Pet Peeve

GRUMPY CAT


 

mONKEY KING AND PIG HEADED BEAST

This Saturday ,I threw caution to the wind and abandoned my monotonous routine of house cleaning,washing and marketing.

I took my German colleague Monica for a getaway to nature. 'I'll rather be a sparrow than a snail,Yes I would if only I could fly away

 -I'll fly away like a bird in the sky.A man gets tied up to the ground,he gives the world its sadddest sound.   

  I've never felt so refreshed and alive as when I'm outdoors in a natural setting.What a wonderful morning.The weather was nice

 and breezy. We went up Bukit Melawati in Kuala Selangor,took pics of the silver leafed monkeys and their golden coloured babies.

One awful primate grabbed my leg hoping to be fed by visitors-but my shriek frightened it away.Then we strolled downhill and drove to the mangrove swamp nature park

We walked around the place,went up a watchtower and Monica caught a photo of a wildboar.Unfortunately when we went down

 the watchtower,it stood in our path-Now what should you do when you are staring at a black ugly boar a mere few metres away.

We're dead meat-I don't think we can outrun it.Its mate was lurking nearby.Quick thinking -If I blast my smartphone song maximum volume ,Toshi 's high pitch song Blue Resistance might just do the trick. Desperate times call for desperate measures.Oh ohh, not a good idea some swines(the non human kind) can be so pig headed and may abhor audio assault and charge at us.Oh No !the bloody trees are so short and stunted-F$#@*K -Do pigs know how to climb trees???????

   Luckily in this staredown between man and beast,Mr Boar got bored with staring us down,grunted and 

disappeared back into the mangrove swamp.We are safe.Monica and I met some youths from Petronas voluntary club doing

 replanting of saplings and good job too as their legs were caked with mud.The little I know,mud has therapeutical  facevalue 

when slapped as a mask on my face but I'm not sure what it does on legs.Maybe replace wax stripper for those with hairy legs.

Anyway ,better leave it to the young and brave to save the planet.I'm past the prime of youth and getting ready to sail into the

 setting sun.

We also discovered mudskippers,egrets and herons.Then we went on the broadwalk across the mangrove saplings

.It's like being pulled into a time tunnel.Streaks of sunlight filtered through tall rows of mangrove saplings.It's so hauntingly quiet

 with the blob blob of seawater being sucked into the crab holes beside mounds of earth.The wind is whistling through the trees

.My heart felt supreme serenity and bliss.It was like being pulled    

into a time tunnel.Streaks of sunlight filtered through tall rows of mangrove saplings.It's so hauntingly quiet with the 

blob blob of seawater being sucked into the crab holes beside mounds of earth.The wind is whistling through the trees.My heart felt supreme serenity and bliss.

     After a quick lunch,we went on a boat ride to see eagle feeding.it was more than 50 Brahminy Kites ,brown and white with huge wing spans swooping down to feed.Awesome sight when these magnificent birds circled dived and swooped.Monicca is the perfect travelling companion as she is an avid nature lover like me.We speak in hush tones and keep quiet to listen to the sound of nature.She is really a travel junkie and has been to all parts of the globe from Latin America,New Zealand,China,Pakistan,South East Asia and even Africa.She free lances as a tour guide to exotic places like Galapagos Island,Peru,Mexico Zimbabwe ,Mt Kilimanjaro,Kenya and Cuba.How I wish to be in her shoes,a wanderer of the world far and wide.

   I hope she was happy to see a small part of natural Malaysia.She seemed excited about the feeding frenzy of the kites.

 boat ride to see eagle feeding.it was more than 50 Brahminy Kites ,brown and white with huge wing spans swooping down to feed.Awesome sight when these magnificent birds circled dived and swooped.Monicca is the perfect travelling companion as she is an avid nature lover like me.We speak in hush tones and keep quiet to listen to the sound of nature.She is really a travel junkie and has been to all parts of the globe from Latin America,New Zealand,China,Pakistan,South East Asia and even Africa.She free lances as a tour guide to exotic places like Galapagos Island,Peru,Mexico Zimbabwe ,Mt Kilimanjaro,Kenya and Cuba.How I wish to be in her shoes,a wanderer of the world far and wide.

   I hope she was happy to see a small part of natural Malaysia.She seemed excited about the feeding frenzy of the kites.

Music and the emotions

Our education system sadly lacks emphasis on music education and the lack of exposure would hamper our creative industry as the music composition of animes like The Garden of Words or Kitaro's composition for movies and Zhang Yi Mou onsite musical theatre in Hangzhou.
        Teachers are so lacking in training that they kill any interest to explore the field of arts.The talented youths in music in Malaysia is because of the extra mile of parents who go all out to groom their own children.But that wonderful opportunity for music education is denied to children from poorer households. Jun's harmonica private tutor was so passionate about his craft that when he was young,he visited the Suzuki factory in Japan whilst on holiday just to learn more about the potential of the instrument.Both Jun's Suzuki and Horner's harmonica would be underrated if not for the passion of his music tutors to expose him to all genres like blues and bluegrass.
       So there is a dearth of good music educators in the system-the lack of infrastructure facilities to practise like studios to jam in or increase the talentpool through music competitions at school,state and national level.Private institutes have Battle of the Bands but not public institutes.
      Even the gamelan is a dying artform.
   
