Shanlung, I do miss hearing from you! See my previous/last post. I was learning a great deal. I am still enjoying the wonderful and informative content in your links.

For anybody interested in birds check out the great information Shanlung has provided in this thread.

Hi Diana,

Sorry for the late reply.
Events in my life taken a bit more of my time and energy last few weeks.

I first wish you and all those who followed me Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

If you have seen my postings in the past, the rate of postings increased very much when I have a birdie in my life. The birdie seemed to supercharge me with energy, and the energy then went to report on them.

If you have followed last few postings, there were no more birdies in my life.

The goodbyes that I have said to those birdies in my life taken a toll on me. To the point I decided not to have a bird again unless I felt I am in a permanent enough place.

I felt the country, Singapore, that I am in now can never be a place I call my home even if I was born and hold the passport here. I think I worked hard and long enough. That it may be time now to enjoy the rest of my life.

I will be trying to find a place that I feel I can call home over the next few months. For that, I am consolidating and preparing my departure, probably starting in Jan 2013, if the world still exist after the 21 Dec 2012.

I will be staying in various places for a month at a time to assess if I can be happy there, and my wife can be happy there enough to join me.

I will be staying in small towns or hamlets. I do not like cities.

I probably start in Malaysia. Then I will move on to Nepal to check out Pokhara. Probably then to remote places in China. I might move on to America. And perhaps even end up being your neighbour.

And when I find a place, that will be the time to have birdie into my life again.

I think in my time of travelling about, my access to Internet will be sporadic. At best, I can only hope to update my livejournal blog now and then. So there might be long periods of silence from me.

When I find that place and settled down and have a birdie again in my life, I will then write a lot more.

I thank you for thinking I can be a mentor. But I said before and I say again, the person that should be role model is not me, it is that Bird Whisperer of Tsao Ling.

And as for training, I said it many times before that is the key to what my birdies did for me.

That I accept my role as their trainee, and accepted the birdie as my trainer.

I hope you find the perfect place to live. I wish you serenity, well wishes and happiness in your travels. If you end up in America I would be thrill and proud to have you as a neighbor. We live in a small town in South Dakota. Most of my neighbors are Karen or Kayin. Except for a new neighbor building one block away (a huge water park) we have a friendly peaceful neighborhood. (It gets downright cold here though)

I hope you find a place where you're happy and can have birdies again. Your spark is not quite as bright and shiny.

Have you seen the work that Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation is doing with the spix macaw?

I think you will enjoy these photos. Spix

Wouldn't it be grand if the extinct in the wild Spix was flying free again?

Since I learned to be open to animals, their communication, I have found I have a lot to learn from them.

I was very aware of Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation for some time on their work on wildlife and Spix macaws in particular.

When I knew I was going to Qatar, I was even more aware. I checked that they were about an hour drive from where I lived in Qatar. I made plans to contact them.

I had not reckoned on the tough work in the project I was on and the full 6 days week. I was so drained of energy that one day rest could barely recharge me.

The vibrations of the long overdued project became very toxic and I left. About my sole regret in leaving Qatar was I did not get to see the Spix and other creatures in Al Wabra.

I do hope that day will come Spix will fly free again in the land that gave birth to them.

And that will not be the only time where beasties and birdies got back into the wild from heartfelt efforts of man.

Sadly, the destruction of man far outweighed those recoveries by man.

Wild caughts // Jackie and Jackie Mash // plug for Formosan Blue Magpies
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/133308.html

The destruction caused by humans does outweigh the good by a huge amount however, at least an effort is being made. Along with the other good folks making these efforts, maybe we can learn by example.

From your link I found the passages from the Taoist Bible and comparing the passages to the political climate in the US and how it applies. With all the teachings it doesn't seem like we learn very rapidly, by teachings or example.

Diana and friends,

I am happy you enjoyed the words from that 2500++ year old gentleman LaoZi who rode off on the back of an ox.

