I find it incredibly peaceful to be on a river and here's wishing everyone happiness, good health, wealth, joy, love and peace in 2007. May you find in on land or ... on the waters!

Labels: Life

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photo title 'Miss Chernobyl 2004' taken from http://www.tonyrogers.com

Labels: Blogging

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So on Monday morning the three of us excitedly headed to Kuala Salak; in anticipation of both.

The weather was fine but the tide time was not exactly ideal for dolphins spotting but I was just happy to be out on the waters in a double kayak. They are leaving back for Brunei tomorrow, so its today or until their next visit to Kuching. CJ sat in the middle of the 'Perception Synchro' kayak in between me and his dad.

The sea was calm and the weather was perfect and pretty soon CJ was enjoying the water and being out in the quiet bay with only the fishermen and us about. We didn't spot any dolphins and after a while we decided to check out the fishermen's catch for the day.

And the friendly fishermen were more than happy to show us their catch so far. We had brought along a cooler box on the chance that we could buy some fresh prawns back but it was still early in the day for much of a catch. CJ was fascinated with but at the same time frightened by the strange looking but delicious tasting 'udang lipan'. The taste is closer to lobster than the name 'udang' (prawn in malay) would suggest. It's a type of crayfish I think.

After about an hour and still not sighting any dolphins , my brother-in-law complained that it was too hot (for me it was just nice and warm, not to mention peaceful) and so we decided to head back.

Although CJ didn’t get to see the dolphins he was quite happy that he got to see strange sea creatures and to go kayaking with unker as he rocked the kayak from side to side and dragging his feet in the waters as we paddled back to shore!

Since he was so happy already I didn't have the heart to tell him that the dolphins were probably frightened away (temporarily only I hoped) by the activities of the sand dredgers and barges out at the mouth of the river. When would we humans ever learn to respect and care for the natural environment and the inhabitants in them? Sadly it could be never; with our greed and when we define our existence with ego, material possessions and too little of anything that is of true value and meaning. I pray that CJ's generation would be a better one than ours now is, in this regards.

Labels: Kayaking, Kuching Kayaking, Kuching Skies, Life, Rantings

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As we celebrated Christmas holiday, it was just another working day for these fishermen at Kuala Salak near Santubong in Kuching.

Labels: Kuching Kayaking, Kuching Skies, Rantings

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So 'another' Christmas is here again and I couldn't help but reflect on how fast the time seemed to have passed and I had to fight the tinge of depression I felt on how miserable the past year had been for Malaysia; what with the increase in the costs of living, racism, bailouts, corruption and hypocrisy from our political leaders (RM30M yatch anyone?) and a decline in the standards of living, morals and the hopes and dreams for a better Malaysia. I think I'd better go back to enjoying my durians the smell (or stench to others) of which is a lot more palatable and less prickly than any issues you care to address concerning the sad state of our economy and nation. *sigh*

Labels: Rantings

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Labels: Life

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After an adventurous and exciting day of kayaking at Sg. Abang yesterday, I was glad to take it easy today by just hanging around the house (and eating durians!) but I need to go out to run some errands and when I got outside I noticed these interesting clouds formations in the skies which I promptly snapped; which is timely as I had not been doing so regularly for a while now I think.

Labels: Kuching Skies

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But first we have to bring our kayaks down from the track up above and down a steep incline. That’s Azmi and Kelvin with the kayak while I’m carrying the heavy camera and paddles … *ahem*

We brought along two kayaks (one double and one single) since there were three of us. You can’t see Azmi in this picture below as he’s carrying the bow of the kayak over his head. He’s also short as well; compared to me anyway (as most people are, angmohs included).

Finally we got the kayaks and our gear down and we eagerly get ready to set out!

We got on the waters, went past under a rickety old bridge and we entered another realm ...

We heard noises and as we round the bend we saw some children whom we thought were smoking as we saw smoke but were instead playing with fire crackers! Its funny how the playing of fire crackers normally associated with Chinese New Year is now ‘adopted’ by other races celebrating all festivals!

