24 September 2006, Sunday

Spent Sunday morning in a cemetery, but not just any cemetery... it's the Bukit Brown Chinese Cemetery! Finally got to see this place after hearing so much about it that it's almost legendary... Was not disapointed, with the first sighting being a whole tree of squawking long-tailed parakeets, in their brilliant green tinged with pink plummage. Sharing the tree with a lone dollarbird.

Being the first to arrive, I could take in the sight of usually elusive birds coming out to enjoy the early rays of the day.... an iridiscent flamebacked woodpecker preening itself....turned out to be 1 of only 2 I saw for the day, though their distinctive calls seem to be stalking us. While the crowd gathered, a flock of purple-backed starlings (lifer!) came swooping on the bare branches vacated by the parakeets. Migrants who have been spotted here last year. This is the place that changed my mind - I'm definitely going to get a scope this year....

Anyway, we had much fun checking out bird nests (iora's?), looking at carvings on the tombstones - which year they died, the figure (like Nezha and the Chinese equivalent of an angel). Particularly striking was an extra large tombstone, flanked by two Gurkha guards with a
guard dog each.

The much touted raptors did not appear, though we spotted a small one hovering above with black tips against white belly, supposedly a sparrowhawk.... which I read counts kingfisher as a favourite food.... so it's good luck to the 2 white-throated kf I saw earlier... Kim spotted something else on her way out but unidentifiable ....

I'll be going again soon..... with a scope to shoot on sight and decipher later....

Erratum

Erratum

There's a typo in my earlier entry... if you have noticed it. Birds roost, not roast, on trees...haha...what was I thinking about? Maybe it's a Freudian slip of the tongue that betrays my real subconscious wishes. Missed the roasted (correct?) pigeon in HK the other time...

Anyway, here's the picture of a 'sample' white throated kingfisher that I fished from http://www.geocities.com/wondersf/
Wonderful webpage with thousands of birds.... go visit it!

Serendipity

17 September 2006, Sunday

Serendipity - discovered the beauty of this word when the bus took a wrong turn and me away from Springleaf, where Dr Ho was supposed to show NSS members the beauty of our forest birds.... but fortunately, one thing led to another.... abandoned idea of finding my way there when I saw this dark brown bird with white on top of chest. It looks like kingfisher but the beak is too short... the backlight was terrible and I couldn't see the colours nor features clearly.

Chasing it led me to Sembawang Park, an oasis of calm near the sea where people just laze around in their tents or fish.... perfect picture of the life I want to lead, away from the madding crowd.... Saw a white-throated kingfisher perched on a lamppost. My sight followed it as it flew away, and as it land on a lone stick poking out of the vast expanse of land, I caught sight of this beautiful (as opposed to cute, which is the usual way I describe birds I like) with what looks like an almost irisdiscent purple on its back plummage and pink in front.... strange colours... I moved gingerly in front of it and when it flew down to the field and up onto a wire, it 'turned' into cream-beige body with dark flanks mirroring its crown, though interrupted by a strand of white.... I quickly turned to my book and found that it's a long-tailed shrike (lifer for me) and followed it as far as I could.

.... but having lost it, I decided to be adventurous and wondered into a wooded lane which led me to a lokang.... with lotsa birds singing, a water hen, a group of 7 pink-necked green pigeons roasting (sic) on a bare tree. Such is the tranquility there these fat (extra fat here) birds can sleep without cover but the main thing about this place is it's.....

Kingfisher Land!! Anywhere I turned, I saw kingfishers.... kf on the railing, kf on the tip of the bare trees, kf on their favourite hangout on branches overlooking the waters... even the very brief appearance of a baby croc-like feature with yellow stripes against very black body failed to distract me from admiring the beauty of kf - some were as close as 2m away. I realised why I like them so much. Despite being slightly deformed-looking with an oversized beak and head, it has very sharp features and strikingly beautiful colours, so much so that there's no need for bino to spot them. A white body would rep a white-collared kf, while a small white blot surrounded by a dark silhouette is the ubiquitous white-throated kf. When I can finally afford a scope, I will return to this place again to capture their beauty :)

Anyway, I got a very good look at one very fine specimen - very handsome collared kf with its sharply coloured brown back.... looks amazingly like the Australian kookaburra (same family). Maybe it's why I like them so much..... mum always sings the song about them....

"Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree-eee
Merry, merry king of the bush is he-ee...
Laugh, kookaburra, laugh
kookaburra, gay your life must be..."

Nice ditty... composed at a more innocent era where gay is not a dirrtyyyy word...

9 september 2006

Ben asked me to go SBNR yest for birdwatching...refused.... refused to tear away fr Caleb....but finally couldn't resist it when Kym suggested we go together....

Kym & I made a big (gigantic, actually) boo-boo when we happily cried there's an egret perched on the observation tower opp the main ob deck....Harry pointed out it was actually to point direction....

But of course I was not daunted ..... the first birds were good.... 2 flame-backed woodpeckers chasing each other, a huge dollar bird ( tho they are not supp to be, but they are cute), a huge pink-necked green pigeon (everything seems so big here). And Ben has reported seeing:
PGP (stumped me when I first heard this.... it's the Pacific Golden Plover - we saw 1 chasing another playing on a very small strip of land - round and round), Curlew Sandpiper, bar tailed godwit, ruddy turnstone, green & redshank, terek sandpiper, asian dowitcher (which ben returned to sight the following Monday)......


......all names I've never heard before... migratory birds on stopover (for refuel) to Australia in early Sept & will be back in S'pore in March to fly northwards home sweet home....

