Hearts in all the weirdest places

After terrorising the praying mantis, I happened to look down and ... found this heart-shaped leaf on the ground. Awww...who needs expensive Valentine's Day cards when Nature readily gives hearts away for free? I'd choose a guy who says, "I combed through this garden, looking for a symbol of my feelings for you...and I found this leaf." over some expensive card that will be stored away in a dusty drawer any day. Then again, how many men in their right minds would even want to comb through grass, hedge and shrub to find a symbol of their love? Add in mosquitoes and kerengga and you have yourself a cheap-skate, crazy man in your hands. Thank goodness I am single then, I suppose. Heh

Praying mantis and mosquito 

Caterpillar among the raindrops

Caterpillar

Whaddya lookin' at?

I know, the angle is such that you can hardly tell that it's a praying mantis. Tried taking a shot from the side, but that's practically impossible when the subject in question insists on locking its eyes on to the lens. When I moved for another angle some place else...and as I was looking at the preview screen, I gasped. I remembered the leaf that had the caterpillar yesterday (or was it the day before?). I looked down...and true enough. The my shirt was brushing against the leaf. And the caterpillar was on it!! Some time earlier, it wasn't there. I'm just glad I didn't brush against the caterpillar. I might have got a rash. I think I have another better pic of that praying mantis.

Rainy Day 3

Collage 2

I have to admit, using the collage feature doesn't quite make the photos look too good. You can't even see the small praying mantis that I found on the anona leaf.

I fed less mosquitoes today, but they were no less itchy. Anyways, I made a full 360 deg tour of the garden. Found some nice raindrops on leaves, took a pic of the neighbour's hibicus flower, then off to the front to take pix of the feng shui flowers. Walked towards this scraping sound and realized that Mum was scraping away the flaking paint. She was letting me in on her scheme. Get Dad to visit the grandkids for a month and then she'll paint the walls of the house. Shhh, you didn't hear it from me.

Went back towards to the back of the garden, and as I was looking for that perfectly round raindrop, I found a 'baby' praying mantis! It was so cute! It kept looking at me, crouched down cautiously. I made a dinosaur with my right hand to distract it and clicked away. It still kept looking directly at the camera. You couldn't see its forelegs. There, I posted it in the entry above. With that, I just realized that I need to adjust the Blogger settings. Anyways, I think I terrified that poor praying mantis. I gave it one of the flattened mosquitoes stuck to my leg. I planted the offering at the edge of the leaf. I don't think it was very hungry, as it didn't approach the mosquito like a starved cannibal. It still kept peering at my camera. My head, even. I moved my head from side to side and so did the praying mantis. It was like some bizarre human-insect mating dance. Thank goodness there were no witnesses.

Went back into the house when I ran out of internal memory (and it was raining).

I saw the Opening Ceremony of the Torino Winter Olympics. Well, when I turned to the sports channel (after watching 'A Cinderella Story'), the country walking across the screen was Tajikistan. I absolutely loved the fireworks display! Impressive to say the least. Now, which Olympic Games was it that had an archer shoot a flaming arrow into the torch? Anybody know?

That's it from me. Added a link to Simon's site, as he so 'graciously' accorded me the honour of being added to his links. =Þ to Simon. Note to self, can't gossip about Simon on here anymore.

Take care, all!

Update: Thank you to Susan who says that the archer was in the Barcelona Olympics. =) That was a very quick response. I expected none at all.

Trying out Hello from picasa

Five-in-one

If I hadn't deleted the individual photos which made up a post each, you might not have noticed that I was fiddling around with hello. Hmmm, that explains why I've seen so many Picasa icons under photos in some blogs. It's SO convenient to use. I don't have to resize my pix and it doesn't take ages to publish. I think I'm going to use the collage function a lot. =)

Woke up to a wonderful rainy day. It's nice and gloomy now. It's so cosy!

