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Mulu Caves, Sarawak

01 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment

by CC in environment, friends, malaysia Tags: conservation, eco-tourism, malaysia, Mulu, Sarawak

My friend LS who saw my Mulu pics on FB just sent me this Youtube clip cause I mentioned that I have yet to watch the BBC’s Planet Earth documentary series. Thanks so much!

This video pretty much summed up my trip there, which is now almost 2 years ago. I would love to go back there again though, we only covered the very amateur/beginner flavour of what Mulu and the region had to offer.

Below is a slideshow of some pics from my trip with my 2 very loud (and sometimes obnoxious, but mostly gentlemanly) ex-schoolmates Paik & Devan:

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some notes:

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We had the best guide Mr.Nangkai – he was sweet and bashful, but I think by the end of our stay, he was very happy to have gotten rid of us — Paik kept calling him Mr. Tak Tahu ( Mr. I don’t know) cause there were a couple of times Paik couldn’t get any useful information. It wasn’t that it was like pulling teeth talking to him, I think he was just really shy and didn’t know how to handle Paik’s ‘loudness’ (we were later told that the local tribe, the Penans , are generally a reserved bunch). Also Devan called him ‘Tangkai’ – he said it was an honest mispronunciation (tangkai in BM means stem). Next time we go back I will contact Mr. Nangkai again!

The Deer Cave (Gua Rusa) was a real delight – that was the cave we were warned was known as the Guano Cave. It didn’t stink. Like not in the way that you would imagine it to smell. Apparently the reason it was named after the deers that gathered at that particular cave back in the day was Because of the guano. It tainted the streams and gave the water a more flavoursome taste for the deers. And so the locals ended up naming it The Deer Cave.

The Clearwater Cave (Gua Air Jernih) with the gushing streams also had a ‘fountain of youth’ which Devan really soaked up! It is still unknown where the source of the water is from. There had been numerous explorations in the past, the most recent one was done by the National Geographic team who had thought the water originated from Mt. Kinabalu … nope!

All the ‘Stalaktit’, ‘Stalagmit’ and ‘Tiang Kapur’ formations were all really amazing, and alive and still forming, which was really cool to see. You really felt like the cave system was this living thing, with it’s acoustics, and the ripples on the walls and the bedrock etc…really really cool. Every one had different takes on what some of the more unique formations looked like, but for me all I saw was beheaded heads placed on stakes during elizabethan times – either that, or Scream masks. I really lack imagination!

I have a new love and appreciation for bats. I always thought of them as sort of like vampirey associated creatures…but not anymore. They are actually pretty cute…and the species that we saw, some of them are tinyyyy! It was rainy season though, so our ‘bat show’ wasn’t as spectacular as what we were promised. But still very cool. One of the things we were told to check whilst hanging out at the forest, was to see if we got bitten by mosquitoes….cause apparently Bats were nature’s insect repellant….hehehe. So Devan & I survived unscathed….but Paik had soooo many mozzy bites, all of them on his back for some weird reason. Dev took a really funny photo of me just counting Paik’s bites…they looked more painful than itchy….hehehe. Poor guy. It must be something about Paik’s blood, cause Dev and Paik shared a room and Dev was mozzy bite free!

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2010 winter masterpieces exhibition @ NGV

15 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by CC in friends, melbourne Tags: melbourne, NGV, winter masterpieces 2010

European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th–20th Century

National Gallery Victoria

art after dark : the only way to visit the museum!

with grace and aki

Kuala Lumpur, Dec 2009

26 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment

by CC in Anne of Green Gables, authors/books, family, friends, L.M. Montgomery, malaysia Tags: friends, malaysia, musings

KL is really…just prodigious. Every time I’m home, I am reminded of how much I love that I’m from here. My father is right though, there exist the frustrations.However, I’d like to think that we are lucky, in that we are uniquely blessed in our heterogeneity. I don’t think that this feeling that I have is born out of naivety. Instead, I think it comes from the reality of the healthy mix I experienced in school and amongst my schoolmates that has helped me shape my view of Malaysia’s harmony and the potential of our society. And I realize, that as I go further along, it’s something I don’t want to compromise in value.

When you grow up as a Malaysian kid, you learn about every single race – the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, the Indigenous people and the ‘Lain-lain’ (I fall under the last category). I just read Akki’s blog post: A Tale of Two Countries – Malaysia & France and the Meat They Eat and absolutely loved it. It’s true! Just by participating in each other’s lives that are so culturally diverse from one family to another, we are made to learn everything about each other’s race: how we eat, how we pray, how we celebrate, how we talk, how we dress etc…and just like how Akki puts it …. it’s almost as if “we’ve become experts at navigating the minefield of cultural dos and don’ts that would leave others baffled, or worse, offended”.

Yinn's dinner with ollie, kev, irv, LC, the A, chun, yinn, juls

Location: pappa rich, after dinner @ the social, bangsar

KL time…It’s nice to see everyone again Things haven’t changed too much; I’d like to think that everyone’s grown a little bit wiser, confident-er, closer and better together. The loudmouths of the group still make the stupidest jokes (all I can think of when I look at the two photos above is ‘dumbwaiter’ …lol). It’s really sweet that all of us still get to catch up at the end of each year. A few of us managed a mini getaway to Mulu, Sarawak. But really, the anomaly and most definitely the highlight of the holiday was talking about Jujurian times with Lulu and Karina Precious times..!!

Always great to be with the family – my father, my mother, my brother and my puppy. I’ve received love and support my whole life that I’m always enticing the opportunity to give it all back in one grand gesture. But I’ve learned over the past few years that that motive is purely selfish. What you feel or say only matters to you. What you intend to do is almost always secondary. What you indeed do to the people you say you love is the only thing that counts. I feel very fortunate that my parents still include my brother and me in their daily lives (even though we are based overseas); and it becomes our pleasure to reciprocate that favour back at them in sharing our lives. Seriously, I don’t know how people/kids lived away from home without video calls, 3G and cheap flights. (I’m still baffled till this day when I think about how my mom managed settling into KL all those years ago! Mind you that’s KL 30 years ago!)

December me time. A lot of freedom of the mind: I watched Sepet (2004)and Gubra (2006) for the first time (both films were by RIP Yasmin Ahmad.) I also decided to pick Anne of Green Gables off my bookshelf and managed to quickly get through Avonlea too before my KL time ended. I think I haven’t read those since I was 9 or 10, and I forgot how beloved Anne was in my memory. Another forgotten treasure: the title page was signed ‘from Papa’. Hah, I didn’t remember that at all.. I was so befuddled and had to show it to Mama…she just laughed and gave me a knowing look. Well, I don’t know whether it’s because I’m struggling to hold on to my childhood, or because I needed a retreat from my ridiculously thick bound copy of science urban journals that took up all semester, but whoa, the nostalgia really seeped in…crying on one page, laughing out loud on the next. Hahaha, sheesh! *slaps forehead*.