Without giving any sign, they, the Brown Shrikes, left sometime around the month of March. None was seen during my count for the MY Garden Birdwatch that I did in the month of June for both years, 2013 and 2014. But now, with winter approaching in North Asia, this migratory bird is back in the Malay peninsular.
As far as I could tell, it was a normal Bantam hen when it was hatched. When it reached maturity it laid eggs and even went broody at times, just like the other hens. There was nothing out of the ordinary. That was until the beginning of this year when I noticed a change in this particular hen - the pattern and colour of its feathers began to transform. I did not give it much thought at that time as it was not sick, nor was it acting in any bizarre way, but at the back of my mind, I did find it odd. None of my other chickens had ever changed their plumage before.
I should have given it more thought before enabling Google+ comments on my blog. The problem with this feature is that once enabled, a Google+ profile or page is required before any comments can be made on my blog. Anonymous and non-Google+ user comments are disallowed. With Google+ Comments enabled, I would expect some future comments to be loss as I actually have a few Anonymous user comments on my blog itself. This is definitely something that I do not want.
I spent something like 2 hours looking for a way to disable Google+ Comments on my blog. The answer is actually there at Google+ Comments FAQs but unfortunately it is not that obvious to me. A separate heading on "How to remove Google+ Comments on Blogger" in the FAQs would have been a much better idea.
My family did not plant cacti for their flowers. As a matter of fact, we did not even know that they produce flowers until about a week ago when we had one. A big white gorgeous flower measuring about 3 inches across. It must have been our lucky day. As the morning progressed, the flower began withering. By the following day, it has completely wilted. This seems to suggest that the full bloom must have been at night (we missed that since we did not know), a few hours before the picture above was taken.
I wonder, do people actually collect exercise books, especially of those that are from one's former school? Well, I certainly do not. But I am beginning to wonder now if I should. Most household do not give a hoot to them come the end of the school year. Most will be discarded and there is certainly no exception at my home. However, for one reason or another, a couple of these exercise books from my former school did survive. They were not all kept at the same place. So when I gathered them together, I realized that I have quite an interesting collection - historical items from my old school St. Michael's Institution, Ipoh (S.M.I.).
Not all of these exercise books were mine. Some were my brother's, and for the more recent ones they were given to me. In all, what I have now is a collection of S.M.I. exercise books that span something like 43 years. They date from 1970 till 2013, and are all of the same size, measuring 16.5cm x 21.0cm. Off my memory, I can recall the 40, 80 and 120 pages for the plain/blank, single line, double line and square line used during my school days.
I only have vague knowledge on the history of some of these exercise books that were used before 1970 and also after 1985. The simple reason is: I was not there in school. Please correct me if you find any inaccuracies by leaving a comment below.
I really should be using the latest version of Gimp, version 2.8. But unfortunately, I do not have the bandwidth to download the installation file. Thus I have to settle with Gimp version 2.6.9, for the moment, which is about a quater of the size of version 2.8.
Upon firing up Gimp version 2.6.9 after installation, the first thing that greeted me was a flashscreen and a user interface in my local language. I would very much prefer using Gimp in English. But like I have mentioned in my previous blog post, I have a need to set my regional location to "Malaysia" as otherwise I will have problems tuning in to my local TV stations with my K-World PCI Analog TV Tuner 
Here is what I did to configure my Microsoft Windows PC so that Gimp will startup in English ("en_us" in this case):
This is my third year of participating in the MY Garden Birdwatch Survey. There are actually more species of birds in my neighbourhood than what my bird count shows. I know because I was keeping tab, and capturing with my digital camera sometimes, on the variety of birds since the last survey in June 2013. Hoping to get the result that best depicts the variety of birds within my neighbourhood, I counted twice this year: on 7th June 2014 between 7:45am and 8:15am, and on 8th June 2014 between 12:30pm and 1:00pm. But unfortunately the birds have other plans. They seem to come around at different hours of the day, and for some only on certain months of the year.
Below is the count that I did on 8th June 2014 which I submitted to My Garden Birdwatch as my official count. I find the results to be more or less the same as last year's.
I never had this error message before. This only started happening about 2 weeks ago. A dialog box will appear as show above for my blog posts that contains Amazon Affiliate IFrame ads in RavenPlus. This error message will appear 'n' times if I have 'n' number of Amazon Affiliate IFrame Ads for any particular blog post. The Amazon ad still gets displayed correctly though, but this error message is annoying.
To prevent this error messages from popping up, what I did was to disable Javascript in Internet Explorer (IE). RavenPlus WYSIWYG editor is actually a Microsoft COM based object that is borrowed from IE and embedded into RavenPlus, by the way. To disable Javascript in IE:
I just found this 1978 copy of "The Living Stream" within my home recently. I must admit, I have completely forgotten about it and now, I can't even remember how I got it. "The Living Stream", by the way, is a magazine that is published, once every two years by the 6th Form Arts Council of the St. Michael's Institution (S.M.I.), Ipoh. I think they are only distributed to the Arts Stream students in the Upper Secondary in S.M.I., which makes this a mystery as I was in the Lower Secondary in 1978.
When I flipped through the pages, I seem to have some recollection of the cartoons depicting life at S.M.I. back then. But I don't think I have actually read the rest of it, which is a pity actually as there is an interview with Reverend Brother Director, Bro. Ultan Paul about the history and background of S.M.I. that is not found anywhere else, as far as I know - not even in the pile of school magazines, "The Michaelian", that I have. Hats off to the 1978 Editorial Team of "The Living Stream" for filling this void.
Below is this interview, conducted by Denise Teh Swan Teen and Choong Mee Yong, both of Lower Six Art 2 1978. See what you think. There are some typos. So, my corrections are in brackets and in blue.
There is no mention of a tunnel of any kind by the way. With all that piling in the school hall at that time, is building a tunnel possible?
