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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

The Forest Research INstitute of Malaysia (FRIM) with it’s established hiking and mountain bike trails has been a fovourite place for me since I discovered it some years ago. It is visited by many who live in the Klang Valley who wish to escape the concrete jungle without having to drive too far away from the city itself.  So over the long holidays I planned another hiking trip with a friend of mine from Australia. You could say he is an avid hiker.

We started the day with some breakfast of toast, butter and jam, two out three of which were homemade. Before we left for the hike, I had Dennis promise to teachme how to make the excellent bread he made. Were arrived at FRIM’s gates at about 8.05 A.M by which time we could see some joggers leaving FRIM for home or a well earned breakfast.  This is my first trip to FRIM with Dennis and he promised to take me to the reservoir deep inside this park. Normally I would head for the parking areas nearby the main offices and the staff canteen, but this time around Dennis guided me to drive up to the end of the Rover trail and parked my car there.

The first part was actually a walk up to the water treatment plant at the end of a rather steep but sealed road. That’s “tarred” to those who didn;t know what a sealed road is.  I have been up here many times on previous hiking and even on my mountain bike trips. The last part of this road makes a sharp 180 degree turn before the gates of the water treatment plant.  The oath tothe reservoir starts where this sharp bend. But in the past I remember there being a sign forbidding “unauthorised” people form venturing up the path. Dennis, being Australian, said he doesn;t read signs in Malay. But I said it was also in English. Well, like I said, he’s Australian. There are some pretty wierd animals on that continent. Hahahaha!

The trail actually follows an old cast iron pipeline that channels water from the reservoir to the processing plant.  Along the way we could see exposed parts of the pipeline where the soil has eroded. At various intervals along the pipeline we could see many types of valves which are part of the delivery system. One of them is pictured above. According to Dennis, it’s called a clecker valve. He had rightly pointed out that this valve is placed at the highest point where a pipeline has to climb up a slope before running downhill again.  The only motive force deliverung water from the reservoir to the plant is gravity. These valves lets air into the pipe to allow the water to run downhill smoothly.  I imagine this would prevent high pressures from building up in the pipe downstream which might  damage the pipe. According to Dennis, these valve are also equipped with a metallic ball valve which closes the orifice when there is too much water rushing downhill form the upstream supply. The clacking noise of the valve opening and closing is what gave the valve it’s name. Not bad for an Aussie farmboy! I’m impressed.

It took us about 45 minutes to an hour to cover the 3 kilometres to water catchment area where the small reservoir was situated. The was nobody else there but us. Still there were signs that there that had been others here recently. The heavy rainfall of late has also filed up the reservoir to the brim. Water can be seem to overflow the lowest part of the dam walls. The area was very green with lush vegetation. The rain had also made the banks of the reservoirs very muddy and slippery. This made trekking quite  tricky.

Here is a picture Dennis took of me standing on the water intake for this small reservoir. Below me would be where the pipe starts it’s long journey downhill to the plant. Just behind me and out of view is a wheel which opens and closes an overflow valve which at the time was closed or nearly so. If you needed to “relive” yourself (as i did) in an area like this, make sure you know where the water intake is and do it at a point below the intake. Otherwise you would pollute the water!

Above are some picture I took with my phone camera. Yeah I did not bring along my DSLR again but instantly regretted it when I entered the trail. It presents great photographic oppurtunities. I promised myself I would come back up here with a proper camera soon.

Curious as to where all this water came from, Dennis and I tried to get up to it’s source. At one point we had to climb up above the level of the reservoir itself. Holding on to trees for support and handle hold is quitenormal when you are hiking up a slope. But one must really watch out which tree one is going to use. I made a mistake of reaching out to this nasty looking bamboo and it “reached” backout at me….with it’s thorns! No nice.

We gave up after a few minutes and decided to make our way back to the car.  The walk down was quite pleasant but on the way we met this unfortunate lost soul.

Lost sole … lost soul get it? hahahaha! Nevermind.  The hike took up the whole of the morning and made me quite hungry. Mind you although this is the first time I am hiking in a long time, it nowhere near the longest nor hardest hike I’ve done. But I am also nowhere near my healthiest. This hike is meant to be a starter to my “road to recovery”.

So how many of you out there have been in situation as depicted in the video which I posted in my last article? Gives a new meaning to the word “close call” huh? hahaha! Just the other day I was driving home when a police patrol car was driving quite erratically in front of me. As I overtook  I looked at the driver hoping to get his attention, but hos attention was on another driver who was driving on the slow lane whislt talking on his mobile phone. Apparently that dirver had veered into the path of the police car which in turn veered into the overtaking lane which I was in. Needless to say the driver was pulled over as I pulled away.

While the video in my last posting depicted some very hairy situations we can get ourselves into, they were what we all tend to call, “close shaves”. Even the rear ender was probably not a fatal accident. But if you still think ” I am a safe driver and can handle this phone call” just watch this next video. I don’t think you would want to be in tis situation . . . . ever.

It was produced in Wales and is to date one of the goriest road safety video ever made for national television. But in a world of information overload, it’s probably the only way to get some messages across.

How many of us can actually say that we have not made or answered a  phone call whilst driving a vehicle? I am definitely guilty of doing so myself. In fact I am quite able to compose an sms from behind the wheel of a moving car. I thought  I was good until I saw a few motorcyclist sending messages from their phones whilst riding their machines! If you’ve been driving in Malaysia long enough then you would know what a hands-free motorcycle phone kit looks like.

So far I have been lucky not to have crashed my vehicle while doing so but time and luck is not always on my side.  Then a few weeks ago my friend sent me a few community message videos aimed at driving safety with an emphasis on driver distraction. I really opened my eye as I have been in one of these situation before.

Think back, have you been in a similiar situation before?