Eidul Adha with Hornbills

Update 21/06/10
It was late afternoon on Friday 18th, the eve of my birthday when there was this loud 'cackle' coming from the coconut trees in front of the house. Told Ayong to get the camera out for I wanted to 'catch' pictures of the birds. It was too far off for the digital compact camera but I insisted. This is her best shot [cropped and enlarged 2x].

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Went to bed in the wee hour .. it was already close to 4.00 am. Was cooking the peanut sauce for eid's breakfast with the children. At about 6.30 am ..there was this loud 'cackle'. I recognized the sound. It was the hornbills. I have seen them around the house a few times but it was never this close. I got out of bed and peered through the glass of my bedroom window.

There it was ... perched on the tip of the gabled roof of the porch. It's faded black and white feathers and the white bill againts the gray morning sky made it looked like a wooden carving. I tiptoed to my daughter's room to get the camera and tiptoed back to the window. As I tried to get it into the lens .. it flew away cackling merrily.

Again I was left with a googled picture.


However, the image of a hornbill perched on the tip of the gable on early EidulAdha morning left a very strong and pleasant impression.

The bird stuck around until evening.

I am hoping it will return to perch on the gable again tomorrow morning.

I Dreamed A Dream

Network sucks. Can't load my cyber farms. Lost quite a lot of coins. Almost bankrupt. Done PMR marking. Resigned from SPM marking since two years ago. The stress was too much. Age rode on bullet train and caught up with me ahead of time [hahaha].


As usual, am finding it hard to articulate my thoughts. In dire need of good stimulant to get started. Seriously considering ciggy but for the persistent coughing and wheezing which requires relief from Salmodil. Perhaps I need to go back to the inhalers.


The sky has been heavily casted with dark nimbus for the past whole week. Some parts of the country has been flooded and rain has not ceased for days now.


Attended a meeting of sort hold at De Palma Shah Alam last week to discuss songs for the upcoming AKSHAH. Hit a milestone with knot. Regret is creeping in now. 

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed that love will never die
I dreamed that god will be forgiving
But the tiger come at night
With the voice as soft as thunder
As it tears your hopes apart
And it turn you dreams to shame
And still I dreamed he'll come to me
That we will live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this HELL I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has KILLED the dream I dreamed

Culpable homicide?

I was so pissed off when I read this in the newspaper today.


In my humble opinion, this is a clear cut accident case because the woman failed to control her car when the man stopped his motorcycle. The man is a thief but I am sure the woman has no murder on her mind at the time of impact. He must have stopped suddenly and the woman could have rammed into the fence and killed herself. 


I bet in some countries, lawyers would run over each other to advise the woman to sue this newspaper for the choice of words ".. he died after his victim RAN OVER HIM in her car in a dead-end valley". 


That's blatant slander.


I have a daughter. This could be her!

Moon Halo

Last night at about 9.00 pm, I took a steaming mug of black coffee to my favourite spot under the warm tropical sky to partake in my favourite pastime - sky gazing on full moon night. It was 14th Zulkaedah 1430H.

As I came out the door, the night was bright. I took my own sweet time before looking up the sky because I knew the moon was full.

When I did .. I saw something like this.

No! I didn't take this picture. I only had a 3mp phonecam. The whole phenomenon only appeared as a white dot on the screen. I googled moon halo and got this image here [moon halo]. It is the nearest image to what I actually saw. After sometime, I received an SMS from a friend in town telling me to get outside and watch the moon. Only then it occured to me to share the awesome phenomenon with my loved ones. I frantically sent SMS to every one on my phone list. It was hard SMS'ing while looking up at the moon! But I was glad I did. They enjoyed the rare occurance. A dear friend who lives on the 8th floor, climbed to the roof of a 10-storey building to catch the halo but the haze was too thick on his sky.


This was not so much about the beauty but to stand right smack in the middle of such a breathtakingly awesome display of nature was such a humbling experience.


By 10.30 the clouds move in and it was over.


So, this is the best I have. Alhamdulillah.


Ask yahoo yields this explanation:- 


That breathtaking vision in the night sky is the result of ice crystalsrefracting the light of the moon. The halo rings the moon when high, thin cirrus clouds made up of millions of these crystals cover the sky. The moon's light enters into the hexagonal-shaped ice structures and is bent before passing out another side of the crystals, causing a ring of light to appear around the moon. But this phenomenon is not limited to the moon -- given the right conditions, you can spot a sun halo as well.
Halos typically appear as a ring of white light around the moon or the sun, but they can also appear in color patterns. The most common type of halo is the 22-degree halo, so-called because the ice crystals refract the light of the moon or sun at an angle of 22 degrees. A less-common type of halo is the 46-degree variety, which has a larger diameter than the 22-degree but is also fainter.
According to folklore, a moon halo indicates that bad weather is on the way. There may be some truth to this since the halo is usually caused by high-altitude cirrus clouds that precede a warm front and an associated storm.
One dark, cloudy night, you might also be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of another spectacular moon show -- the lunar corona, when the moonlight is diffracted into hazy colored rings.