Kinta Riverfront

It's a long journey for rivers, so useful before the birth of automotive industry and definitely before people knew how to construct tar-roads. Rivers were left abandoned for decades, forgotten, became rubbish dump sites in some places. Then people learn how to look after and care for the old Kinta River.

View from 16th floor of Kinta Riverfront Hotel and Suites Ipoh.
I spent a weekend there for this Water Project .

________bangchik and kakdah________

a sweet memory of the recent past.

The photos were taken during the last rainfall. It had already been more than a week without rain now, it's definitely getting hotter and drier.  Kakdah was down for two days with fever. The plants are yellowing with thirst. I am displaying sweet memories of the last rainfall here....

the vegetable patch with ubi kemili or ubi keling

a spot where water wont go anywhere, and it got to dry up by itself.

the little buds of a palm tree close to the front porch

watery buds.

sweet memory of the recent past, a rainfall

bangchik and kakdah

pasir gudang, johor

Three days without water, how does it feel?

How does it feel to be without water for three days? We never know for sure because we are blessed with rain almost every day. Imagine what  life would be in desert if left alone for days. But how can we imagine hunger and thirst without experiencing one. How can we imagine love if we never had one. We can go down the list: poverty, pain, anger, sadness, joy....... etc.

Tanah Merah was without running water for three days recently. Yeap, River Kelantan still flowing, rain do drop almost every other day but tap was completely dry. Since modern life is made so dependent on tap water, anything wrong with the distribution system will affect us. The other day, the big pump broke down, replacements had to be imported, so tap was dry for three days. They did send tankers to ease hardship, yes a basic emergency procedure. But modern life itself can't effectively cope even with good recovery efforts........ Since there was only two of us in the house, we went on low consumption measure and rationing usage. Our neighbour at the front with 8 children would suffer more.

I remembered how  Melaka in 1991 had to go through it's worst water  crisis when Durian Tunggal reservoir dried up after a prolonged drought. Millions of dollars had to be pumped in to handle water crisis; diverting water from other states, and sending planes up to do cloud seeding. Melaka Water Board finally had a new boss ...........Without trying to be too judgmental, we do accept that history of mankind was punctuated with crisis, fallen heroes, rising stars, and scape goats ......

Then another problem appeared right in front of us. Our own fertigation system! So I resorted to manual mode, rationing water to just once a day. Huh, how they cried, yellowing every leaves they had, ripening every chili they held, to survive on low water mode. It should take longer than three days to see us humans succumb to starvation ..... Like us, chili plants are fighters too. Trying to emerge as winners against all odds, is still within their DNA make-ups.  To survive against drought, to stay sane, to stay relevant is to see the light of tomorrow......

pic1 ~ chili leaves yellowing, chili ripening, thirsty.

pic 2 ~ chili so small, yet potent.

pic 3 ~ Kakdah picking ripe chili from 90 plants

pic 4 ~ chili plants looked so healthy 2 weeks ago

A lady from the far end, asked for 3 kilos. She runs a restaurant nearby. I didn't know how much Kakdah charged that day. With Thailand still suffering from flood which effectively reduced vegetable imports across the border, Kakdah should know how much to charge. A full time housewife, but there is no stopping for her to know the rule of supply and demand. She has  mental record of her chili sales...... I wouldn't ask.

bangchik and kakdah

Tanah Merah Kelantan

Sprinkler and Dragonfly.

Dragonfly is called pepatung in a standard Malay Language. Kakdah mentioned about a very peculiar name cakcibo (used among Perakians staying around Bota, Parit and Sitiawan) referring to same dragonfly or pepatung. I am not familiar with that name cakcibo, because I am a Perakian with red Kedah blood.

yellowish brown dragonfly

yellowish brown dragonfly

yellowish brown dragonfly

Yellowish brown dragonfly sipping water from nipple of blue sprinkler,
with papaya leaf at the front, and  faint roselle flower at the back.

Brown Dragonfly over bamboo stake

Brown Dragonfly over bamboo stake

Dragonflies came and played with the sprinkler nipple almost every morning. Two distinct colour, one is yellowish brown, the other one is brownish. Probably one is male and the other female. I have not seen red or black yet. They really are water lovers! They do have peculiar habit of darting in circles and coming back at the same spot. Just wonder what they eat......

bangchik and kakdah

Tanah Merah, Kelantan

A memorable coil

 The yellow watering hose is in a resting position. If watering is done 

twice daily over 3 years, the coil has been straightened 

and recoiled over 2000 times.