In other news, I have several mouth ulcers as a result of my biting the inside of my right cheek while happily munching on food. The right side of my cheek and jaw is achy and painful. Been that way for over three days. And I ate the last Ponstan in the house today. I've never been reliant on pain-killers but I can feel the difference.

Oh yeah, in the middle of that anona leaf is a small caterpillar. I bet that if I put a kerengga there, it wouldn't last very long. Hmmm...I wonder if my ulcers are making me think evil thoughts. Then again, caterpillars eat leaves and I might not have any fruits to eat because the tree doesn't have enough leaves to produce energy for bearing fruit. But caterpillars become butterflies/moths. Which would be better? Fruits to eat or butterflies to snap pix with? Then again, have you even seen photos of butterflies here? And do you know why? Don't think I haven't tried, but those butterflies are so hyper! As soon as I get close enough to even think of snapping pix of the fluttering butterflies, they flit away in bliss. Well, maybe they don't (flit away in bliss, I mean). Maybe they have their moods too.

The caterpillar in question.


Well, that's it from me today. Take care, all!

Little raindrop nestled on an anona leaf 

FedEx ad

I don't know about you, but I was having trouble accessing Blogger for quite awhile. I even had problems getting to some of the other Blogger blogs. Good to see that it's no longer the case.

Let's see...what happened yesterday? We were having a couple of family friends (who also attend the same church as my parents) for dinner. Someone had given them a specially packaged container of 'yee sang' and they decided to share it with us.

'Yee Sang' is a dish eaten during Chinese New Year and has either raw or smoked fish in it. All the ingredients are tossed and mixed while phrases like, "Good fortune!", "Health!", "Happiness!", "Prosperity!", etc, etc are said out with gusto. Fish is used because it signifies abundance. I'm sure if you googled for 'yee sang', you'd find a better explanation. *smiles*

So I washed my bathroom. It's a small bathroom and I was done in 20 mins. I saved a spider from drowning and killed another by accident (I think I killed it, anyways).

Here are two photos of the dish before and after the smoked salmon was added. It was topped with Plum sauce. Oooer...I'm hungry again just thinking about it. They were impressed that a thin girl such as myself had such a hearty appetite. I think I know now why I don't gain weight. I drink cold water every time. I read some place that the body uses up energy to regulate the water temperature as it enters the stomach. I do want to gain weight, but I don't like room temperature water (unless I was in Seattle in Spring, then room temperature water would be akin to water taken out of the fridge in Malaysia) nor hot/warm water. It tastes different.

After a sumptuous dinner of beef noodles and yee sang, I digested and listened to them talking. I made a pitstop and then watched the last 10 minutes of 'A Haunting' on the Discovery Channel.

Yesterday afternoon, I clicked on a link and watched some of the SuperBowl ads on Google video. One of my faves is the FedEx ad. It is entitled, "Stick".

Wouldn't you say it was hilarious? I wish certain local ads had that kind of humour. Speaking of ads, the Perodua ad for the Chinese New Year season was really good. It had a scene of kids having fun with a dragon dance, with an upside-down box as the head of the dragon. Towards the end of the ad, we see the Malay mother calling out to her son, who happened to be the one under the box. He turns to his friend behind him (the body of the dragon) and speaks to him in ... errr, was it Cantonese or Hokkien? I get confused. The friend is an Indian boy and he answers in the same language. It has that Yasmin Ahmad/Petronas ad vibe to it.

This morning, I woke up to a rainy day. Respite from the heat! Yaay! It even rained heavier later on. The TV was one and I realized that I missed the Grammy awards! Ugh...

Take care, all!

The Struggle To Survive

It's 3am and I JUST finished editing the 30+ photos I took this afternoon. Imagine me going back to my room to transfer photos after every 7 - 10 shots.

I will upload most of the photos by tomorrow (18 - 20 hours from now).

