus Pratorum” bumblebee.

XylocopaViolacea
Photo courtesy of Laura Smith
www.bumblebee.org

The black one looks like a Bumblebee but is actually a Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa violacea).
However, for me the black round blob that flies “when it shouldn’t be able to fly”, will always be the “bumblebee” to me. It epitomises the lesson adequately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

19-Feb-2014
BBC News (Science and Environment)
Bumblebees infected with honeybee diseases
Researchers have found that two diseases harboured by honeybees are spilling over into wild bumblebees.
Insects infected with deformed wing virus and a fungal parasite called Nosema ceranae….

20-Feb-2014
The Bumblebee came visiting again in my garden.

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