The yellow watering hose with a row of vegetable containers. 

Kale is not much to be seen, because they are going through  

the early stage of cut and come again technique.

As we water everyday we get to know that plants really need water to survive and to keep growing. Some plants are 95 percent water. Banana plant is almost water, but surprisingly the plant can grow so tall and stand upright even against the strongest wind. Then we come to know how leaves wilt when the soil is too dry and that is a signal of real thirst. Some plants wilt due to excessive water.  Watering is a little process that we have to go through everyday, and during such process we check the plants on their growth, look for signs of pest attacks or diseases and the weeds. It is not just watering......

bangchik

As it rains.

 It was raining hard. But the sky was quiet,
no lightening fireworks to set the mood
and no loud thundering music to accompany the happening.
As both of us looked out the door,
we could hear the sounds of dropping and splashing.
We could see the rains dancing on the red pedestrian walk.
They flowed along the pavement and crossed the lawn
and disappeared through the drain.

pic 1

pic 2

pic 3

pic 4

After a while, the rain went easy and stopped.
But the leaves were enjoying the last bit,
seeing water flowing down ,
forming little drop at the edge
before jumping off
pushed by its weight

pic 5

pic 6

pic 7

pic 8

pic 9

pic 10

Rain has been falling down for zillion of years,
draining the heavy cloud,
clearing up the hazy sky,
bringing life back to the dry land.
As it stopped, the little frogs were croaking
in chorus rejoicing the after climax of the rain.
The soil was moist,
the males croaked continuously  to serenade the females.
There was wetness everywhere.....,
on the road, the leaves
and even in the air.

pic 11

Bangchik

Putrajaya, Malaysia

Water theme of Ampang

A large body of water, once a mining pool, readjusted into a nice looking and decent water theme. Lucky for those living nearby and those staying at the hotel . I stayed there for a night and two days for a function recently.

Many jog around the pool at weekends.

a nice fountain
right in the middle

Sunset on gloomy sky.

sunset over Putrajaya.

It rained around 3.30pm which lasted for about an hour.  The air became clean, easing visibility  through dusk.  But the sky remained gloomy with a definite promise that the sky would break again spraying rain onto land and mountains soon.

The sunset was a little bit gloomy lacking the silvery look.

~bangchik

Putrajaya Malaysia.

Wordless Wednesday: wet and windy.

~bangchik

Putrajaya Malaysia

The rain, and veggies on bed

dirt get caught on leaves

This is the place where two papaya plants used to be. For a quick replacement, I  put two rows of green vegetables. They enjoy more sunlight and rainfall, and during hot days, the soil dry up quicker than in containers. So vegetables has to undergo whatever changes there is. Heat and Rain!....... They look quite hardy for soft green vegetables. I am trying to understand why harvest in gardens and farms are fairly poor during raining season. There could be host of reasons. The most notable one is that the rain really splash dirt all over, and some get caught on the leaves.... We get cleaned up after a good shower in the bathroom, but vegetables get very dirty after a good rainfall.... and that would probably be the most damaging factor for vegetables on garden beds not to do so well....

~bangchik and kakdah

Putrajaya, MALAYSIA.

Chives drinking water?

chive flowers with an extremely long stalk

bent awkwardly after a gust of wind.

Thirsty.. huh!!

 

 

the pedestrian walkway

~bangchik and kakdah

Putrajaya, MALAYSIA

Cooling down the lawn!

The weather is getting hotter here, so they use sprinklers to cool down the lawn. I caught it digitally..... here you are, a snap of a sprinkler in Kelantan. I was there last Thursday, just for a day...

sprinkling..
The two guys are the security guards...
The lawn looks yellow not due to draught
but the reflection of morning rays...



The weather is getting hotter

Looking back is important too.

Arriving at destination, pushing forward to achieve target, utilising all resources to grab opportunity are things in everybody's mind. What about looking back once in a while... its like checking, monitoring and to ascertain we doing fine...... The same thing to gardening.....

A few photos here on ripples made as we were charging forward.... on Banding trip not on a raft, but on a boat........ the ripples are leaving us or chasing us?

Talk about looking back, I am still thinking what has gone wrong
with my sunflower seeds.....