I must warn you that they are not for the faint of heart. If you hate bugs, and the photos of the kerengga gave you the willies in the past posts...then perhaps you should come back next week. It's almost like that Discovery Channel documentary called, "Final Hour" or something. Tells you the second-by-second happenings as they unfold. Or was it minute-by-minute? You decide later.

I have spiders, and caterpillars (again!). Plus some water droplet shots. It rained for a minute and then stopped. So the droplets you see are a result of Dad watering the plants.

Enjoy this photo of Michaelmas Daisies. And to think I used to hunt for photos of these daisies online just so I could make my website better (that section is called 'The Meaning of Flowers'). Anyways, I'll leave you with another photo. Of the really cool-looking spider I mentioned about earlier.

Cool, no? Look at the pattern on its thorax. Be back later. Bye!

*****

Okay, I am back. I'll show you some of the spider pix, and then the caterpillar pix. Isn't that spider a beauty?

Yesterday, as I was on my way to the anona plants at the back, I noticed a spiky caterpillar on a mango leaf. It was just above my head. It pays to be observant. I thought I would just take a shot or two of the caterpillar and be on my way. But as the events unfolded, I just couldn't keep away. If it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't really tell if the photos came out right at the time of clicking, I would have had more shots. I had to delete a lot that were blurry. So I just selected the few that seemed okay. I had to return twice to upload my photos and reformat the internal memory. And then I got lazy (it got hotter) and by the time I returned two hours later, there was no sign of the caterpillar.


So I walked to the other corner of the garden, hoping to catch a glimpse of the spider again. But it had moved. It had destroyed its web. I'd like to think that the wind had bothered it, and not my camera stuck in front of its eight eyes. My Dad told me where its newest location was. And it was too difficult to reach. Over the kerengga-infested wall, on a durian branch. That was when the kerenggas got my attention. I followed the trail and soon enough, I spotted another helpless caterpillar being carried by three kerenggas. At one moment, I felt pity for the poor creature and tried blowing the ants off their feet. I saw the acid spray out from the back of their thoraxes. Kerengga have a weak acid as a defense mechanism. When intruders approach too closely, they arch their backs til their thoraxes point to the front and start spraying. Once, when Mum sprayed their nest and they fell down to the ground, the grass around the site of the massacre was burnt by all the acid as the ants died in agony. I don't like kerengga because you can't wipe them off your skin. They stick to you and when you try to wipe them off, they stick to your hand and then they BITE. I'm sure you've noticed those pincers. Sometimes, they bite so hard, they don't let go even after death. I've seen kerengga heads stuck to clothing, it's THAT extreme. Back to that caterpillar. As I blew, I noticed that it was still moving a little. It was alive! I wonder what happens once it's in the nest. Does it get fed, like how chickens are raised for slaughter? There are times when you think about the cruelty that happens to some creatures by other creatures, and then realize that we're no better ourselves. Hmmm...


After all those shots, I got tired of kerenggas and started looking at flowers again. And noted that Dad had watered the feng shui plant. Saw the water droplets, all round like drops of mercury and I just HAD to take those pix. Enjoy!

Take care all!

Whoops!

Many apologies. I've been spending most of my time at Do Not Resuscitate II. Copying and pasting text that has been pre-formatted is such a pain! The section from PubMed is all screwy. Never say I don't do anything out of the goodness of my heart. Of course, you may disregard the numerous links to Amazon.com too. So for those of you who got to this site searching for "Do Not Resuscitate" and "Do Not Resuscitate in the Philippines", etc, please proceed to the blog linked above (and to the side). Thirty links to various articles, and I might just keep adding more links.

Spent quite some time in the garden again today. Dad mentioned seeing an unusual spider in a corner of the garden yesterday and earlier in the day, I tried to locate it. To no avail. So I took photos of the miniature portulacas, a feather in the drain nearby, and moss.

