This party is undead

Was commissioned to shoot the zombie post-run afterparty. I am terrible with flash guns.  Am also half deaf. But it was a pretty good learning experience overall! (:

Billy Joel - The Longest Time

This is what a love ballad should be. Being inspired by people, and rediscovering that hey, you are okay after all. (:

The frontline of climate change

This is pretty ingenious. Using relatable everyday figures of authority, capitalizing on a recent disaster that all of Australia knows and condensing all this into a running and awareness event; my god, the Australians have got it.

Forget not our living forest

This Longhorn beetle is pretending to be an ant nodule.

Someone once told me that "Rainforests are a perfect picture of decay and life, and that is what really differentiates a forest from a garden."

This is a living parachute... I mean colugo. 

I went on a walk along McRitchie reservoir with the NUS Toddycats yesterday, and my goodness, it was quite an eye opener. Before this walk, I had only been to the treetop trail and along the main reservoir itself so going on this Venus drive loop was quite fun. The Toddycats are a cool group and they have quite a few stories to tell. Its pretty heartening to hear the two little kids who were with us eagerly rush forward screaming "STORY! STORY!" whenever our guides found something interesting. While I normally disapprove of screaming children, I think I would rather have them be a nuisance and learn something rather than just be nuisances and be dunces.  

NEED. TO. PRACTISE. MORE. MACRO.

There are certainly more animals and insects to be seen along this trail. The foliage is a lot denser and is more mature, and there is a pretty good distribution of fig trees and rotten logs along this loop. I was quite surprised to actually see many of the larger animals; my tour group was not the quietest. But in addition to the skink, colugo, and copper cheeked tree frog, we also saw tiger shrikes, a drongo, a slender tree squirrel, and some puddle frogs (which are the most adorable things ever) so it was overall a pretty fruitful biodiversity walk!

Flatworms are so WEIRD. 

But as usual, its a bit sad to hear that like Bukit Brown, the MacRitchie forest is also under attack from the monster called development. The government wants to put an MRT line right through the heart of the forest, fragmenting it. If you want to be a troublemaker, enjoy protesting, or actually give two hoots about the development, you can read up on the proposed cross-island line and why its a terrible idea here  and petition against it here.

"The forest of MacRitchie... IS UNDER ATTACK!"  Instead of having a godzilla-sized skink attack Singapore, maybe we should let him save the day?

 I think if I ever get the chance, I would like to try and do a research paper about stories and conservation. If there is one thing that I've learnt the past few semesters is that stories are very important... so perhaps when I can get my head around the concept properly I can refer to some of my own experiences here on this blog. I mean, making comics and taking photos are one way to tell a story, and one of the driving forces behind getting people on board for conservation can be said to be stories. Hmm... conservation comics. That may be a good holiday project to pursue.

"goodnight, sweet prince."

Happy fake weekday everybody

Everyone should read Nerdfitness. Its a pretty cool site for motivation, fitness, health, and goal setting in general. I've been following their Paleo Diet (EAT LIKE A CAVEMAN RAWR) for about two weeks now and I've lost a kilo and a half already!

Today's post was supposed to be about birdwatching at bukit brown but it stormed like heck so I slept until noon instead. I then spent the rest of the day reading an actual book instead of digital PDF readings. It was nice. 

Forgotten places.

Went to bukit brown with my classmates today as part of a student-organised field trip. The place is pretty cool. Turns out bukit brown is both the largest and the most 'populated' Chinese graveyard outside of china; the place is 3 times the size of botanic gardens and has an estimated 100,000 tombs. A lot of these graves date back to even before Raffles even landed on Singapore, and it is the final resting place of many interesting people, including the 71st descendent of Confucius, Singapore's first western-medicine certified female doctor, Mr. Gan Eng Seng (the founder of Gan eng Seng secondary school) and the grandfather of the our most famous Singaporean to date, Lee Kuan Yew.

This isnt the grave of Confucius' great (x70) grandson, but its still cool. 

Up until pretty recently, most people just avoided the area since it would make a lot of horror-movie sense to stay away from massive graveyards, and was generally only frequented by the turf club, birders, ang mo joggers, and dog owners. However, after LTA announced in 2011 that they were going to put a road right through the middle of the cemetery, a lot of people took interest because all Singaporeans are kiasu and were afraid that they would miss out on something if they just bulldozed their way through it.

Of course, the horse-riders, birders, joggers and dog people had already known about how magnificent the place was. And thank goodness they raised a huge fuss about it. Bukit brown is a wonderful sanctuary for nature in addition to being an invaluable heritage site. While most of the roads are fairly well maintained, a lot of the cemetery has been taken over by pretty mature secondary forest, and as a result it looks radically different from the rest of the concrete jungle we call Singapore. 

Tomb with a view.

There are some pretty interesting insects here and a whole host of birds. I heard a woodpecker, saw a pair of nesting racquet tail drongos, and even caught a glimpse of a raptor of some sort. It wasn't even a good time for birding. My mum, dad and I may go back next tuesday at a better time to see what else may be hiding there, and I think I'll try to get some more insect photography done. 

Even though the verdict has already gone through that the road will still be built through bukit brown, I hope that we may still be able to pull a chek jawa and save the place. For all our talk about preserving heritage and being a garden city, we don't seem to really be walking the talk. I mean, bukit brown has recently just been cited as one of the World Monuments to Watch by the World Monuments fund, and it is the only place in Singapore to receive such an honour. And besides, wouldn't this be a more sensible place to generate tourism than Gardens By The Bay?

I guess in the end it will really boil down to a question of who cracks first. I personally feel that bukit brown is one of the few places in Singapore where you really can find adventure. Its wild, its chock-full of history, and most importantly, its different. Maybe its because I don't have my driving license yet, but I think I'd rather have this massive cemetery than a shorter commuting time. And besides, wouldn't the new downtown line take some pressure off the surrounding roads? So many questions, so little time. 

I read this pretty interesting article that children need to be feral to truly appreciate anything, so why not preserve places like these to set them loose in? There will of course be repercussions of losing the calming tranquillity bukit brown now has, but having a couple of screaming kids learning to keep quiet to see cool things will always be infinitely better than a constant stream of rumbling cars.  

To all my nature buff readers or friends seeking adventure, I highly recommend you swing by bukit brown to seek some solace or to sniff out some history. There are tours you can join for heritage and for nature, so why not go learn something new? It sure beats scrolling through facebook all day.

Next week I'm going for a walk along McRitchie as managed by the NUS Toddycats, so I think I'll try to churn out another photopost then. This old-fashioned bloggering sure is a lot more comprehensive than tweeting or facebooking photos, so what the hey, I'll see how far I can get with this. 

Grow Up.

Sky green farms, growing vegetables in multi story structures to match your sky-high aspirations!