Of snakes, plants and flowers

I love to take macro pictures of bugs, plants and flowers. As I have only a small camera with a tiny lense, tiny things are all my camera lense could capture well! I usually spend my evenings out at my parent's house herb garden, busily clicking away! 

On the eve of CNY, right before my reunion lunch, I saw a lot of little bugs buzzing around my tangerine plant (I bought this for my dad 4 years ago during CNY too!) which was flowering then. There's a lot of cute little wasp busily pollinating there hence I wanted to capture those wasps in action! As I approached the tangerine plant, I got a rude shock when I discovered a slittery thing! Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a snake!!! It was at least 80 cm long, with small green stripes on its body!.

Here's the snake which was well camouflaged on the tangerine plant! To think about it, perhaps the snake just came by to usher in the year of snake!! Huat arr!! 

I actually called my dad after I saw the snake as he was out doing some grocery shopping that time. The first thing he did after he heard that was to head over to the lottery shop to buy our house address number!! 

LOL!

My dad tried to shoo the snake away but in a flash it managed to slither to the bougainvillea plant. After that, we decided to just ignore the snake hoping it will just leave. We went for our reunion lunch and as soon as I returned to check on it an hour later, true enough, the snake had left and never returned. Theoretically speaking, we suspected the reason the snake came was because of this here. Please see the picture below. Yup, that's two bird eggs. Looked yummy right? LOL!

I captured these two lil' eggs, two weeks before CNY when I returned home. Apparently a bird had decided to build a nest on my dad's flowering potted plant which wasn't very tall, hence we could easily spot the eggs.

When I was back during CNY, the eggs had hatched and this were the two cute little darling nestlings!

They were waiting eagerly to be fed by their mother.

Look how cute they were, luckily the snake did not manage to eat them! However, I have an even more tragic news. Just a day after I took this picture, they were missing the next day when I went to check on them. The nest was somewhat destroyed too!! So what has happened and who's the culprit?

By doing some CSI investigations, we highly suspected that it was the CAT looking at the damage done to the nest!! :( The cat basically just swallowed them whole!! 

Sigh...that's life isn't it? :(

Here's a picture of the poor momma bird, always busy looking for food and watching over her nest.

Other than that, here's some macro shots I took.

 The little wasp helping with the pollination process! Note: I took this picture prior to the snake's visit. I dare not go near this plant for a few days ever since I spotted the snake! LOL!

 Another shot of the wasp busy at work! If you noticed, there were two little bubble thingy on the wasp's leg. Do you know what is that? I am wondering too..

 The tangerine plant flowering and fruiting soon thanks to the wasps!! :)

 The bougainvillea flower

My parent's chinese bamboo plant never fail to flower every spring especially on CNY!!

  A little wasp hive!

                                       Another bougainvillea flower. Aren't they pretty? :)

 My dad's fiery chilli plant

 I have forgotten the name of this flower! Any idea?

 Another unknown flower. Beautiful eh?

 Unknown fruit!

 Little dragon fly :)

 An abandoned shell

A morning glory which was sleeping as I captured this late afternoon.

Don't you just love the nature? :)

I definitely do!

CNY 2013 - outdated post

I was really privileged to be able to celebrate the CNY back at my hometown this year while hubby returned to his hometown. As usual, I just love to snap snap snap all the traditions that has been practiced in my family for generations. My grandma would shake her head whenever she sees me holding my camera! LOL! Well, I am just worried that this tradition may have been forgotten especially in our generation, hence if I have some visual proof here, I could at least emulate some of these traditions in future. 

Basically, Chinese New Year is all about food and family gatherings. In some families, the get-togethers also included "gamblings" while the younger kids would play fireworks together! I do miss all these activities as a kid and I would be so excited donning on my new attire on CNY too!  Now that I am older, CNY brought a different kind of feeling. To me, to be able to be at home with my family has already bring me great joy! As I was away at Hungary last year, to be able to celebrate CNY this year indeed make me very happy! I was home for a week and to be able to immerse myself in all those "festivity" feeling, hearing those loud firecrackers, loud CNY dong dong chiang music and watching all those funny CNY movies which I use to hate alot but strangely, I actually love em' all now! So here's some pictures that I would like to share. 

Since I was back two days before the CNY begins, I helped to decorate my parent's home with some angpows and little decorative items I bought from the Campbell Street Market. Decorating the house prior to CNY has always being my responsibility but since I was always away or are only back a day before the reunion dinner for the past few years, I was actually excited to have the chance to decorate the house this year! :P

Reunion Lunch: The simple reunion lunch for the four of us. My parents, my grandma and myself. This year, my sister will only be coming back home on the 2nd day of CNY.

Midnight prayer to welcome the CNY

My favourite CNY Day #1 dish and also my all-time favourite food!!. My mom's super duper delicious mix vegetables dish!!Mmmmmmm!!!

CNY Day#1 Dinner: Went to my uncle's house for lou sang and steamboat dinner! Mmmmmm...!!

My grandma showing me the blouse which I bought for her. Nice or not? hehe..

CNY Day#2 : My cheeky 4.5 year old nephew! :)

CNY Day#2: My lil' niece, Jean at 14 months!! She can waddle (very cute) and has mastered quite a few words!! She loves to dance and guess what's her favourite song? 

