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Weather Advisory, Tides and General Weather for this weekend – Part One

You may have guessed it: yes, I’m going diving again this weekend.

FIRST CATEGORY WARNING
WARNING ON STRONG WINDS AND ROUGH SEAS
IN THE COASTAL WATERS OFF THE EAST COAST OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA, SARAWAK, LABUAN AND WEST SABAH

WARNING UPDATE
Section: A

WIDESPREAD THUNDERSTORM WARNING OVER THE COASTAL WATERS OF KELANTAN,TERENGGANU AND SARAWAK

Thunderstorm activities with strong winds over the coastal waters of Kelantan, Terengganu and Sarawak are expected to persist till 10.00 am today(13 November 2006).This condition is expected to cause rough seas up to 3.5 metres and is dangerous to small boats.

Section: B

FIRST CATEGORY WARNING

WARNING ON STRONG WINDS AND ROUGH SEAS IN THE COASTAL WATERS OFF THE EAST COAST OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

Strong northeasterly winds of 40-50 kmph and rough seas up to 3.5 metres over the coastal waters off the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, Labuan and West Sabah are expected to persist till Tuesday(14 November 2006).
The strong winds and rough seas condition is dangerous to small boats.

Updated on 13 Nov 2006, 6.50 am

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Daud “Sudah Potong” Hijau

Daud “Sudah Potong” Hijau is a name I gave to my friend, Nor Azlan David, who also used to be David Paul Green.

I first met him back in 1996 when he worked for an associate company called Ceanet Advanced Technologies (NOW DEFUNCT). An Australian, he is now married to a malay lady and assumed the name Nor Azlan, which I find rather dull. Daud Hijau would have resembled his name closely. The nickname SUDAH POTONG was given because he embraced Islam and had his dick chopped off..I mean, circumcised. Well, it may have been chopped off by the wife by now, I don’t know.

I met him again for lunch just now, after 3 years. As always, it’s been good to see him again. I remember our trip to Cape Town in South Africa. he and I cracked jokes from Subang International Airport, all through the flight, until we touched down at Cape Town. And the joke-telling session did not stop until we were back in KL…when we were scraping the bottom for jokes…the kind that you wouldn’t laugh at. The trip to the jazz club, stripjoints etc…were fun-filled. This Cape Malay bloke, Omar Salie, was assigned by his self-righteous brother to drive us around during our stay there. Initially, he was reserved, saying that he cannot do all the haram things. By the end of the week with us, he was already corrupted and was telling us even worse jokes than the ones we cracked.

Well, Daud, let’s make sure we don’t wait another 3 years before we see each other again. You owe me a concept paper!

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Can They Or Can’t They?

In the midst of the MPK councillors’ saga, the MB of Selangor was shown to have a new youthful look.

Faizal’s gone, and so has Zakaria. One person who seems adamant on holding on is Mazlynoor – the guy who thinks he has done nothing wrong by the fact that his rumah haram (illegal dwelling) is the smallest amongst all.

I seem to remember somewhere during my military law enforcement days some 11 years ago that the recommended punishment for theft is 2 years whether it was for the theft of RM1, RM10, RM100, RM1000 and so on. It doesn’t matter as to what degree of crime that has been committed, it is the act that deserves the punishment.

Now the MB says that Mazlynoor is still eligible to be nominated as a local councillor as the latter is highly qualified; what puzzles me is that by flouting the very Act that the latter was supposed to uphold shows how he is NOT suitable to become a councillor, not at least in his lifetime. And to claim ignorance of the procedures set by the very same Act shows again how NOT SUITABLE he is to be retained in the next line up of local councillors anywhere.

And the MB too had shot himself in the foot when he blurted out to the press that there needs to be a proviso in the Local Government Act to enable community leaders, professionals etc to be nominated as coucillors; when indeed there is such a provision in Section 10 of the same Act.

Now that goes to show that the very top management of the state of Selangor has been running the state without a clue of what he can or cannot do.

It seems that while the MB has now look somewhat younger (he is a year my senior), he hasn’t gotten any wiser.

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Tioman Here I Come – Part Three

Day 2 in Tioman and it was a good one. We started the morning with some roti canai and nasi lemak. First dive was at the Sawasdee Wrecks.I remember telling Kudinne that it was going to be a decompression dive, and it was. Like another dive site called Fan Canyon, it’s so easy to lose track of your bottom time diving these wrecks. I spent 23 minutes at the bottom and had to do 26 minutes of decompression stops starting at 24 meters through 3 meters.

