Gentle rains at October end...

The first cold wave of the season hit us last Tuesday...
Temperatures dropped to about 8 degrees in the mornings...
Yours truly had to grab that long johns to keep the cold at bay...
This weekend showed a return to warmer temperatures...
It rained on Saturday morning, giving me a good opportunity to clean up the store room...
In the afternoon, I turned to doing woodwork...
More precisely, I made some borders from wood for the vegetable beds...
Saturday the 30th of October also marked the first appearance of our favorite bird, the so-called 'Daurian Redstart'...
We are more comfortable with the Japanese name of 'jobi taki'...
This little pretty bird is super friendly and it sometimes comes close to me while I am working in the garden...
Close, as in about two meters or so... 
Sunday morning was spent in the potager...
But rained caught us up at about noon and I turned my attention to working on wood again...
Under a shed, I tried my hand in making a trap for the animal pests that come to our potager...
Stray cats in particular, and perhaps racoons?
The rains continued to fall until the night...
Gentle rains, that is, and for sure, my plants are very happy...

Diving at Tioman Island

Scuba dived at Tioman in early September...
We are now more into doing shore dives by ourselves...
This allows us to control our dives better...
The downside is, we just get to see the 'common' creatures...
Which is not really a problem, actually...

This is probably a kind of damselfish...

Am not very sure of its name
but it was fun watching it darting in and out of the corals...
Size was about three centimeters?

 

The house reef was nice to dive...
Coal bleaching was apparent in many spots...
This particular brain coral was just off the jetty...

My dive buddy aka missus getting on low to peep at the fish life...
The finger corals were bleaching too...

This lemon damselfish was a joy to observe...
It would hide in the corals as I tried to focus...
But patience always pays off...
And we had a lot of air to spare because we dove shallow...

In the shallows, the anemone fish is unavoidable...
Not to say that we want to avoid them...

And, what beautiful creatures they are...

The so-called 'sargeant major'...
Think it is part of the chromis family...
This picture was taken below the jetty where there were loads of them...

This is called a two-lined spinecheek, I think...
Was resting on the sandfloor, just observing this guy...
Shot this picture as it was yawning?

A pair of blennies, resting on top of a little brain coral...
Perhaps two centimeters or so...
Their movements come in spurts...
And they seem to be darting all the time...

And finally, yours truly...
The sargeant majors were picking at my hair, mistaking them for food...
My missus had a good laugh upon seeing that...

Lovely autumn weekend spent...

Spent a very pleasant and productive weekend...
On Saturday, hosted a potluck party called 'An Autumn day at Aji'...
This was the second time we hosted the event and as in last year, we invited a couple of nice folks in the neighborhood...
The blue skies, the cool temperature... wooh...
One of our guests brought hand-made soba... delicious...
As in last year, we roasted some chicken parts with the dutch oven...
Still have a lot to learn, as I over-cooked the chicken again...
Such a pleasure to chat with these folks...

Today, went to a jersey cow farm to collect cowdung for our potager...
Apparently, they use only grass to feed the cows, so the dung does not smell...
And it is free...
Immediately use some of it to prepare a vegetable bed for carrot seeds...

Also went to a stone-wholesaler to collect some wood to be used as boundaries for the vegetable beds...
The wood is used to hold the stones during transportation and once they are done, the wood is treated as 'rubbish'...

Tonight, the moon is so pretty... and the night is so bright and beautiful...
Aaah, heavenly...

Paddy harvesting and tractors in the fields...

Our last vacation back in Malaysia went by rather uneventfully...
Which was a good thing...
We did all the 'standard' things we had wanted to do...
Scuba diving (at Tioman, more later), eat ourselves silly, meet friends,etc...

Mee Abu... again??
Yes, again...
We normally have a plate of mee rebus, and then we share one goreng...
This time, koay teow and mee hoon goreng it was...
As I look at this picture, I want to fly back to Alor Star again... now...
Actually gained 1.5 kilograms after the trip...arrggghh...

My youngest brother owns two combine harvesters...
And he plants a couple of longan trees in his garden...
The fruits are a little small compared to the commercial ones, but they are juicy and sweet...
But taken too much at one go, you will probably end up with a sore throat...

This is one one his combined harvesters...
I just love this kind of scenes...
And we were lucky to be back during the harvesting season...
While growing up, I had my fair share of helping out in the paddy fields...
No such machines then... and naturally, we had to harvest the paddy by hand...

The combine harvester loading the harvest right into a truck...
Back in the old days, we had to put the harvest into gunny sacks...
And transportation was manual, be it by man or buffalo...

Sometimes these guys work until almost midnight...
My brother would be with them, buying them food and drinks...
I wouldn't be able to heck it... oh no, not until midnight...

There was a lot of rain, too...
Days after the harvests, it was time to till the soil...
I watched with interest, as four tractors did their stuff on the fields...
Again, in the old days, we had our buffaloes...

There was a large flock of white cranes, coming in to look for a meal or two...
Too bad, I only had my mini-mini camera with me...

'Kick-Ass' politics in Malaysia

I must admit that I am addicted...
Addicted to reading about the happenings in my beloved Malaysia...
It is not only 'fun', but 'educational', and 'entertaining' as well...
This latest tough talk by the MCA lame-duck Dr.Chua and UMNO's double-talking Najib that PAS will 'rule' Malaysia should PR comes to power...
That MCA should 'kick ass' on its disloyal members, and blah blah blah... warns Najib...
Oh my, how I chuckled out loud upon reading what PKR's Tian Chua had to say on this...
'The only ass that Najib kicked was probably his own'...
Super right on, I must say...
Last year, I met an American professor at an academic conference...
He approached me and said that he was the academic advisor of Dr. Koh Tsu Koon while Koh was in the US studying...
He then said to the effect that Dr. Koh is a good politician, and a good chief minister, too...
Plus, Dr. Koh was such a gracious host when he visited Penang...
I could only look at that person in disbelief...
For, who can forget that episode when the UMNO suckers tore his photo and shamed him so publicly?
Dr. Koh should really quit politics and start growing vegetables (like me?)...
And now, with Dr. Lim Keng Yaik giving him some tight slaps, in full view of the public...
Come next election, I really pray that these suckers will be kicked out, in the ass, that is...

Getting back to routine...

Am gradually falling back onto my routine...
Been cycling to work again for the past few days...
Close to twenty kilometers one way...
wooh, I love it...
The air is dry and cool, really nice...
And the views of the vegetable patches along the way, pretty...
The above shot was taken by my missus in early August, I believe...
These days, I am all long pants and long sleeves
as the temperature is sliding down to around 20 degrees in the morning...
The day is getting shorter
So, by the time I reach home at about 7:00 pm

it is already nightfall...