Oppa Gangnam style!!:)

My techie gradma chatting with her great grandson Jacob all-the-way in US!! :)

Happy Chap Goh Meh

Happy Chap Goh Meh!!!Wow..luckily I still managed to post an entry before the CNY ended for the year of 2013!! 

Chap Goh Meh is basically a hokkien word which means the "15th day of the Lunar New Year". This day is also known as the Chinese Valentine's Day. Historically, single ladies/maidens would throw mandarin oranges into the sea or river, not before putting their wishes and perhaps their contact information written on the oranges. On the other hand, the bachelors will all be eagerly waiting on the boats, trying to collect the oranges with the intention of getting more contact information from the girls :). This culture is still being practiced today although it is much more commercialized and staged. I guess the most important information on the oranges today would be the Facebook profiles rather than an actual contact number! LOL.

This year, I have been privileged to be able to visit the annual light-up of the Kek Lok Si temple at Air Itam, Penang again. Expecting a large crowd, instead of going there today which is the last day, hubby and I went to check out the place on the 14th day instead. Although we went there rather late, around 9.30pm, traffic was still pretty bad and the roads leading to the temple was congested at the last 1 km. Not surprising though, as the roads gets narrower as we approached the temple. We remembered that 4 years ago, when we went to check out the place, traffic was smooth all the way and we were able to park right at the bottom of the hill. Time has definitely changed today with more people congregating in Penang today than 4 years back. Not complaining though as this sure is a good sign of Penang progressing well. :)

These are some of the pictures I took with my camera phone. Too bad that all my camera batteries were dead, so these pictures were the best I could capture! :)

Happy CNY 2013!!! :)

Back home in AS for the new year

I celebrated the New Year back in my hometown at Alor Setar this year. The reason is because I had to send my parents back after their 2 month trip to the US visiting my brother's family.

See how elated my parents were when they just got out from the departure gate at Bayan Lepas airport! I missed them loads too! :)

Since my parents were there for two months, hubby decided to order a Google Nexus 7 for my 2013 birthday present. Weee!! I have a new gadget!! Love you dear! :)

Dad bought my favourite fried noodle and fried yingyong (fried flat noodle). Yummms!

As I have nothing better to do at home, just for fun, I snapped some of my childhood memorabilia. On this vest are my huge collection of pins and badges which I had accumulated over the years, mostly from my Interact club days back in high school.

On my bookshelf, here' my childhood softoys collection. Some has been with me for over 20 years!

Some novels and old pictures

Some reference books from my university days and also some souvenirs I bought from my travels.

Lastly, before I returned to Penang today, my favourite thing to do is to "harvest" some of the vegetables from my parent's herb garden. As shown on the picture above, there were some pandan leaves, basil leaves, lemongrass, limes,fiery cili padi and kafir leaves. Soo aromatic, so fresh!! mmmm....time to do some cooking again :)

Have a great new year!!

Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013!

Wow...can't believe the end of 2012 is drawing close and we are going to usher in a brand new year in about an hour's time! Time to reflect back on the year's event.

January 2012

I celebrated the CNY in Debrecen, Hungary. I remembered a colleague and myself took a flight to Warsaw, Poland. We then took a 3 hour train to Krakow, a really beautiful, historic city. The most poignant and memorable event when we were there was our tour to Auswitz, the largest Jewish Concentration camp during the second World War. I remembered I always wanted to visit this place as I have done a research on the Holocaust during my university days history class. It was really a humbling experience learning about the atrocities and the sufferings of people especially the Jewish where many were killed in a horrible manner in an attempt by the Nazis on doing an "ethnic cleansing".

For CNY, I cooked my mom's signature dish, the mixed vegetarian dish.

Mixed Vegetarian dish

Just the two of us, we took this pic at 12 am Malaysian time on CNY 2012!

Feb 2012

Went to Ireland for the weekend. Love the place, as it reminded me so much of UK although it was wet and gloomy! Also visited the Guinness Warehouse!

Beautiful Irish coastlines

March 2012

Final trip with my fellow colleagues to Athens, Greece. Such a beautiful place, fell in love with the Mediterranean sea! Soooo blue! Also visited the famous World Heritage Site, the Acropolis!

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

April 2012

Saying goodbye to my Hungarian workmates and it's time for me to go home! But before that, hubby came over for a 2nd visit, and we're off for a full-fledged 2-weeks tour around Western Europe and parts of the East-side :)..Visited the UK again, and we're lucky to head to Croatia for the 2nd time to the beautiful Dubvronik island! Not to mentioned, it has always my dream to visit Keukenkof, Amsterdam to checkout the tulips and we're there at the right time! :) 

Tower Bridge, London

Dubvronik, Croatia

Beautiful Tulips at Keukenkof

May 2012 -June 2012

Came back to Malaysia. Spent 5 months in a temporary office. The location is great as it takes me a mere 5 minutes to get to work!

July 2012

Became an aunt for the third time with the arrival of my brother's newborn baby boy, Jacob.

Adorable baby Jacob at 4 months old

Aug 2012

4th Anniversary of my blog! :)

Sept 2012

Celebrated my 1st year wedding anniversary with hubby! :)

Oct 2012 - Nov 2012

Moved to new office. Very very busy at work setting up new facility.

At the new facility, check out the rainbow!

Dec 2012

Survived through the doomsday prophecy!!

Fuh, what an eventful year right?

Have a great 2013 peeps!!! :)