Red under the sun

 

It's not just us that gets red under the sun :)

Not sure what this soft stem is called but it gets a beautiful shade of deeper red as it matures. That's what I noticed anyway. Maybe it's just my imagination. Don't we let our imaginations run wild sometimes?

  

And it's at the same place that I found Pink Under the Sun .

And a bit of wonderful news : I might go again soon! Yaay!

  

 

Rantau Abang : An orange on the beach

I thought it was pretty exciting to find an orange among the broken shells on the beach. I'd never seen that before and this was long before Chinese New Year

The two week long Chinese New Year celebration (Feb 14 - Feb 28) is now officially over, but I only remembered this picture today. Should have remembered earlier. Darn.

There's a tradition among the Chinese single women (not sure if it's a Malaysian thing or an all over the world thing) to throw oranges into the sea (or any body of water) during Chinese Valentines (15th day of the Chinese New Year) in order that their future husband might pick up their orange.

Oh, but before they throw their orange into the water, they write their phone number onto the fruit. Oh, and the men will be right there, waiting to catch the orange of the woman they fancy. Make that orangeS and women. Using nets too to catch as many oranges as they can!

I think it's such a cute tradition. I think we Asians have so many cute traditions. :)

Anyway, so I'm wondering if this was such an orange. Only, it wasn't the right time then. And there was no ink on the orange either. Hmm, it could be someone who couldn't wait two more weeks! Perhaps.

I think next (Chinese) Valentine's I might throw an orange into a lake. :)


More skywatch images here .
 
  

 

Pink under the sun

 

Whenever we are on the East Coast, we always make it a point to have lunch or dinner at this place. It's a wonderful little place, where the proprietress is a lovely friendly Chinese lady, and the waitress a sweet sweet friendly Malay girl who remembered me when I went for the second time! She couldn't remember my travelling buddy though. Haha.

Aphid in Butterfly Park, Kuala Lumpur

 

Caught in Butterfly Park, Kuala Lumpur!! A giant aphid on a heliconia! A gigantonomous aphid for sure!! Never seen any that size before, but then again, why am I surprised. I saw some huge huge Atlas Moths not too long ago in the same park!!!  Not sure what the park keepers are doing right... or wrong... maybe seriously wrong...!!

Nevertheless, it was beautiful to behold, so white, and so fine, all the pointy things, feelers I guess, moving in slow motion, as if underwater. Alien-like even. 

   

Patrick Starfish

(one of) My favourite cartoons reincarnated as a flower. This beauty can be found (in abundance) in Cameron Highlands (at the Boh Tea Plantations)

Fact trivia : Starfishes are one of those animals without a true brain.

 

Nature on Love

I love the innocuous way that nature sometimes employs to surprise me. Cheeky, cheeky!

Found this leaf on the sands of a pretty little cove in the Teluk Bidara area. A stranger among pebbles, broken shells, and polished pieces of glass.  A lovely little imperfectly almost perfect leaf. Not caring that it might be out of place. Making a statement in its own right.

Perfection? Not. Perfect!

The Blue Lotus

Wandering around someone's garden while waiting for a friend, I found this gorgeous flower! Lucky break for me!

The little bee was struggling to get nectar? I don't know but I made sure to get my camera quickly and capture the moment!

I love the title to this post too - The Blue Lotus - one of the titles from the Tintin series - my favourite comic book hero! Woot!

Coconut!

I love coconut!

Except in the milk form. It allegedly does things in your arterial system and makes you susceptible to all sorts of nasty medical conditions.  Yekk.

So I was so shocked when a friend told me his niece drinks coconut milk as a beverage. What! Like omigod. Why?

Falling in love with...

 

... Frangis!!

Found and fell in love with the white frangipanis in Rantau Abang.

There's a place in Rantau Abang that we always stay at. The guy who keeps the place is such a workaholic, he leaves the place spotless! Sterile almost! But one evening he wasn't quick enough, so I went snap happy!!

Oh, did I mention? I have a new camera and it takes pictures like a dream! Am so loving it. Pardon my McDonalds.

