Jungle Jewels

So we went to the birdpark yesterday, as is obvious from my earlier post. An enjoyable time, though walking up and down the hills was a chore! We spent 6 hours there fortified by homemade samball/tuna sandwiches, we didnt even have lunch!
Aside from some enclosures where you have to shoot through bars, the birdpark is opening up alot of areas for free flight. They seem to have moved away from the old small cage format to a more natural setting, which is a good thing. Anyway after the birdpark we went back to my mums place, bought dinner for TLOML which we dropped off then we went to tampines mall for thai food. I came home, went to the shop to get milk, settled stuff around the house, did a bit of bloggin and was ready for bed at midnight, i am getting to old for these long days and late nights!
Gripe of the day----Another tourist attraction that always seems to be under renovation.
Moment of the day----(for me) when the parrot landed on my bag and started to nibble the back of my head!
Line of the day-----(same moment) OUCH!!
All pics have been reduced in size to 25% of the original.

THE BIRDS!!

Just some pics i thought were interesting. Taken at the birdpark today. People pic will be uploaded tom, and i shall write more as well. Not the best of the shots but i thought the most interesting .
Pics have been edited.

Babys....all of them

a picture of little 4 month old baby simon
ITS SUNDAY! Wasnt that quick...the 18th of dec 2005. a week till christmas. Yesterday was a long long long day. The start was good as was the end but in between it was work as always. TLOML and i went for a doctors appointment yesterday. Just another of those regular check ups, we thought we mind find out the sex of the baby but the fella didnt want to open his/her legs so it was a no go. All is well as far a s the pregnancy goes, another 5 months and pop the little tyke will be free of its watery confines. Anyway our doctor is also the doctor that delivered my sis in law Tuffy 27years ago to the day yesterday.I have no pic of tuff on my comp! shocker!

HappI Birthday TUFF TUFF!

From gleneagles i had to dash back to work as we had our christmas thingy going on there last night. IT all went off without according to von smallhausens plan which of course meant that what could go wrong did. Sometimes i dont know why these people just dont follow instructions and all will be fine but oh no everyone needs to shine on a night like this, i wish i didnt even have to go. the damn thing ended around 930PM!!!
From work i flew(flew thats what i said) down to bedok res for tuffys hatching day party, a nice couple of hours and it was back home to sleep.
I woke up at 7 this morning, god i wish i could sleep in but als it was not to be today. I am off to the birdpark with the Machado's and the Dyers. I will confess to being very very tired today but as i do like birds and ..it is family so i shall raise my weary almost carcas and prepare for out little excursion.

Bungalow 14

Today was a pretty busy day, some friends and co-workers had a chalet and I went down after work. The back-story to this is that TLOML booked it but for whatever reason we had to find someone to use it or she would lose her deposit. The gang stepped in and took over the chalet and we had a good time, cooking and talking. The group chat is one thing I love. One of my favourite lines is "its all about the conversation". Its one of my favourite things, talking to people I like, doesn’t have to be all politics and religion it could be our shared history or stories about stuff they did when they were young or even yesterday. . Try it, turn the TV off get the kids together sit and listen as we share old war stories(and some new ones), who knows you too might just enjoy yourself as I did tonight. (as you can see below i took more pics of the grounds than of people!) Thanks Richard, Jaz and Mark for sorting everything out!

You may notice I changed the video from creed to red hot chili peppers..this song to me is one of my all time favourite songs, the boys and I mean a couple of batches ago and I would sing this at the top of our voices. We used to get the words all wrong and the verses mixed up but our angst more then made up for it , doesn’t really reflect my life or how I feel now, but those days when I or rather we all felt lonely even in a crowd. ....."its hard to believe that there's nobody out there its hard to believe that I’m all alone" looking back from where I sit now, its hard to believe that I felt that way at all.
Today before I log off I wish for you and your family a good, peaceful, joy and laughter filled day.

Evolution of a blog and its blogger

I started blogging for the first time only 6 months ago, according to my archives that is. It feels alot longer, the strange thing is that when i go back and read my earlier post i sometimes wonder did i write that? I am not known for my writting skills and my blog isnt the most exciting one in town lol . Some of my post include rants against State sanctioned executions while others have been nothing more then pics taken at lunch time. Originally i did know if there was a direction to my blog and after a scant 6months i realise that there isnt. I ramble along putting bits of my life on screen for people to read, does it give a slanted picture of me? Does it matter? Not one bit. I find blogging very calming and i think the people i encourage to blog are enjoying themselves too. My favourite part of blogging is the pictures, i enjoy taking pictures and posting them here, of course i realise that most people dont really bother with them (I find that people respond more when there are pics of them or the post is about them ).The other thing i enjoy are the comments, which are few and far between lol just goes to show how many peole actually read my blog, does it disappoint me that so few wander in here? heck no..i am suprised that even 1 person bothers!!and if no one came in here and read my rambling rants or saw my photography, i would still continue..the blog is a form of expression, artistic, politcal, personal, social it can and is all these things to me and that is what counts!

