#1. Sunset at Parangtritis

#2. Sunset at Temerloh Bridge

#3. Sunset at Parangtritis, Indonesia

#1. This shot was taken not far from our house. Free and we can move about easily. Exercise for health.

#2. Strapped and bundled. I pity the guy. Its a sleep study done by a trained personel.

#3. Enjoying Magic the Gathering. Players and the deck builder. A fine game after the tests were over. Aliah is bored.

#4. A moon and tree stumps. At the beach not far from home.

#5. Taken by Momad at a London subway.

Our patience were rewarded with this one beautiful unique spider with large horns, the Gasteracantha sp.

#1 Gasteracantha sp.

#2 Gasteracantha sp. closeup

#1 Location 1

#2 Location 2

#3 Away from its web

#4 A close up

#5 A close up

#6 Looking at the belly

#7 With a black board on the background

Pituitary fossa MRI February 2007 with pituitary tumour

I was back at Damansara Specialist Hospital where the surgery was performed to repeat the MRI and see the doctors for post surgical assessments. I was told that I am doing well with slight hormonal imbalance. I was also encouraged to get myself physically fit, to prepare for work in about 2 weeks time. That night a few of us had teh tarik and agreed to meet on Sunday for Bukit Belacan’s outing.

Post surgery MRI March 2007

I arrived earlier than Red and Boogey. I was accompanied by my wife Roza, my mother in law and Aliah, my daughter. We walked up the forest park with 1001 comments. The park was beautiful with big tall trees, clear water flowing with thunderous sounds, birds singing along and the sound of insects adding to the music.

However the beauty was spoiled by litter. Plastics, wrappers, waste papers, leftovers were thrown everywhere. Buildings were not maintained both in terms of cleanliness or structural integrity. It is really sad that a place that has a potential of becoming a tourist attraction is treated in such a way.

We met Boogey, Red, with Mas Ryna, Maman and Danial on our way back downhill. I continued with the boys for the Bukit Belacan safari as the girls chose to go home.

We traced back up the road that I took earlier until we arrived at a bridge crossing Sungai Ampang. Along the way, a few shots on spiders were taken. Red met with his nemesis, the ‘pacat’ that crawled on his index finger trying to ‘aid’ him on squeezing the shutter. It was lucky that the camera strap prevented his dslr from diving intil the river.

We then crossed a narrow bridge to the othe side of the river. We saw lots of butterflies flying around and we were lucky to find this dovetail butterfly that flew not like ordinary butterfly, a mutant.

There was a pond with lots of dragonflies, red, blue, green and pinkish. I guess, there were lots of dragonfly larvae or nymph in the pond as most of their life cycle were spent in this form. Their life span is from 6 months to as long as 6 years. The larger species can live in the adult form that is flying up to 4 months.

A dragonfly is any insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera. It is characterized by large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and an elongated body.

Dragonflies have excellent eyesight and their compound eyes have up to 30,000 facets, each of which is a separate light-sensing organ or ommatidium, arranged to give nearly a 360° field of vision.

It was recently discovered that dragonflies employ a particular optical illusion, termed motion camouflage, to stalk other insects that invade their territory. It was suggested that a dragonfly can move in such a way as to project itself as a stationary object while speedily attacking its victims thus illustrating how dragonflies use complex camouflaging techniques during aerial combat. Dragonflies typically eat mosquitoes, midges and other small insects like flies, bees, and butterflies.

Therefore, they are valued predators and can be breed to control the population of dengue carrier mosquitoes.

On our way back down the road, we found more bugs and spiders. There were grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and the usual large green dragonflies trying to haunt Boogey with its stationary mid flight.

I was geared with the Nikkor 55mm F2.8 micro AIS(1:2) attached to my D50 and Nikkor 55-200 F4-5.6G as my second lens.
Most of the photos were taken by using the Nikkor 55mm lens.

On the next day we had an engagement ceremony of Rafidah, my sister in law. It took place in Ampang, Selangor.

I have just started to use BR 2A with a Nikon 35-70 F3.3 lens to try macro photography and close up