Where're All The Frogs And Beetles?

I remembered when I was waaayy younger, back in the early 80s, I used to see a lot of insects or amphibians coming into my late maternal granny's house in Penang and paternal grandparents place in Teluk Intan. Insects like dragonflies, green shiny beetles the size of a 20 cent coins, horn beetles, butterflies, moths or even toads and frogs would on more than one occasion came visiting the houses, uninvited of course. Heck, there will even be a local tortoise or turtles came a knockin once in a while. The best time would be in Ipoh, where I would go on bicycle trips with neighbours to "hunt" for grasshoppers, tadpoles and guppies "longkang". In Teluk Intan, where the grandparents house is perched just right beside Bidor River, cousins and myself would catch mangroove crabs, "udang galahs" the size of a 12 inch ruler, with the occasional misfortune of snaring a terrapin instead of river carps (or worse still, irresponsible act of dirtying the river - used condoms). During the rising tide, where the water comes into nearly a quarter of the backyard, I could observed archer fishes, puffers, as well as even river snakes and monitors. I guessed I just missed all these stuffs...I reckoned Chloe and Dylan's stories would be very much different from mine...but hey, there would always be one of those exotic pets or aquariums where they could observe "nature" from a a safer distance.

Monkey Cups...Restart.

Esther wasn't all that please that I threw away on what's left of the nepenthes and saracenia...she practically asked me to "pick" it up from the drain in the front porch and replant them...Anyhoo, I had contacted Fauzi on re-acquiring some new plants and will pick it up from him tomorrow at Subang Parade.

William L. Shirer's The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

Another tome which I revisited during my leave from work, is William Shirer's The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. This book is introduced to me by a Uni mate back in the mid 90s. History can be quite dry, but Shirer managed to write it in ways that the entire beginning and eventual fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany chronicles read like a thriller. With tons of factual infos on real life subjects, their thoughts and the events leading to WW2 and its aftermath, I practically could not let go of the book. The best is the early chapters on how did Hitler and the Nazi Party managed to become the absolute authoritarian in Germany and why and what made a nation gave its fate to the hands of a group of nationalistic, racist extremists. The political manuverings and back handed negotiations, like between Joseph Stalin and Hitler, also made a very good reading. The most harrowing is of course when the Nazis planned and implemented the Final Solution.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four & Animal Farm

"All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others" ~ Animal Farm (1945).

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June, 1903 – 21 January, 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell whose work is marked by a profound consciousness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism. He is also the author of two of my favourite books, Nineteen Eighty Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945), which of course, are also about totalitarian in general. To recap, I got to "know" Nineteen Eighty Four from the movie adaptation starring John Hurt and the late Sir Richard Burton, back in the late 80s, when RTM wasn't so restrictive in its choice of programmes and movies. Co-incidentally, I stumbled upon Animal Farm whilst searching for Nineteen Eighty Four in the local bookstore. Whilst Animal Farm dealt with the corruptions of individuals if absolute powers were to be "given" and "rest" in the hands of the few, and ultimately about why Marxism would not work in practise, Nineteen Eighty Four is about what the world and society would be like, in theory, if it was totally under the control of such extreme socio politcal ideology, seen from the eye of the protoganist, William Smith. More importantly, these books asked to rethink about individualism vs group think (this famous words come from Nineteen Eighty Four), absolute conformity, and the danger of human greed, corruption in moral principles.

Monkey Cups...Disaster

Disaster struck my nepenthes today. A combination of heavy torrential rains and a hungry Leo wiped out all three of my plants - Hookerania, Rafflesiana and Bicalcarata....sigh. Looks like I will have to start from sratch again...The Sarracenia is "gone" too..but due to inexperience I reckon...no new sprouts, the existing pitchers just turned brown and wrinkly...

Dylan...pics.

Pics of Dylan, Chloe and some of their toys...Chloe nearly stab me in the neck with the scissor when I attempted to take it away from her...just kidding....the scissor was bought specially to clip the nails of both precious. The edge of the scissor is blunt, not sharpish as normal ones...Dylan's raspy voice has gotten better, perhaps thanks to mom's secret formula of introducing diluted finely blended green apples...however, Esther and I were scared that this may cause another problem..diarrhea...but so far, everything seemed fine.

Suet Nee.

Pics of Suet Nee, sister of Suetch, both nieces and Chloe, Suetch playing with waters again at sister's Puchong home. Have been dropping by my sister's place for past few weeks for dinner since mom's cooking.

Monkey Cups...Fishy Granules

Fed some fish granules to my pitcher plants last night...just a little experiment to see how things grow...