Anyway i started with a basic blog template, to which i added music, followed by my own pictures as backgrounds(they do change just not often) and now i have added a music video window courtesy of the fine folks at freevideocodes.com...will i change things? sure i will, will you like it?

The week gone by

What a busy week. I shall focus only on the good for this post!
During the week we had TLOMLs cousins drop by, for a short visit. Although a short visit it was an enjoyable one none the less!
After that we went to Ikea to pick up some Christmas stuff with Mum, Alison and the 3 kids. I was a little disappointed with Ikea’s Christmas stuff I found it pretty poor in relation to what they normally have, so we did not pick up a live tree as all the live trees looked terrible. We left Ikea and popped down to the John Littles sale at the Singapore expo, I got lots of new stuff (thanks honey) although they too had a drought of Christmas goodies. All in all I enjoyed our little outing although it may have run abit long. We were really tired by the time we got home.
Saturday was the return of the sisters day and after work I went to mummy’s house for lunch, My sister Jocelyn and hubby Scott had arrived at some ungodly hour of the morning after an 18hr flight! I can barely take 1hr on the bus! The horror the horror. After a pleasant lunch I made my way to bedok res where Tuffy and her beau Jamie were(along with another lovely meal), for those that don’t know Tuffy is TLOML’s sister. ( I shall not blog too much on these two arrivals as my wife and sister shall be doing it all)
Today was a really long day for some reason or other I woke up at 530, looked out my window and saw it was raining. Terrific a nice morning of photography (at kahtib bongsu) was cancelled or rather delayed with an sms to Philip. I tried to get back to sleep. It was not to be, there was no second wind and I tried a bit of reading and wondered around my empty home(TLOML and fatty were staying and the doomil mansion) till around 730 when the rain had slowed to a drizzle and off we went. Philip got some good shots of kingfishers with his new zoom lense while I sat and watched ….sigh for a 300mm my kingdom for a 300mm . Not much in the way for other bird life but kahtib bongsu is an interesting place to go to. I am sure I will make a return trek.
Once again we went back to my mums house for a great pepper crab lunch, and of course they decided to play scrabble….i politely declined to participate and helped out from the sidelines…it was a lot safer. Anyway just a simple post with lots of pics today…maybe I will elaborate tomorrow . (All pics are reduced to around 25% of the original size. Typos should be forwarded to bill gates care of mircosoft)

Little friends

I took the kingfisher using philips Sony camera










Just some little friends from kahtib bongsu.

Of course i get stressed.

Today i was told by a friend of a friend that I seem to be the happiest person around and dont have a care in the world, she gets this from reading my blog. i guess from reading my blog it can be assumed that all is grand and life is rosy, but alas it is not always so. Like everyone i have problems, money or the lack of it, work and the TOXIC people that i am forced to be around there. Health my constant worry about TLOML and the baby, family. I have unhappy days or rather unhappy moments like anyone else. I have stress, maybe i dont show it as much as other people but its there this constant naggin feeling that this whole thing is going to come crashing down.
Take for example office politics, in an office of four people you wouldnt belive the politics that is going on, i do my best to stay out of it becuase there is no purpose..its not like i am going to get a pay raise from it so why bother. But these fools feel the need to lie and spread rumours about everyone, example "that guy is on the take" or "that guy is tryign to steal my job" when all i want to do is work, get paid and go home to where my life begins. my life is not centered around my job. IT is a job. My life is centered around my family, my friends. By trying my best to live to that motto i realise that i must give my ALL to my Family and Friends not to my job, i do work hard and i do it well BUT that is not the most important thing to me. Thus alot of the work related stress seems to not matter so much, it does bother me but not as much as it used to. Things like am i the best staff in the company or am i selling enough of my soul so that the bosses can get more profits...they dont seem so urgent anymore. If my job required me to travel i would, if it meant that my office hours are 8 to 8 dialy so be it. But once the clock is off then i am gone and dont expect me to stay behind to cover your ass. When i die i want ot be able to say i spent all my time with family and friends NOT WORK. So thats how i deal with work stress.

Another thing that helps lot i find is my blog, it allows me to rant and rave but it also helps me focus on the good things that happened in the day or during the week. Because i want my blog to be a positive one i try and focus on the good things, like my dog in joyus raptue eating her bone, or my family playing scrabble together or even on my photography(someone told me my nature shots are ok but i need help with composition in the rest) which i really enjoy doing. I encourage everyone to have a blog, it is a great destresser. Most of the peopel that come in here dont even read my extra long rants but hey at least i know i have a venue to vent without anyone else being forced to listen.

With more then 10 hours a day including transport time taken up by work, at least 8hrs a day taken up by sleep that leaves less then 6 hours a week day on average to be with loved ones and friends or doing the things u love. 6 hours. Thats why if i could, every weekend would be a family weekend out doing something, Anything, but with family or friends. To me thats the best destresser of them all.

1 YEAR OLD TOM

HAPPY BIRTYDAY!
ZORRO & PEPPER