But we (actually Kym & Harry) discovered the lesser sandpiper, a cute (Kym & mine fav term for birds we like) cream-&- white wader, which Kym had deciphered from a crowd of waders. I had lost interest by then. The 10x bino wasn't clear enough to distinguish the difference in mottled print which distinguish sandpiper fr redshank) and I felt giddy from staring into it too long....still waiting to buy my ed50.... and the herd of waders just look like the homogeneous crowd of buffaloes crossing the Serengeti into the Masai Mara, no? and there were 5 dogs from a herd led by a matriach ... to pose as the African wild dogs on the African plains.... picture perfect....


But Kym was undaunted and I saw what a serious birder should be like - eyes trained on the bird, describing the colours on every part (first time I heard the word 'supercilium') , referring to the Bible of birdwatchers here (Craig Robson's birds of SEA), distinguishing between brown and shades of rufous, describing the legs and beak.... until Siew Kuang (heard that Bing Wern was also there) chanced upon us and gave us the 'model answer'....

.... all the while when I was busy eating the seaweed K gave me - not the usual one but very crispy, made in Thailand.... but forgot the name. Will CIO in Watson's....

Anyway, we also spotted animals which are easier on the eyes - jumping fishes... lotsa them! Traced them to 2 otters (big fat ones, more well-fed than those in the zoo!). Joked with K we should change the signboard on croc to otters). Also: big monitor lizard (taller than me if I were to lie down), narrowly missed a paradise tree snake which SK spotted, ironically in a shed with a pic of it painted nicely...we ran in search but it has long slithered away.... end to K's effort the whole morning looking for snakes...

..... anyway when we returned to the main ob deck, we were thrilled to see the egret on the tower was no longer there, thought we had been right the first time round - until Harry pointed out to us it's looking at the other way.....

Boo-boo #2......

Happy running

Nothing that a good run can't cure. Despite a lack from sleep (eyes just refused to shut from 1252 to 0400), I had an invigorating run on my favourite NB terrain in Sentosa. I didn't complete the trail though, since I was late and the sun was already flashing its brilliant smile.... and I thought I shouldn't be too hard on myself.... :)

It's the first time I've not hung-up on not finishing the run....realised running is supposed to be disciplined but fun. I have to give myself a pat on the back for :

• trying out a different running technique ( flat surface - longer stride, less power ; upslope: small strides on almost tip-toe; ditto for downslope but with the longest stride I can master )
• trying to run on sand..... and experimenting on how best to land. Actually running on sand is not as tiresome as I thought.... in fact, it's worse to walk on this quicksand-like surface.
• for running continuously on upslope
• not stopping despite the curiosity about Barclays' golf tourney around Sentosa cove.
• not chasing after the 4 cockatoos I saw on the ground at Tanjong Beach
• not stopping to look at dogs swim....

I think I should be able to better my personal best for this terrain in 2007 - better than the 01:19 I clocked in 2005.

Anyway, my results for NB Real Run 20 Aug are out. Out of 1119 runners, I came in #758. Haha.... I'm amazed at my timing.... what was I doing?

http://www.realrun.sg/results/WomensOpen.htm

758 WO0720 SUET LAI, THAM SINGAPORE WOMEN'S OPEN
Check Pt1: 00:16:07 (took 16sec to touch the mat despite being near the front and it's counted
inside the final result)
Check Pt2: 00:38:18
Net Time : 01:27:55
Total Finish time: 01:28:02

6 September 2006

sad... haven't been this sad for a long time. deja vu.... always a happy event transforming 360 deg to something of the deepest sorrow..... it's always the same; how can I break out of this cycle? It's certainly not for want of trying or lack of thought to method. I asked Caleb what he would do to someone who makes him sad.... his reply was a "Box him!" Wish I could do that, but already as it is, it's the second ending which doesn't signify any iota of revival in the future... sad.

8 April 2006 - 6 September 2006

4-5 September 2006

Exams. Stranggggeee feeling to be on the receiving end of exam. Must have been such a long time that I felt shocked when I saw the seating arrangement.... even when I see the same every semester.... The first exam, Action Research, was a even greater surprise as it turned out to be open-book. I thought they say starting from this year, there'll be no more open book? And just a week ago, the lecturer had emailed a response to a classmate that there'll be no reference. Strange indeed.... a reputable school which can't make up its mind? Everyone was furiously referring to their notes but I guess I could offer something different cos I put in ideas from Curriculum Design (CD) since that was all I bought along. Luckily, I didn't bring any relevant material.... there was barely time to tell all the tales I could fish out from my mind....

The second was hardly better.... even less time..... but I had one special source that nobody else bought.... the Singapore EL Syllabus..... unbeatable, hehe.... Sad to say, I didn't have enough time to prepare for exam because of oral exam, marking, CA..... Really! I plan my timetable to factor in 30min of studying every day but even that wasn't enough.... so of course, I resorted to the time-tested favourite strategy of students all through the years - spot questions..... luckily I was spot-on with emphasis on needs analysis and syllabus...but method not recommended to everyone.....

27 August 2006

27 August 2006

Sheares Bridge & Army Half-Marathon

Survived.... that's all it matters. One of the most relaxing races.
Run, walk, run, walk, .... even finding time to chat with 2 Regenites and popping down to 7-11 to buy a Snickers. Sprinted only in the last hundred, cos the commentator was talking about me, haha... 3 hrs 38 min. Nothing to crow about, but it's a start :)

.... but oh, where's the medal that they promise?