Later in the evening, I managed to find the elusive spider. I hadn't known that I walked into the web that morning. Poor spider. I took at least five photos of that magnificent arachnid. Background was cool too. Unfortunately, in my haste to take more photos an hour later, I inadvertantly formatted the internal memory without transferring the images beforehand. I thought I had already done that. Tsk! Well, always tomorrow to try again.

Let's see, I also took some photos of the bougainvillea flowers set against the cloudy blue sky. The problem with taking all pix at the highest resolution (5MP), apart from the limited number of shots, is that I have to crop and resize the photos later. And it does get tedious. That's one of the reasons why I take so long to update. Plus, I tend to multitask as well (and not succeeding in accomplishing much). Right now, I've got five tabs open in Firefox (I just upgraded to 1.5), and listening at Pandora.com.

It's late now. I'll leave you with a nice little shot of a cool-looking periwinkle flower, and blooming pussy-willows. Take care, all!

When the stomach is full...

...the eyelids get heavy and laziness sets in.

Sorry for the lack of updates. After a nice, heavy lunch, I can't help but enjoy a nap. However, my afternoon nap earlier was different from usual. I had a dream. A very unusual dream. I was dreaming that I was stuffing my face with a burger and the ketchup was dripping down my knee. Yes, "Ewww" comes to mind.

Perhaps this is what they warn about when sleeping after such a heavy meal. Well, I survived.

Heard a dog barking last night, and this afternoon, Mum mentioned that the neighbour had a dog. I can't wait to have a look at it. I miss having a dog. You should have seen me at the pet shop in KL. So pitiful, face close to the glass partition.

It's 4am. Time for sleep. It's a vicious cycle. Can't sleep early because I napped in the afternoon, have to nap in the afternoon because I don't get enough sleep at night.

*yawn*

Take care, all! By the way, since this is not a daily update, perhaps it's better if you checked twice a week, instead of five times a day. It's wrecking my stats, as each visit lasts 0 seconds. =Þ

Once more, with PASSION!

Yup, it's a passionfruit flower extravaganza! The first few shots were of the same flower, at almost the same angle. Plenty of wind blowing between shots.

In fact, the first two shots were of the flower just newly bloomed. Then the wind started to blow and I looked away in frustration. The next thing I knew, it had opened up nicely.

I'm going to yak until I get to the bottom bit of this first pic. I've been stuffing myself with food the past few days. Second day of CNY, we had some family friends over for lunch. It culminated with AIS KACANG! Then yesterday, no ais kacang. Made up for lost time today with a nice BIG bowl of ais kacang. Errrm, too much ice. Fingers froze.

Yesterday's lunch was Indian rojak. Mum wasn't happy with her first try, so she made it again. Her rojak sauce tasted really nice, not too hot (even if it was, had plenty of ais kacang to cool down the burning tongue).

Tonight, it's going to be burgers for dinner! Yum! Minced beef, shaped into fat little patties. As much onions, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, cucumbers as I want...Mmmm...

Okay, now to the pix!

Photos arranged chronologically.

Annoying buzzing was heard and I started to itch. Darn mosquitoes. I think I killed about 10 mosquitoes, in various stages of gluttony (not unlike myself). I did keep one dead mosquito and when I saw a spider (looking like a kerengga), I offered the dead mosquito to it. It hopped on my index finger and I let go of its prey. It hopped off happily with its present. Then the wind started to blow and with the mosquito between its mandibles, the spider hopped on a leaf. It sheltered against the wind and started to munch on the mosquito. I left before donating more of my O+.

A few hours later, while I was throwing away some orange peel, I noticed two more buds had bloomed.

Anyway, I just realized that I didn't resize those pix. I think I had enough shots of passionfruit blooms for one day. *g* That's why I suddenly took pix of leaves against the cloudy sky.

Hmmm, the photo changes when there's more cloud and less blue. More gloom. Alrighty then, one more photo (of the Indian rojak sans rojak sauce/gravy), and then I promise, "No more passionfruit flowers for at least another month!" *big grin*

Take care all!