Hospital......boots....

The patient, smiling as always. went down to visit him again today, once again Mark and Frodo went with me but this time we had another guest, brad from oz, yes folks the fletcher is back in town for the wedding this saturday. Anyway back to the patient, looks in good shape he will be undergoing some test tom but he hopes to be out tom evening. From what we all thought was a little bruise to almost 4 months of recovery and back to the hospital, tough run this fella is having.
Frodo, and Mark another two hard working boys who always seem to have bad luck.


And here he is my ex altar boy gone reggae ozzie boy, good to have this one back for abit even if its just 7days.... the new boots are here....a bitter sweet day. I guess its time to retire the old buggers, they have served me well as i have saidbefore..30months of total abuse if you compare the soles of the old and the new you will see the difference.
Brad got two pairs for me, a black and a brown..get those tom..whoo hoo/boo hoo.

missing in action ...the poor sole

The Buck Protege..

While trying to cut some nylon cord i found myself struggling, the knife just doesnt cut as well as it used too...mostly my fault. After three years of use and abuse, cutting rope, cable and wire..slashing bush and branch..even the odd birthday cake, i find the blade that has served me so well..buggered. I have never sharpened it, and although i doubt that it will help i shall give it a try...The Buck Protege..soon to rest in peace







Have a look at the damaged blade, pits like craters on the moon
I reckon its time to retire the old fella and find myself a new one..

0ne hour in the park, and The Indian Patient

In a one hour period i must have seen over 10 of these lizards up some pretty low trees, thats a record for me.
This also shows how fast and well an introduced species can adapt and multiply in a new environment, these lizards were introduced in the 80's and now they are all over the place
Changeable Lizard






The Collared Kingfisher----this pic isnt very good but as i am a fan of kingfishers .......











Went to visit young Sherwin(the indian patient as opposed to the english patient) in the hospital, after visiting hours u need to obtain a visitor pass from the security counter, they didnt really check anything and i think it was more for show then anything else. Anyhooo the patient was in ward 26 bed 17 (for those of you who are 4d fans..) and when i strolled into his room our friend was eating a RAMLI burger!! smuggled in by his other partners in crime, so far no updates on his condition other then they did a bit of an op and he has to lay up for abit.

the weirdest post yet

I am sure some of you will be wondering about the choice of song lol but hey i am eclectic when it comes to music. and i am sure right about now your thinking this guys is either a wallace and gromit wannabe or has too much free time and more than abit of plasticine, well its the latter! Dont worry folks i am not going all soft on ya, in order to strike a balance i have posted a pic of my if i do say so myself rather manly belt buckle........ lol..

odds and ends at rivervale

Took some pics today, odds and ends.
Busy day today, the temp clerk to replace my perm clerk is on mc, the attachement girl is on leave so we have another attachment student here today. I spent most of the day outside the office, checking for defects and spot checking the staff, had a late lunch (a hotdog from the bakery) today..still not feeling 100% but hey i am better off then Sherwin who is in hospital! The wound on his leg was a source of concern and the doctors did a bit of an op on him last night, so after work i shall swing by to see how he is doing.

Had a rough night last night, couldnt get to sleep and finally conked off around 3am, instead of laying there in the dark i decided to read a book i got off sherwin, "I could never be so lucky again" by Gen Doolittle, the guy who lead the first bombing rai over Tokyo during world war 2, its a pretty good book and i read it cover to cover by the time i reached the last two chapters i couldnt open my eyes and thank god for that. my normal knock out hour over the past couple of months has been around pretty early around 1 or 130am i still try and read a couple of pages before i sleep , its a habit i picked up as a child and until today scattered around the area i sleep you will find and assortment of readers digest, national geographic and a couple of books( i try and read two or three books at the same time, so one book is for bed, one for office, one for meals that kinda thing). dont know if its a good or bad habit, i do know it hasnt helped my spelling so if you find any errors or typos..as i have said not nearly often enough..i dont want to know hehe............hope everyone is doing well!
PS...TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF THE WHITE BACKGROUND AS OPPOSED TO THE OLD BLACK

easy come easy go......

so i did it, i sold my new toy...the canon ef70-300mm III..i just wasnt satisfied with the performance of the lense, i wasntgetinng sharp pics, at first i thought it was me with my bloody hands shaking, then i thouthg it was the flimsy tripod at work but when i used my own very stable tripod i found the results the same bah. its back to the old 18-55 for me, at least i didnt loose anything, i want to test drive another of these lenses to see if the problem was just that lense. These are two pics i took with the lense, i had to sharpen them up on paintshop....sigh the sparrow would have been a good shot......cest la vie. like a fisherman i shall tell tales of the one that got away.

Some Shots

A couple of shots from pongol park Eurasian Sparrow, Yellow bittern, Batik Golden Web Spider,Multi-coloured St Andrew's Cross Spider( i think).....

one small step for photographers, one giant leap for me

Got myself a new toy, a canon ef75-300 III lense and boy oh boy did i get a great deal! anyway i havent had a chance to really play with it but i did take one shot.I have cropped it for space reasons, no pun intended.