This is to say my current chapter started. A bit later than I thought because of Chinese New Year celebrations.
My mishaps and all.
And a bit more of LaoZi as well.

The start of my next chapter
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/141112.html

I enjoyed your links. It looks like you are having an exciting adventure! I look forward to all future updates!

Hi Diana and friends here,

I was back into Singapore a few days ago. Making my obeisance to Procratinatia as usual before my checking through the photos taken, gel up my rambling thoughts and writing it up.

Taiping town was even more beautiful than I thought. Maybe because it looked like my childhood Singapore before rampant developement destroyed all parts of it so nothing left to be nostalgic over. My search for the Tao there was in vain. Maybe because I did not know what the Tao look like.

Thoughts evoked my by 3 weeks stay there will be left to be written eventually in my blog.

Loads and loads of swallows making their nests in the eaves of the town houses chattering and chattering away in a blanket of white noise.

There is a lake garden in Taiping, nestled next to Maxwell Hills or Bukit Larut covered with forest that I spend a lot of my waking time.
My eyes were drawn to cats and birds as you might imagine.

The kitties largely under the tables of roadside food stalls where my meals were shared with them. Kitties in Malaysia small in size. My Ivan and Sieben not exactly big and not fat either, but yet the Taiping kitties were at best 2/3 the size of Ivan.

The birds largely on the trees in and around lake garden of Taiping and 3000 feet up Bukit Larut.

I enjoyed seeing the blue eared kingfisher, white throated kingfisher and stork billed kingfisher perched on the branches above the lake and diving into the waters. And caught sight of the majestic barred eagle owl on the ground. I walked very very slowly to try to get a better photo. Sadly it did not trust me enough to allow me to get nearer. I seen night herons and egrets. I heard many other bird cries that I never hear before and I could not identify.

I was hoping to see hornbills in the forest up Maxwell Hills. Instead of that, I caught sight of an Oriental Pied Hornbill on a rain tree of the the road running around the lake gardens.

I really must think of getting a good SLR camera as my handy pocket camera was not up to taking the photos to do justice to the birds I seen. I put a creak in my neck and backbone as I ogle up between the branches to see that hornbill.

Up the Maxwell Hills, the striated swallows were streaking across the sky. A couple landing near me on top of a window.
A beautiful streaked spiderhunter entranced me with its gathering of nectar with its curved bill.

I visited the Taiping zoo. A Java Hill Mynah, slightly larger than Jackie my former Greater Hill Mynah, in a walk in enclosure seemed friendly with me. But again, birds seemed to be more friendly with me than with other people. Sadly, other visitors and their kids broke the spell when they tried to touch the mynah.

You know I love the Formosan Blue Magpie. There is a subspecy, the Malaysian Blue Magpie in Malaysia. Smaller then the Formosan Blue Magpie and the blue much lighter and less intense than Formosan. There was a flock of that in the Taiping Zoo that I took much pleasure in visiting.

This little stint made me decide on a good bino on future trips. I am still weighing should I get a very good SLR or will I give that up eventually as I did so in the past because a good SLR is bloody heavy and gets heavier by the minute.

I will be in Singapore for a couple more weeks to feed the cats and to clean their [censored]. My wife found it difficult for her to keep 2 kitties when I am not around. It will be likely that Sieben be given away to a good home. That family used to have one of Sieben's sibling in the past.

I find that future parting to be kind of sad , even if Sieben is traitorous to me, Sieben gave me a lot of loving too.

Taiping thoughts //Camera malfunction at NanHwaShi//Combat Taijichuan -some notes
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/141331.html

I wonder if folks here remember my sweet boy Yingshiong, that I last seen about 5 years ago in Jurong Bird Park after I gave him up there. I rejected offers of blank checks for him so he could fly free in the big aviaries there.





Here is a bitter sweet report of him , that might be of him, that I just wrote

New camera at Jurong Bird Park // Shades of Yingshiong
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/142032.html