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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.