Domesticated cats

I shook my head in disbelief when I read this. The Malayan tigers at the Sabah zoo (technically it's called the Lok Kawi wildlife park) chewing on plastic bags?
Those treating the tiger enclosures like a big refuse bin are obviously witless.
And I I guess those cats must be bored out of their wits to resort to chewing on stuff like that. Then again what else can they do as they fed at regular intervals and need not worry about hunting for their food unlike their endangered cousins in the wild.

Monkey business

I was thinking about the slew of criticisms being levelled against Malaysian mainstream media when I spotted this 2inch high carving at the Borneo Arts handicraft shop in the Centre Point shopping centre (gotta put in a plug for the missus).
The first thing that crossed my mind was "Oh how appropriate." The carving to me summed up all those criticisms. Whether justified, i feel that as a practicing member of that profession, it is not for me to answer.
But I keep this carving on my computer as a reminder to try and avoid 'monkeying' around.

Bounty from the backyard

I do not have a kebun or orchard to my name but the small strip of land at one side of my house is enough for a papaya, a few mango and a handful of banana trees.
Though all these trees have bore their fruit at one time or another before, a few weeks ago, these began ripening together so we've had no shortage of freshly plucked from the tree fruits at home.
I'm occasionally asked why I've never moved elsewhere to practice my profession. There are many answers to that.
One of them is life's little rewards like this.

Update

Hey I'm back. Yea, it's been like nearly three weeks since I've updated this blog. I had to take a short break for a while. I was bogged down with work and I wasn't in any mood to blog.
But most of what was required has been done and so I can start sending out some postcards.

Keep a watch on this space!

Highland veggies

Curious hands unfurl leaves of a cabbage plant at a patch in Kundasang, about 60kms from Kota Kinabalu. For decades, Kundasang has been the centre of temperate vegetable and fruit cultivation in Sabah.
The cultivation of cabbages, carrots, capsicums and asparagus were introduced in Kundasang by Christian missionaries to the indigenous Kadazandusuns of the area in the 1950s.
Sadly though, fuelled by demand for local temperate vegetables, 'outsiders' have been making a beeline for Kundasang and acquired land there. They have resorted to employing cheap but poorly educated Indonesian migrant labour to grow these vegetables. And for years there have been persistent worries that these vegetables contain excessive amounts of pesticide and fertiliser.

Pygmys of Borneo

Photographing these Borneo pygmy elephants were a cinch. Afterall they were confined in their enclusures at the Lok Kawi wildlife park near Kota Kinabalu.
The situation is hardly different for their cousins in the wild, particularly in the Lower Kinabatangan region where tracts of jungles where these pachyderms used to forage have been cleared to make way for oil palm plantations.
As a result, the 150 or so elephants in the Lower Kinabatangan are confined to the remaining fragmanted strips of forests along Kinabatangan river. It makes me wonder what are the chances of these elephants surviving in the whatever remaining "wild" areas of Sabah.

A picture with a few stories

Riding on a boat heading up a tributary of the Kinabatangan River with some friends some time ago, I saw this pile of logs stacked along the river bank and whipped out my camera and began snapping away. Reviewing the picture later, I realised it it said a lot about the environment of the area.
a) small trees some barely 1metre in circumference are being felled for lumber because there are no more bigger trees there;
b) these small trees were likely to have been felled in a secondary jungle that has been cleared to make way for yet another part of an oil palm plantation and;
c) plantation owners are ignoring requirements for them to leave strips of forests along the rivers (or riparian reserves) and instead are planting the crops right until the water's edge though oil palm trees could be wiped out in the event of a flood.
Because of (c) wildlife such as the Borneo pygmy elephants are being squeezed in their remaining habitat (more of that in an upcoming posting).