pink necked green pigeons

i first came across the pink-necked green pigeons at sungei buloh wetland reserve. they usually make their appearance on the trees next to the pond, near the entrance of the reserve. when they fly, they make a distinct flapping sound. most times, i will see a pair of them but sometimes i may see as many as five.

today, i saw as many as thirty of them on a single tree at the zhenghua park. they were not roosting but feeding on the same berries found on the tree. pink-necked pigeon are quite well camouflaged. there are about six of them in the above picture. can you spot them?

as with most other animals, the male pink-necked pigeon is more colourful (attractive) than its female counterpart. unlike the common pigeon, this species of pigeon normally do not come to the ground; they are always perched on shrubs and trees.

pump prices in melbourne

i noticed that pump prices in melbourne follow a certain pattern that is unique to australia. in singapore, pump prices vary, but not day to day; in singapore, when the world's crude oil price goes up, after a while, this increase will be reflected in a higher pump price, with an announcement made of the new price. the adjusted price will remain the same for a period of time unless there are marked fluctuations in the prices of crude.

in melbourne, australia, the price can be, say, aus$1.13/litre one minute and then aus$1.16, the next on the same day. prices are usually lowest on tuesdays and wednesday mornings. so, it is not surprising to see queues of cars waiting to top up at petrol kiosks on these two days. prices tend to be higher on fridays, weekends and public holidays.

unlike singapore, prices are not standard: they not only vary from day to day, they vary from station to station and they vary from one suburb to another. in the rural and outlying areas, where petrol stations are few and far in between, you will definitely have to pay more for your fuel. in singapore, whether you fill up at changi village or pasir panjang, you pay the same price for the same grade of petrol.

another trend that i have observed in melbourne is the switch to cars using diesel instead of the conventional unleaded or leaded petrol. my friend chris who drove me to the yarra wineries drives a diesel powered holden captiva.

wineries at yarra valley

wine-drinking tourists to melbourne would have designated the yarra valley as one of the must visit places in melbourne. as for me, a social drinker, who has visited melbourne at least a dozen times, i made my first visit to the yarra valley wineries today. my original plan was to go to miss marples in sassafras for tea but my friend chris suggested yarra glen as i had been to saafraas and olinda a few times already.

enroute to the yarra valley, we dropped in at lilydale. i have heard of lilydale but i had not seen the place. chris perked my interest when he mentioned some 19th century buildings, including a small theatre and a museum in the town. we did not manage to see the inside of the theatre as it was in total darkness but we managed to get a glimpse of the lobby.

at yarra glen, we stopped to have coffee and pie at a small cafe. that is one aspect of life in australia that appeals to me: you wander to some outlying town and have a light meal on the sidewalk. would have been perfect except for the pesky houseflies that appear in droves in summer. across the road was a brewery. we tried the six types of home brewed beer; rather it was chris who tried most of it while i had the apple cider only.

the first winery we dropped in was the yering, the oldest winery in the valley. this winery was different from those i had visited at the mornington peninsula. it has a fairly long history and the original buildings have been conserved. the other winery - the chandon - conducts daily tour for walk-in visitors. we joined one group at the tail end of their tour and managed to see the wine hall.

although we did not buy any wine, we stayed back to have a light meal at the cafe so as to enjoy the countryside scenery - the vineyard and the mountains in the distance.

why drive?

"driving in singapore is a breeze." whoever wrote this had to be joking. what is the use of well-marked roads when you can hardly see the markings; when what you constantly see these days is a close-up view of the back of the vehicle in front of you.

driving, especially to work, is no longer a pleasant experience in s'pore. the roads to your working place seem to be all clogged up. in the early days, it used to be the main roads that were jammed. nowadays, even the arterial roads are chock-a-block. returning home from work, you go through the same grind.

even with having to pay for erp, quite a number of motorists do not seem to be deterred. there is only a slight drop in the traffic during those paying hours. the number of cars on the roads has increased a few folds over the past few years. there was a time when parking space was never an issue, whether you reported for work early or late. nowadays, you had better be early or you might end up leaving your car at some unauthorised spot.

when i first started working in the 60s, it would have taken us at least a few years of working and 'moonlighting' before we could afford to buy a used car. these days, it is quite normal for a person who has just joined the workforce to own a new car within the first two years.

the congestion on our roads is beginning to remind me of our experiences when driving in kuala lumpur (kl). i do not know of the present traffic situation there but for many years, each time we visited kl, we would park our car in the hotel and relied on public transport - even though we ran the risk of being charged an exorbitant rate by the taxi-drivers - to move about. chun see mentioned about the notorious traffic in kl here.

here, in melbourne, i see the same kind of traffic build-up during peak hours but the speed of flow is definitely much faster than back home.

i just checked with my friend's daughter who lives in melbourne. she parks her car, for free, outside the train station at huntingdale and takes the train to the city. as long as she exits the station, any station, before 7.00 a.m., she travels free on the train. this is one of the ways that they have adopted here to reduce morning congestion on the roads.

she has been back to s'pore recently and she told me that she has changed her mind about going back to work in singapore. she finds the place much too crowded, not just the vehicular traffic but also the human traffiic.

how they clean the canals

keeping the waterways clean is no easy task, given that you have to contend with the ways of man and nature. from my observations, a lot of the rubbish in canals come from nature, mostly the dried leaves from trees. after a heavy downpour, the condom shaped nets at this canal outside bukit panjang will swell up with lots of brown leaves, among other things.

i once commented to my friend that the kallang river was so clean that one would be tempted to have a swim in it. however, i changed my mind about doing it when i saw the state it was in after it had rained the night before. the amount of rubbish was unbelievable and the cleaners had to go around in a boat and armed with huge nets to scoop the rubbish and transferred it into a container in the boat.

with many of the canals and rivers draining into the marina reservoir, it is even more critical that less rubbish reaches the area dammed behind the marina barrage. apart from nets, booms are placed across some of the canals and rivers to trap the rubbish.

how do they remove the debris from this narrow and shallow canal which is not accessible by boats? the rubbish is trapped in the elongated nets and although it is mainly leaves, it is still too heavy for the workers to carry it out of the canal. normally, once a week, the contractor will come in this lorry equipped with a fork lift to haul up the nets laden with rubbish and dump the rubbish in his lorry. however, during the end of the year rainy seasons, he may have to make three or four appearances a week at the side of this canal.