Coming back soon

Hey all,
I will be returning soon. Keep a watch on this space.
Ruben

Play time

He was alone near a pile of sand with two pieces of cut off planks as his toys.
As his father worked to complete renovations at a house, this boy found some discarded pieces of wood to live out his imagination.
As I watched, the pieces of wood were transformed from what a apparently was a four-wheel-drive vehile race across a desert to a train (after being strung together with a piece of plastic sheet.)
The wonders of a child's imagination.

Another posting via mobile blogger.

Nature nearby

It is said that Borneo like other tropical regions contains the highest biodiversity, meaning as I understand it, it has the largest variety of plants and creatures.

My house is in the middle of a housing estate in Kota Kinabalu is a little testament to this. Little creatures do drop by at the yard attracted by the plants that we have there.

So I've learnt to keep my camera nearby to "capture" them. And it has made me realise that nature photography requires much much patience. Afterall, a toad or a butterfly will not wait around for anyone to set up that "Kodak moment."

Here are some of the creatures that have appeared in my yard.

Royal opening

Often described as the king of fruits, aficionados will not hesitate to pay a princely sum for a durian. I've seen people forking out as up to RM17 per kg (working out to nearly RM40 per fruit) just for the ones that taste 'bitter sweet'.
However, more often than not,the king of fruit will have to be consumed at humble surroundings, usually along a road side, under the shade of a large tree as hotels and other businesses ban them due to their overpowering?odour.
An American has described the smell of the durian as something akin to a pair of very well used socks.
So much for respect for the king of fruit.

Plastic scare

At the backyard of my house is a wiremesh basket in which my family has been tossing in discarded plastic containers, mostly mineral water bottles.
After a while we send them to the recycling centre. Mundane stuff. But looking at the filled wiremesh basket recently, i realised that there was an awful lot of plastic containers just one family has been throwing out.
Now multiply that thousands no, million times more. And how many are simply discarded and end up in garbage dumps? And that's just the plastic bottles. What about plastic bags?
A scary thought.

On the go

Colourful and candle lighted paper lanterns light up the night of the mid autumm festival as these children parade around their neighbourhood park in Kota Kinabalu.
It is good to see simple pleasures like these persisting.

By the wayThis is a short post as it was dispatched to blogspot via my hand phone where typing out a message is definately not a walk through the park (pun intended).

Nature's water park

A stream flowing down the Crocker Range in the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu serves as a wet playground for these children as their parents harvest their orchard nearby of durians, mangosteens, rambutans among others.
The cool, clear water of the stream flows for about 10kms before pouring out into the South China Sea.
Along the way, it becomes a convenient open sewer as it flows past pig and chicken farms, industrial and commercial areas and riverside squatter colonies and has been described as one of the most polluted waterways in Sabah.
And it continues unabated. This will be one of the legacies these children will inherit.