Kelvin successfully going through the rapids and happily taking photos of us after that.

This dead small tree has fallen across the river creating an obstruction hazard so we decided to clear it.

But little do we know that more obstructions await us along the way! And this time it was bamboos – but we haven’t seen bamboos yet! More on this later ...

Though pretty to look at, bamboo can be a real hazard on the waters if one is not careful. The least of which is that you can get 'whipped' by the small overhanging ones as the water pushes your kayak through them or at the worst you can get yourself impaled by the larger jutting ones that may had snapped off. Nasty! As you can understand now, we have a lot of respect for the bamboos!

As I said, bamboos are really pretty and so I took a few snaps before we pushed off again.

End of Part 1. Adventures to be continued ... (when the author gets over the holiday seasons lethargy)

Labels: Kuching Kayaking

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I came home earlier than usual yesterday as I wanted to go for a quick paddle before dinner knowing that it would be easy to launch from the jetty as it was king tide and the high water is at 1838.

Buddy was tailing me all the while as I was getting ready and I decided to use the double kayak in case he wanted to join me kayaking; and he did much to the delight of my wife and daughter who were watching us from the timber deck!

Here are some snaps of buddy enjoying the short but delightful paddle with me.

Labels: Kuching Kayaking

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This would do nicely, very nicely for christmas ...

Labels: Kayaks

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Time flies! It seems like it was only yesterday that I posted on ‘Tung Chieh’ or the Winter solstice but it had been exactly a year since and today it’s the Winter Solstice again! As you’re probably aware of it already (or not), today marks the “arrival of winter” and is celebrated as a festival that falls six weeks before Chinese New Year.

As is the customary practice in our family, my brothers and I together with our families will gather at our parent’s house at lunch time to make offerings (and have a nice lunch later). I look forward to this and the other Chinese festivals as it gives me a chance to catch up with them and their families. My wife and children are making the the marble-shaped ‘tang yuan’ or glutinous rice ball later this morning at home – a traditional dessert, which is a ‘must-have’ for ‘Tung Chieh’. Perhaps they could make them into fruit shapes like the desserts we saw in Bangkok. So go and enjoy your ‘marbles’ today whatever shapes they may be in!

Labels: Life

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We felt quite safe as tourists walking around the streets of Bangkok as there were no vagrants or hustlers to bother you. However if we were to live there for any length of time, we may feel otherwise as the residents of this building obviously don't!

Labels: Vacation

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The new blogger is ‘out of beta’ with new stuff like labels, drag-and-drop template editing, and privacy controls and I made the switch over yesterday evening. You can take a tour here to find out if it’s worth the trouble to make the switch as you can still sign in to use Blogger with either the New Blogger (using your Google account) or the Old Blogger (using your Blogger account).

I found out that it was no trouble at all provided you have a Google account already but you can always sign up for one anyway. The only trouble I had was that all my previous postings at www.fh2o.blogspot.com was gone now which I had expected anyway when I made the switch to publish at an external ftp instead of on the free blogspot.com. They are actually not 'gone' but were transferred, photos and all over to www.fh2o.kuchingkayak.com! And if you want to publish to an external FTP server, you will need to Set 'Blog Readers' to 'Anybody' and use a "Classic Template". I suppose this effectively means that you would not be able to use the new features like labels (categories) that I was looking forward to using the classic template. Darn! Maybe someone can let me know how to include 'labels' in the classic template format that I'm currently using? I had 'played' around with the various new features and it's really much easier to use and customise the templates now compared to the old blogger. A 'no-brainer' - I like it.

And I could now leave a notice at www.fh2o.blogspot.com to inform people of my migration to www.fh2o.kuchingkayak.com when I couldn't previously. Maybe I can get some of my old readership back now. Hmm.

We’ll see how things go. *sigh*

Labels: Blogging

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It is the beginning of the durians season in Kuching and I’m not the only one who’s happy and excited about this …We tried feeding the durians to some of the little fishes at the spot where we normally take our swimming break and pretty soon we had schools of them arriving to feast! Good news spread fast even in the rivers ...

