After the GoldRush

As a young man in the 70’s I used to day dream a lot. I remember lying on my bed in the warmth of the  afternoon sun withthe radio listening to Neil Young.

This is a rather strange song. I have never been able to figure out what inspired Neil to write these lyrics but it allowed anyone listening to them to imagine. Some of the words he wrote comes back hauntingly, lyrics like  “We got Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies”. Now some 40 years later, look at what we have done to Mather Nature! I guess the man saw what was coming. We just did not listen.

Driver Crashes Bugati Veyron into a lake

If I were driving a Supercar which I paid USD1.5 million to own, I would

1.  learn how to drive it properly.

2. concentrate on driving while the car is in motion, and

 3. Not drive it into a lake at normal highway speeds.

You’ll notice that the guys filming the video was in a car travellling at almost the same speed as the Veyron and there was NO sign of a seagull that the driver claimed distracted him, caused him to drop his mobile phone, which he just had to pick up and caused him to lose control of this million dollar car! As my colleague and friend would put it, ” What a doink”

Subang SkyPark comes tumbling down

Ok ok the airport did not collapse but rather THIS did!

It’s the unipole which carries (or used to carry) the advertisement for Subang SkyPark. Not a very good omen to the newly reopened airport huh? It must have fallen due to the high winds that accompanied the thunderstorm this afternoon.  Ihe signboard stood in the large roundabout at the end of the Subang Airport Highway. It was really lucky that it fell northward into the roundabout rather than into traffic.

I was leaving work when my colleague alerted me to an incident at the roundabout but stopped short of telling me what it was.  I saw it as I was approaching but at first could not place what it was or what had happened. Then as I went around the roundabout it dawned on me that the 60 plus foot unipole had come crashing down. I went around twice before stopping my car to take these photos.

You can actually see how big the signboard is by comparing it to the full size MPV in the foreground. The unipole had it;s base closer to the south side of the roundabout and would have landed smack on the road had it fallen the other way.

The design of the unipole is almost akin to the mast of a ship. in a ship it is highly desirable for the mast to “catch” and harness the energy of the wind to drive it forward. But the opposite is true in the unipole. I wonder how safe the hundreds of other such towers actually are? Is there a government body that checks their design and construction? Is there anybody maintaining them after they have been installed?

I ‘ll bet there will be politicians who will try to get some mileage from thsi incident and after a few months everythign will be forgotten again but not after a task force is formed to investigate the reason for ths incident at the cost of a few hundred thousand Ringgit. Another typical major incident handled the Malaysian way.

The Sand and the Foam

I grew up in an era in which songs had very meaningful lyrics. Simple melody and wonderful and meaning ful lyrics that one can often relate to. One of the singer/songwriters that filled my younger days with music was the late Dan Fogelberg. Here is a video in tribute to his life and the music he brought to the world.

“Gone are the pathaways

The child followed home

Gone like the Sand and the Foam”

How these words ring so true to me now. The place I grew up has long changed. The paths and parks where my friends and i once roamed are no more. replaced by ever widening roads, ungly buildings and ever growing number of houses. All in the name of progress. But sometimes I ask myself “How far have we gone forward? ….and at what price?” or have we actually taken a few steps backward?

I hope this song brings back memories of the simpler times in your  lives and that for you the pathaways are still there for you to walk down.

Sleepy Study Group

IN my line of work I get involved with many aspiring young men (and of late women) who would one day take over the job of overseeing the safety of civil aviation aircraft. Currently there is a bunch of them supposedly with noses buried deep in their books preparing for exams which will see them obtain their Licence.

Hmmm, at least one of them took my advice to literally and has his face buried in his books.  The others . . . . errrr . . . well they had  “Autopilot Engaged“.  Looking at their angle of attack those three guys at the front probably had activated TOGA too! hahahaha! Good Luck for your exams guys.

United Breaks Guitars -Song #2

A few months ago in July Dave Carrol wrote a song about how United Airlines broke his guitar and refused to accept the fault nor  acknowledge the claims for compensation. That song “United Breaks Guitars“ has garnered a very very respectable 5,750,538 views since July! United has since tried to but failed to make amends. I guess it’s a case of “too little too late”. Going by the comments I have read, the Airline has lost a whole lot of customers.

Well, Dave Carrol and his brother Don promised United they would wirte and sing 3, yup Three songs about the incident. Here is song #2.

Personally, I preferred song #1 but then Dave was both angered and inspired by the treatment he received from United. This second song was just fulfilling his promise of writing 3 songs. I hope the third one would be as good as the first.

Pedestrian narrowly misses a runaway bus

Heard of running to catch the bus? Well, this bus nearly caught a pessenger! hahahaha! I’ll bet you that little dash across the road could have set some sort of  world record!

I caught one of them!

With much perserverence and the help of a few well placed cashew nuts I managed to catch one of the rascals . . . . on camera. I would never think of doing it literally. It’s actually kinda nice to have these wild creatures in my garden.

At first I placed the cashews on the patio which was a little brighter than my garden but it turns out that it was a little too close for my 80-200 mm lense whose minimum focusing distance is about 6 feet. If you look closely you can see that I was shooting through the metal grills form inside my living room. I dared not go out for fear of scaring away my new tenants. A debatable point actually, it’s probably us that have invaded their territory.

Next I tried leavign the nuts on an upturned pot in my garden. It took them a while to notice the nuts but soon one of them found it. I found myself lying in wait on my carpet for a good half an hour before I got these next shots. I can appreciate how hard those wildlife photographers have to work at capturing all those beautiful pictures of animals in their natural habitat.

My next project will be to capture a civet cat that is frequenting my colleague’s house down the road from where I live. Now that will be quite a challenge.

Spies in my yard

Since moving into my rented house I have noticed that there have been squirrels visiting my front yard foraging for food. So far I have counted three different individuals. Bieng wild they are very wary of humans. I have tried to snap a few photos of them but have not bene successful until today.

This is one of the only clear photos I managed to snap.  Since my garden  is quite full of plants the ground is  naturally dark making it is rather hard to get a good picture of them when they are foraging for food. ON top of that, these little creatures are very aware of humans. The one in the picture above is almost always in the same pose as if spying on me to see whether I pose a danger to their activities in my garden.

Unexpected walk under Clear Blue Skies

Today my boss became a little agitated and made me take a long and uneccessary walk accross a hot tarmac to an aircraft which was parked outside the maintenance complex where I work. It was all because he does not trust me when I told him that a part he wanted would not be available on the parked aircraft. he insisted I walk out to the aircraft and “eyeball” the part in question. So I did.

It took about 5 minutes to walk the nearly 600 metres to the aircraft but the minute I saw it I knew I was right and the walk was totally unnecessary.  But he asked me to “eyeball” the part so I did affirming I was right all the time. i wonder what it is like to have to question everybody’s opinion. Must make you fell like God… and I guess he’s well on his way to acquiring the complex.

However as I was trudging back to the hangar (you can see it at the bottom left of the picture) where I am currently working, I saw this  clear blue sky with just enouhg clouds to make a beautiful picture. I snapped this picture with my phone camera. It didn’t turn out too badly huh? But it made me think back to the time when I spent most of my working hours outside and not under the steel roof of a hangar. How I wish I was back to working outside.