Wat Photivihan, Kelantan - the tale of the purple mangosteen

 

Welcome to the home of the largets reclining Buddha in Southeast Asia!

The second wat we saw in Kelantan was Wat Photivihan. Totally different from Wat Pracacinaram, and again different from the next two wats we were fated to see later the same day. I like this wat for the different trees growing in the compound. This one I'm standing under is a mangosteen tree. There is even a cocoa tree nearby.

Before anyone thinks I am an expert fruit tree person, let me set the facts straight. I DO NOT know my trees, except for rambutans, durians, mango and banana trees. I dont think I can name anymore. Maybe they'll come to me after I'm done writing this piece. It's always like that isn't it. :)

So I'm standing under this tree for shade, trying to make a meaningful picture out of the combination of concrete seats and over-manicured tree. As soon as I clicked on the click button, something dropped onto the ground next to me. I was creeped out of course. I looked down. A dark round thing rolled to my feet. I got really creeped out. I looked up the tree. Nothing out of the ordinary. I looked down again at the dark round thing. Then I saw that it was a mangosteen. Hmm. I should have taken a picture of the fruit. But as I said, I was creeped out. Who remembers anything when they're creeped out except to get away as far as possible as quickly as possible from the creepy place?

Anyway, creeped out as I was, I picked the fruit up. Looked up at the tree. It seemed to smile at me. I smiled back and said thank you. And walked quickly away.

I looked for my travel buddy. He was busy taking pictures. I decided not to bug him and took some more pictures on my own.

Afterwards, when we got into the car, I showed him the mangosteen. I said if I ate it, it would be the freshest ever mangosteen I'd ever eaten in my entire life. Would you like to have some? He shook his head. I said, but what if it were cursed or something? You eat some too, so that at least if we died or something, we'd die together or at least have dysentry together.

So he ate a wedge. And I ate the rest.

To this day, we have not experienced any adverse effects from it.

Phew.

A white antrium in Cameron Highlands

This fly spent some time on this white antrium, allowing me to experiment and re-experiment (taking pictures). What a lucky break (for me).

Princess Frangipani

Frangi baby

Frangipanis in Putrajaya.

A Lotus and a Dragonfly

I frequent the Butterfly Park in Kuala Lumpur just because... :)

Cameron Highlands - the local flora!

This is a close-up of tea leaves before harvest.

I had, for the longest time wanted to go to Cameron Highlands. Think 15 years. Haha.

Each time I wanted to go, there was always something or other that got in the way!

So, last weekend (Friday 13th to be sure!) I arrived in CH! At long last!

I was surprised for one, at how bustling it was. I suppose I had always imagined CH to be quieter... in an English country-side kind of way. What I found instead was something busier and bigger. Not in a bad kind of way though.

I'm glad I came when I came. Before it gets too big, too commercial, too not-so-quaint anymore.

There is even a Starbucks on main street! And I got two bags of used coffee-beans to use as fertiliser! Haha. They were giving away bags and bags of them. For free. What a great idea.

We drove to the Boh Tea Plantation early Saturday morning;

1. for a spot of tea. Nah, not really. We'd had breakfast in town and were still quite full.
 
2. because that's what one does when one is in CH... it's one of those you haven't been to the place if you havent done such and such kind of thing.
 
3. to take pictures! yes! oodles and oodles of them!  Tea plantations are so scenic! Unfortunately, none of my scenery pictures came out nice enough to show on here. Point and click you know. And the weather wasn't too kind for that kind of camera. I am so jealous of my travelling partner. He and his camera make no less than stunning pictures!
 
Here are some flowers that caught my eye.
 

 

A flower that looks like it would be equally at home on a wet sandy beach or at the bottom of the sea in a place called Bikini Bottom! And I christen this flower Patrick :)

A georgeous lone pink rose! So pretty that all the day's light decided to focus their attention on it.

A fly decided to pose for a bit because the white of this Anthrium showed his glossy black off perfectly. Well, my point and click can only do so much...