We found this big fat and juicy worm inside one of the durians which we I later chopped up and feed to the little fishes who went into an eating frenzy! Nothing cruel - I'm just helping the workings of the food chain process in a more efficient and expedient manner.

Different people react differently to durians but rest assured that you'll get a reaction!

At first we were quite excited about picking up the durians from the river which soon filled our kayaks and we were quite happy to let subsequent ones we saw just float past us! There were also plenty for sale for a 'dime a dozen' at Bengoh, Danu and Semadang where we take out. Ahhhh, so many durians and so little time! *burp*

Labels: Durians

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As they say, this is the 'silly season' and in keeping with the season here's a silly (or as See-See a malaysian weekend kayaker living in London, Cynthia and ShuPing from silly-land Singapore would say - "stupa"; as in a 'stupa' architect does not know what is a 'stupa') picture of yours truly taken on saturday (16th December 2006) morning.

Perhaps I should have a caption contest for this ...Photo by See-See of FH2o's Silliness on a kayak

Whatever it is - do enjoy the 'silly' season but don't get "stupa" and drive when you'd had one too many!

Photo by Robin Wong of jungle fruits induced silliness.

And talking about silliness, here's another "stupa" picture of yours truly taken by Robin Wong at the blogger's meet at Bings on saturday afternoon. We (See-See, Cynthia & ShuPing who are blog-readers) went for the meet after our kayaking trip at Borneo Highlands. It was nice meeting the other bloggers (Ann, BoonKim, Irene, Joshua, Allen, Ben, Mike, ChunChow, Ivan, Frank and of course Robin Wong) who were game enough to indulge in the silliness of eating 'lemang' (glutinous rice cooked with coconut milk in bamboo) at bings but not brave enough to try the delicious durians! *sigh* Youth nowadays are so prudent and "kuai-kuai" (goody-goody) unlike my "samseng" days ...

Photo taken from www.robinwong.blogspot.com.

I'm the one with the long (and hairy) legs at the extreme right of the photo.

And not one to waste good durians, I invited my old schoolmates (some had purposely flown in from Canada to Kuching to attend the St Mary's School class reunion) whom I met over lunch on sunday at "Shanghai Restaurant"; to my place to savor this 'king of fruits', and they graciously (and wisely) accepted. After which they agreed that it was a brilliant and not a silly idea!

Going silly with durians at my place!

Labels: Durians

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I was supposed to have joined Huey and JB on an overseas kayaking expedition trip in October but unfortunately I couldn't make it. And now of course I really wished I could have been with them ... *sigh*

Anyway, this is Huey's lively account of their epic 3-day 170km paddle down the River Kwai Noi, and ending at the historic death railway bridge. It's a wonderful read with lots of absolutely stunning photographs; some of which I'd taken the liberty to post here. You would enjoy reading it this weekend and wishing that your life could also have been just as adventurous - but actually of course, you could! Wishing you a wonderful and adventurous weekend!

Labels: Kayaking

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After busy and bustling Bangkok and the Thai Air Asia flight delay; I was really looking forward to a relaxing and tranquil float down the river on Sunday morning with Simon and friends. But when we reached the put-in at Krokong, the river has risen considerably due to rain on two consecutive days with the rain continuing the night before; I should have known better. But the water level was already going down then and the flow was not that fast and we decided to go ahead with the paddle - and I promptly capsized when we got tangled up in some branches in mid river half an hour into the paddle! And I did it again an hour's later! So much for Rivea trying to get a dry ride by being in the same boat with the 'captain'! *sigh*And we saw ostriches and loitering soldiers along the way as well as having to drag our kayaks over debris at a spot where the river was blocked. I am kidding you not about the ostriches!

Photos taken from Simon's photo gallery

Labels: Kuching Kayaking, River Trips

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My nieces and nephew (from Brunei and Sabah) are staying with us for a short while during the school holidays and last night they were making a quite a racket laughing away at some old photographs; and the above is one of the source of their amusement. *sigh*

Labels: About Life

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