Just some Pics

Click on them to get a bigger pic, if u want the maximum pic size you cant get it lol unless u ask real nice.

Godma

My baptismal godmother/aunty and uncle came down to visit and as the pics will show a good time was had by all. My Aunty Henrietta and Uncle Wilson have been coming down yearly from england where they stay and we always try and get together and this time we had dinner at my mums place. I love hearing about stuff from before i was born, stories bout my father, grandmother and many other members of our extended family, she happens to be my dads youngest sister as well.
The best part of the whole thing is that they have been married for 48years!! can u imagine 48years and they still look like a teenage couple!

Return To Pongol Park...(click the pics..they grow)

UPDATE 071005 -Daylight flying moth is what the orange butterfly is called.
Spent my lunch time at pongol park today, something i havent done for some time. The sky was overcast, even after the clouds had dumped a ton of rain of sengkang they still looked like that had more to drop. The humidity was crazy, was sweatin like a hog i tell ya..anyway took lots of pics, pretty average for me i guess some of the shots i have posted are not very good at all esp the the green fly like insect but i just wanted to show you all what i saw today. This orange type insect is pretty common but for the life of me i couldnt tell ya what its called, so if anyone knows please drop me a message. had to drop to one knee for the pic and one pic is all i had of it.






I know, i know ...not another fly..but hey these guys are everywhere look at the design, this fella has break lights and all.
Not my fav insect but at lest this fella sat still while i fumbled around trying to take a shot..the ferrari of insects..

This guy is just stunning, the pic sucks its blurred at all the key points, but i just wanted yo uto see the clrs, looks like it was airbrushed.... and the wings. really beautiful....alas it has no name and for now shall be called the green fly....





Found a couple of apple snails at the edge of the pond, something i have never seen before, i love apple snails, i keep a couple of them as pets for some time..not the most exciting of pets though but beautiful to watch as they glide along the glass of a fish tank. I was rather tempted to keep take a couple and keep them as pets but....i think Pepper aka fatty would be jealous...
Just did a bit of research and found out what apple snail eggs look like! i saw tons of them, the next time i go i will take lots of pics!






With all the rain we have been having the water level in the pond has risen
almost 2 feet over the past week or so and i think the snails
are using this opportunity to feed in areas that they dont
normally wander around(can you see the little blob?)

Not far from the apple snails i came across the carapce of a turtle, actually it was more like the scutes of the carapace it was really thin. and it was lying really near the waters edge.



the inside of the carapace...looks like its just the scutes and not the whole top shell i found(some turtles do shed abit ..but nothing like this)




about 10feet away from the scutes i found the Plastron and it was totally cleaned out of any bits of turtle flesh, about 7 inches long, no idea how the turtle died..maybe old age...maybe a fish bit its head off or a bird pecked it to death....i dunno how it died but i do know what was feeding on it...


Varanus salvator- Commonly known as the malayan water monitor. This bugger was lying in in the shallows..hidden by the reeds Around where i found the turtle shell was an excellent place for this big reptile to take shelter and feed peacefully and should anyone come stumbling along it would would only need to turn around and it could disappear into the water. Great spot for it to sun itself as well, which it needs to do to help digest its food. I saw 3 monitors in the space of 100m and this was the biggest, around 1.5m(no where close to the giants i have seen at sungei buloh) and looked pretty fat. The other two i saw were smaller maybe 1m and pretty skinny. Male or female? i dunno, these guys are great scavangers but also know for being adept swimmers and tree climbers, i reckon they do get the odd fish or chick and bird eggs or even a turtle once in awhile....come to think of it i didnt see any live turtles.....hmmmm



Any typos and or spelling errors are in your imagination.
pics have been resized for posting purposes, if you click on them they get bigger but you still wont get the full sized pic.

Boyo's big day

Sunday the 2nd of OCT was Baba's First Communion, for those of you who dont know baba is my nephew. We had a lovely day first mass @ Holy Trinity..(where i had a coney dog) followed by a nice lunch at my mums place where we had naan...prob the last naan for sometime as the shop is closing down. As is our normal pattern after unch we went to pasir ris farmway to look at puppies! as always we each had our own favourites .
Anyway as i was saying BABA=PHILIP=BOYO and as is custom at the age of 9 he had to have his first holy communion, when asked how tasted he asnwered "it was nicer then the unblessed one we tried before"
The first pic is of the big fella himself and though i took many posed shots i found this one which was off the cuff to have captured his happy go lucky style.
I have also added some pics of the star with the family, nanny and me..the one with me reminds me of the game othello.
Also there was karen de souza and her little daughter, unfortunately they came after we took the pictures and i was too lazy to take anymore

Nanny made a lovely choc cake and karen brought a cake as well....Michael seemed to be the happiest and he went at his slice with gusto..leaving a trail of cake crumbs all over the place, he enjoyed his cake thats for sure!
.

shadows in pink

i used to think that all a guy needed was a good smoke and a smile was all a guy needed..but having a great partner is all i need and i am lucky that we found each other.tloml