Next dive was at Labas. The winds had picked up by this time so the waves were quite big and the surge could be felt all the way down. By the time we surfaced, it was raining.

Expecting calmer weather after the rain we dived at Golden Reef next. Current was strong and so was the surge. Visibility was bad too! But there were two Manta rays passing by but we couldn’t catch up with them. Then Reeno asked me to enter a relatively huge cave. I did, but having no dive light I exited the cave. Derrick then went in as he was better prepared, and hurriedly came out andd signalled that there was a shark in there. So I re-entered and still couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, Derrick switched on his light from behind me, and there it was, with a head wider than my body and I went “Holy Cow!”. I turned and never went back in. Reeno had the shark on video.

It has been a good trip but frustrating for me as I did not have a camera with me during this dive trip.

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Tioman Here I Come – Part Two

Greetings from Tekek, in Tioman. Although this resort actually has LAN connection via wifi, I’m using GPRS to connect.

The drive was nice and easy, did 110km/h all the way to Air Hitam. I left KL at 11.45pm and got to Mersing at 4.15am (plus an hour roti canai break). I managed to get around 1.5 hours worth of sleep before taking a shower and making my way to the jetty.

Anyway, I did three dives. First dive was at Tiger Reef, second was at Pirate Reef, followed by one at Soyak Reef. Monsoon is already here. The waves were big initially but was flat calm after a storm. However, you can feel the surge even down at 24m. Visibility ranged between 8m-15m. Not too bad at all.

So, what did I see? A Blacktip Reef Shark, several huge Reef and Broadclub Cuttlefishes, huge Chevron Barracudas, Bumphead.Parrotfishes. The shallower of the two wrecks at Soyak’s falling apart. That’s the bad thing about sinking wooden ships as artificial reefs. Tomorrow we’ll be doing Chebeh island first and I expect thunderstorm again late morning or afternoon.

Thank you to Kay for taking time to read my blog: do leave comments as you do.

I shall write again after tomorrow’ dives.

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Tioman – Here I Come

It’s time to go back diving.

Here’s what weather in Tioman is going to be like until Sunday:

Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th November:

Morning – fair; Afternoon – thunderstorms; Night – fair.

Sunday 5th November:

Morning – fair; Afternoon – cloudy; Night – fair.

THUNDERSTORM WARNING
WIDESPREAD THUNDERSTORM WARNING
IN THE CENTRAL SOUTH CHINA SEA

A) WIDESPREAD THUNDERSTORM WARNING IN THE COASTAL WATERS OF PERAK AND NEGERI SEMBILAN
Thunderstorms activities with strong winds over the coastal waters of Perak and Negeri Sembilan are expected to persist till noon (01 November 2006). This condition is expected to cause rough seas up to 3.0 metres and is dangerous to small boat.

WARNING ON STRONG WINDS AND ROUGH SEAS IN THE COASTAL WATERS OF THE EAST COAST OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA, SARAWAK, LABUAN AND SABAH

Typhoon ‘Cimaron’ was centred near latitude 18.7 North and longitude 116.3 East, approximately 482 km Southeast Hong Kong at 05.00 am 01 November 2006 and is expected to track northwestwards with speed of 6 kmph.

In this connection, strong southwesterly winds of 40-50 kmph and rough seas with waves up to 3.5 meters now occurring in the coastal waters of the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, Labuan and Sabah are expected to continue until Thursday (2 November 2006). This condition of strong winds and rough seas is dangerous to small boats.

Updated on 01 Nov 2006, 7.30 am

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Globe Trekker 2006 (Unconventional)

Places I've covered up until october 2006

I saw Jimy‘s post in her blog on the number of places she has covered. I thought that that’s a cool thing to do. Just that I’m lazy to do it as refined as she does, so I used Microsotf Paint to edit my unconventional map of the world to paint the places I’ve been to.

It looks crude, but it serves the purpose.

Jimy, can you calculate for me the percentage of the places of the world that I have covered please? Hehee..me lazy.

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Water Tariff Going Up 1st November 06

JANGAN MEMBUANG AIR - SAMY VELLU 1998

Yup…first it was retail oil prices. Now it’s water for the users within the Klang Valley and Putrajaya. With 10 people in the household, I don’t know what to think of it anymore.

To borrow the words of Samy Vellu during the water crisis of 1998: “Saya yingin menase-ati sumue worang supaye tidak membuwang ayer.”