Author Archives: admin

Goodbye 2022 Hello 2023!

Goodbye 2022 Hello 2023!

It is New Year Eve again. 2022 seemed to have passed so quickly. As we ceremoniously say goodbye to 2022 and hello to 2023, we pay homage to the New Year Eve rite with thoughts of the year gone by and hopes for the year to come. As 2022 comes to an end, I marvel at how it went by in a ...

Read More »

Happy Ruby Anniversary!

Our wedding photo

Today is Christmas but it is more than just Christmas to me. It is a very special day for me and my wife for it is our Ruby Wedding Anniversary. Four decades spent together is a very special milestone in its own right. To my dearest wife I dedicate this poem: The year of 1982 was a very special year We ...

Read More »

Kuala Baram Wetlands – Bird Sanctuary?

Kuala Baram Wetlands

The Kuala Baram Wetlands is my favourite place to go for bird photography in Miri. Located about 35 minutes’ drive from the city centre, the marshland has been hailed as a sanctuary for migrating birds from around the world. Kuala Baram Wetlands The wetlands’ total size is about 600 hectares consisting of mudflats, mangrove forests, salt pans, freshwater lakes and prawn and fish ponds. At the last ...

Read More »

The Black Hornbill

A male black hornbill

I have been doing bird photography for a few years and the black hornbill is a bird that I have encountered only a few times in Kuala Baram Wetlands area near the roundabout going to Brunei. The black hornbill (Anthracoceros malayanus) is a sooty black bird of the hornbill family Bucerotidae. It can be found in Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Indonesiua, Thailand and Singapore. The ...

Read More »

The Vulture And The Little Girl

I read a sad story shared in one of my WhatsApp chat groups this morning. The story really touched me and I feel inclined to share it. It was on 26th March,1993, that a photograph titled “the struggling girl” appeared in the New York Times. Taken by Kevin Carter, an internationally renowned South African photojournalist, the iconic photograph taken in Sudan when the country was plagued ...

Read More »

What Is Success?

What is success? Many equate success with money, fame, status and material items.  But success is not something that comes with a one-size-fits-all label. Each of us needs to define success by our own labels. Though different dictionaries may agree on a general definition of success, it’s a subjective concept. It’s up to an individual to determine what success is ...

Read More »

Miri’s Water Woes

Poor poor Miri residents Their lives turned upside down by the water disruption incidents A burst pipe is all it takes Creating havoc in its wake. Lots of Mirians are blaming LAKU It’s difficult for them to keep their cool Even taking bathe seems to have become a luxury Life has become such a misery. Toilets stink like hell Things ...

Read More »

Escape From Shangri-La By Michael Morpurgo

Escape From Shangri-La

Escape From Shangri-La is a heartfelt war story from Britain’s best-loved children’s author, Michael Morpurgo. It explores the legacy of strife and loss in World War Two. I have read a few of the author’s novels and they always pull at your heartstrings. Cessie has never seen her grandfather, not even in photos, until the day he turned up on the ...

Read More »

A Judgement In Stone By Ruth Rendell

A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell

A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell is widely considered to be one of her greatest works. There are no shocks or surprise twists. And yet it is utterly compelling. A Judgement In Stone opens with this first sentence: ‘Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.’ The brief first chapter then goes on to tell us the ...

Read More »

Deep River By Shusaku Endo

Deep River by Shusaku Endo

I have been reading one thriller after another for quite a while so I decided to try something very different for a change. Looking through my vast book collection, I finally chose Deep River by Shusaku Endo. Deep River (深い河, Fukai kawa) is a novel by Shusaku Endo published in 1993. When he died in 1996, only two novels were chosen to be placed ...

Read More »