This georgeous thing flirted shamelessly. Take my picture! Take my picture! She said. What else could I do? But submit to her demands.

This is how Patrick looks like profile view.

I couldn't decide which picture of this red flower I like best, so I decided to put both up.

These both wanted to be posted. :)

Phew! This is the fifth time I'm editing this post. Can't seem to get the positions of the last four pictures right :(

Whatever comes out, I'm not going to fuss anymore :)

Cherating again. What makes a place special?

The five senses are a powerful thing.

We were in Cherating again last month. Not that I'm crazy about Cherating. So why Cherating again? Memories maybe? From something you saw? felt? heard? smelt? tasted? :) And then it stays with you. Hopefully forever :)

The day before, I had looked up at the evening sky. It was changing colours and I wanted to capture the colours in my mind and archive them there. I laid on the sand, and looked and looked and looked. And I thought of M&M's and lipsticks and rainbows. We ended up with wet clothes and hair! I didn't really care :) Sigh. The joy of abandonment...



The morning was bright as a day usually is when I'm out by the beach (maybe it's all in my head :) ) and we laid for a bit, got bored of lying down, and decided to walk down the beach. And found a river mouth! Seems like the beaches here have a tendency to do that! No miles and miles of sand, but always meeting a river mouth somewhere 200-300m further up or down!

Interesting stuff we saw along the beach.

A piece of wood that didn't want to be ordinary...

A flower that probably birthed a future gigantonomous tree destined to delight visually...

A jellyfish that decided to take a short break on our beaches en route to a more exotic beach beyond alpha centauri!!

We stayed at this cute little place, an arrangement of wooden houses. Ranting Inn. It must have been there for awhile. The bougainvilleas are huge trees! Well maybe I exagerate a little. Haha. But the ones growing here are no petite bushes.

There's a pond a little way back inside the compound, and it looks georgeous but probably not a good idea to stay in the houses in the immediate vicinity!! Mosquitoes you know...

green trip!

Made a trip out to Sg Buloh this afternoon!! It's always nice to visit the nurseries there, so much green, reds, yellows, purples, pinks, oranges! I must bring Sara one day! And Iman and Noah (if I can convince them it's better than internet or the movies! haha)


Anthriums!!!!

miscellaneous green stuff!

fir variety!!


Ixoras!!! but they're a slightly different sub-species, longer leaves, longer flower stems too!


cacti!!

more cacti!!!!

orchids orchids orchids

Sneaked (hmm.. or is it snuck?? anyway...) away for a longer lunch than usual some 2 3 weeks ago to look at orchids 20 minutes away from work at the edge of KL!!

I should qualify that I dont normally do this (sneaking away stuff) but it was a welcome change to staring at two white (plaster) walls and a glass one 8 hours of the day.. (oh, and I forget... the computer screen)

For those not in the know(poor you), the park is on this little hill opposite the bird park (at the edge of KL). That's the path leading up to the top of the hill... not quite as strenuous as going up Mt Kinabalu!! Hardly broke a sweat, and bonus! It was a pleasant afternoon... not too hot, a breeze that came and went and a little drizzle that daren't turn into a terrific thunderstorm while I was out there.
I can't remember if my mom had an orchid like this, but it reminded me of her anyway.

I think she had some like these.

I know she had these!!! I remember asking her for some from her garden to bring to class so I could be teacher's pet (thats me learning how to suck up at a young age, oh yes, gaining teacher points was big at the time)

I dont think mom had these.
I know she had these or something that looked very very similiar to these!

Pitcher plants!! Only we called them Monkey Cup... I only started calling them pitcher plants after I learnt to read. We used to live next to this rambling secondary tropical forest and there were many many pitcher plants growing there. I remember looking into the cavities to watch ants trapped inside trying frantically to escape those unforgiving walls (not too dissimiliar from an action-packed scene from a b-movie minus the sound effects)

More orchids on the way back to the car.

Can you see the red dragonfly just right of center? I have to learn about composition and focus and lighting and ...

Hmm.. I should do this more often!