In Nature Neuroscience a Canadian team uses fMRI scan and PET scan to see the effects of "the potent,pleasurable stimulus "that is music. The result was music triggers the production of dopamine a chemical with a key role in setting people's moods by the neurons in both the dorsal and ventral regions of the brain.
       The dopamine neurons in the caudate a region of the brain involved in learning stimulus response associations and in anticipating food and other reward stimuli were at their most active around 15 seconds before the participants' favourite moments in the music.
  Although music says little it stil manages to touch us deeply.Our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal.Our pupils dilate,our pulse and blood pressure rise,electrical conductance of our skin is lowered and the cerebellum a brain region associated with bodily movement becomes strangely active.Blood is rediredted to the leg muscles.Sounds stir at our biological roots.
That's why chanting has a meditative effect at slowing down our hyperactive brains.

Zhang Yi Mou

I've been an ardent fan of Zhang Yi Mou ever since I viewed his movie Raise The Red Lantern and the lowly status of women practically faceless in a patriarchial household.My absolute fav is Life starring Ge You and his muse Gong Li.But there are more art house indie movies that don't command big box office earnings but are absolutely artistic like Happy Times about an aged bachelor and his heart of gold in helping his blind step daughter to get a decent job.It's bittersweet comedy like Charlie Chaplin's City Lights but with a decidedly Chinese streak.The other poignant movie with a theme of love and reconciliation between father and son is Riding alone for a thousand miles which starrs the Japanese actor as a father and the lengths he goes to to fulfil the wishes of his dying son.It'll be good when streaming services are introduced to enable independent art house movies to reach a wider audience world wide.
         

Female Artiste

The talented female artiste that has a wonderful voice which is angelic is Faye Wong-especially when she sings the epilogue to the song for the movie Aftershock.The heart sutra is a song that lightens the burden of overanxiety when she sings it in her crystalline vocals-it makes my skin tingle and lifts the brain fog.
   The other Chinese female director that I adore is Xu Jing Lei .Her direction of the movie "Letters from an Unseen woman" is not only subtle but also poignant without descending into a melodramatic tear jerker of Bollywood exaggeration.It's so quiet and muted like the scoll unfurling of an inkbrush painting of mists swirling around the rugged peaks of mountains. 
 

Phenomenal woman Maya Angelou

American poet  Maya Angelou is a craftswoman with words.I tear up today listening to a recital of her poem on love as freedom and how her inspirational mother liberated her to reach her fullest potential.May she rest in peace and her words continue to speak out to our humanity.

Inspired by Maya Angelou's poem "I know why a caged bird sings."

Just a song in the night

A Song of light

It sings 

when darkness descends

A plain looking bird

This nightingale atop the leafy branches

Just a simple brown song bird

gifted with 

a melodic voice

Lifting its breast as

Darkness starts to swallow up the sun

And stirs your heart

With ballads of remarkable loss and hope

It sings of a search for love as

Of ships that pass each other silently in the night

In an ocean of churning waves

Two lights that know each other only in passing

Two strangers in an ocean of people

A brief glance of memory of love that lights up

And  vanishes just as fast

Two wanderers whose paths would never ever cross again    

For one is a tiny flash of light 

Fighting against the encroaching darkness

Not ever hoping to outshine

The radiant star shimmering in the vast sky

The star that is the light of hope 

The star that is a beacon

To guide the journey home for lost ships

The light of the firefly can barely be seen

Nevertheless a thousand in unison

Glitters like a Christmas tree

A thousand in unison brightly flickering

A  joyful sight to the lonely wanderers in the night

The song bird warbles

Of two hearts passing in the night

Falling in love 

never able to meet each other again for

The firefly can never reach the distant stars

That are so high up in the night sky.

Unseen though the nightingale is.

Only the melody remains

Its song pierces the coldest heart

Lights up the darkest night

And strikes the lonely sailor

Longing to reach home.

Just a song in the night

Lingers in the silence

Just a songbird

Discovering a firefly

Amongst the stars

A nightingale in the wild flies far and wide

Across mountains and seas

Free to fly through rain or shine

A songbird does not stay free for long

He  pays a price for his angelic voice

That is a lure for bird hunters

The last song he sings in the wild

Before he loses his freedom

Trapped in a cage

Singing his heart out

to his captor

To be free again

To fly with the fireflies

To serenade the stars

To call the sailor

Home from stormy seas.

To fight to be free

To love

again

Adaptation

As body ages,need to adapt to physical movements.Tried to do Zumba and aerobics at the park but knees are screaming in pain after all that jumping and twisting and kicking but boy every joint is aching and need the thai massage to soothe sore muscles.It's the chinese tuina massage and thai massage that enables me to do yoga postures but after my fall and injuries and frozen left shoulder it need ayurvedic oil massage and acupunture to finally restore back full functioning but still there is weakness in shoulder muscles.
       Osteoarthritis of knee is affecting my yoga stretches and yesterday I started learning tai chi-I used to think it was so slow when compared to jazzrobics with Judy Shepherd tapes ,it was for old people until now I'm qualified for the senior citizen label,I understand why I cannot do such vigorous exercises anymore and tai chi is so meditative like swimming,the repetition slows and relaxes the body.I'm looking forward to improving my internal energy and after watching Jack Ma and Jet Li in their kung fu flick,maybe slow and steady may be the way to go.My body aint gonna jump and prance around like the energizer bunny so time to slow down and listen to the body.