Cross Island Line on Pale Blue Dot

Recall the number of minutes of travelling time we were told can be cut on the upcoming Cross Island (MRT) Line through our precious forest that we are willing to risk and then read Carl Sagan's reflection below. Would you not be laughing and crying at the same time?

Seen from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles), Earth appears as a tiny dot within deep space: the blueish-white speck almost halfway up the brown band on the right.

Pale Blue Dot
- by Carl Sagan 1994

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

The house is burning down, Nero, and you are fiddling away?! Hahahaha. 

Read also: Celebrating Our Rain Forest in SG50.

Eternity of a Dream

One cool December morn 

I woke feeling the wind blowing 

the frosty sea in my heart 

and painterly chased 

the fleeting clouds 

over the lee of my dreams.

The real journey does happen in your mind and I have a little notebook for a conspirator to listen to all my secret longings. Can you feel my heart beating upon the canvas pouch? I do. I really do.

Relevance of the Coastal Hill Forest to the Marine Environment of Chek Jawa

Introduction
Rising steeply from the sandy beach to a height of 21m, the coastal hill at Chek Jawa may seemed remotely connected to the shallow sea beneath, where lush meadows of seaweed and sea grasses thrived in the shallow, well-lit and nutrient-rich waters. However, the link is very much alive though not easily perceivable unless one witnesses how rainwater runs down the hill during a monsoon downpour. 

Export of nutrients to the marine environment

Dissolved nutrients, along with guano, leaf detritus and rock minerals, trickle down with the rainwater to the beach below, where it is released slowly through the sand to the sea, and readily absorbed by the marine flora or consumed by detritus feeding fauna. 

Leached nutrients (Trono, 1997) and leaf detritus (Odum and Heald, 1975) are two of the most important elements in the food web that associating landforms (including mangrove) contribute to the vitality of the inter-tidal zone. The abundance of marine flora and fauna in Chek Jawa bears testimony to the importance of the coastal hill as a keystone community in the marine environment. 

Physical buffer and natural breakwaters 

Physically, the steep coastal hill is imposing. It is a natural fortress make up of large igneous boulders that goes right down to the beach, and act effectively as a buffer against casual intrusion to the sandy beaches from inland. The obscurity as well as the relatively undisturbed state of Chek Jawa owes much to this rugged feature that are almost impregnable when aided by the long hours of high tides. 

The coastline integrity of Chek Jawa owes much to the series of protective finger-like boulders jutting out to sea at the base of the hill. Like natural breakwaters, they offer protection against accretion of the sandy beach. Without doubt, the coastal morphology of Chek Jawa, predominantly truncated by these mighty boulders, had evolved with the tidal flow to create the unique marine features (including the lagoon) that we find today. 

Unique flora and beach-dependent terrestrial fauna 

Apart from being an ecological and protective partner to the marine environment, the rocky coastal hill forest is a special habitat by itself. It harbors a very unique primary flora that is distinctly different from the terrestrial vegetation found further inland. These are tenacious survivors in the plant kingdom, as equally adaptable as plants found in the deserts. Coastal trees such as the Seashore Nutmeg, Sea Mangosteen and the Sea Olive are constantly exposed to strong dry winds, salt sprays, high solar radiation and temperature, and scrounging a living from nutrients obtain from its own leaf detritus and animal guano. 

These are amongst the last remaining stand of littoral plants that have survived the centuries undisturbed, on extremely shallow soil found atop rock ledges and crevices, and sandy substrates. One such rare tree, Mischocarpus sundaicus, once common in Geylang, Changi and Ubin, cannot be found elsewhere in mainland Singapore now. 

A flock of over 50 native Red Junglefowls inhabits and breeds in this quiet coastal forest. At low tide, they flock to the beach to eat worms, mollusks and other organisms. They are dependent on the beach for food. The coastal forest, in turn, depends on them and other rooting birds for their nutrient-rich guano. The activities and life history of these animals are thus not compartmentalized or confined in their own habitat. Food webs are very complex and cross invisible ecological lines that separate adjacent ecosystems. 

In conclusion, Chek Jawa's six special habitats, namely coastal hill forest, sandy beaches, mangrove, lagoon (sand/mud flats), coral rubble and the rocky shore, represent an integrated system or community of linked ecosystems.  Physical and biological alterations will pose and adverse and irreversible consequence to the ecological balance in what is recognised as the marine environment of Chek Jawa. 

Footnote: 

The above paper was written for the group submission put together on the invitation by the Minister of National Development, Mr. Mah Bow Tan, in 2002. Lead authors were Professor Teh Tiong Sa, N. Sivasothi and my good self, with contributions from Ria Tan, Francis Lim and Yap Hui Boon. 

When Rain Meet Wind

There is a kind of abandonment
how you come meet the earth
and sparkle for just that little whilst
before glistening a teardrop farewell
down a quivering grass blade.

Still you remain till like a memory
stirred by a gentle wind
you rose invisible and
in shades of white
set the clouds in the brilliant sky.

Graced with fleeting lightness
you skip hither and tither
a young heart just born of gladness
only too clear that he the wind
is near.

He is there seen but unseen;
existed because you existed.
He guides the way you toss and heave
hand in hand paints white on blue
of imaginations wild and free.

When rain and wind meet
there’s sweetness in the air;
they are happy just being.
Though the grass may quiver once more
the days for skyward rendezvous are everlasting.

- Joseph Lai

Advocacy for Sungei Mandai 2003 - Jewel in Jeopardy

True to weather, October has been wild and contrasting. Inter monsoon wind and rain are confused and if I may add, as erratic as human affairs playing it out under the moody sky in true Thomas Hardy fashion.

First came the good news for Mandai mudflats. It finally found official recognition and is set to open in 2022 as a 72.8ha nature park to be named Mandai Mangrove and Mudflats. A modest beginning, hopefully, for better things to come.

Not long after, though, we were suddenly struck by the great loss of Subaraj Rajathurai - an outspoken advocate for our native wildlife - who passed away at 57. Hitherto he lived to see for himself a ray of hope shining for Mandai mudflats.

It was back in 2003 that I wrote and submitted an essay entitled 'Jewel in Jeopardy' (appended below) to The Ministry of National Development advocating the preservation of Sungei Mandai mudflats.

Today I am drawn by the unfolding events to relive the moment how I put pen to thought sixteen years ago and to make sense of time since passed and of people the likes of Subaraj and I, and many others who, at their own behest, represented a spot of earth such as Mandai mudflats with a feather of hope in our cap for conservation.

October also saw the successful opening of the Jewel at Changi Airport by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The feeling of national pride is evident as he paid tribute to Jewel as an idea or symbol that epitomises how in Singapore, we as a people must dream boldly to create new possibilities. As he put it - "Dream big, apply themselves and nothing is impossible."

It made me smile an everlasting smile like a quiver of my little feather. For these are age-old familiar words and ideas that still echoes from the distance of time immemorable.

But far beyond the politics of monuments and memorials, humble folks have from time to time answered the call of wild geese to dream the hopes of our beautiful world.  Not from glass palaces and gold-trimmed stairs,  but from the wildering heights of mountains, plains and seas.

Somewhere in time, a young wild goose found his jewel on such a rare spot of earth and called it his own. To him belongs the family of all things and the inheritance for all. My beautiful world, my all.

Jewel in Jeopardy
Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, located in a district fondly referred to as Kranji by many, sits pretty along the scenic waterway of Western Johor Straits. Though much change had been effected by our nation’s underlying need for water, the damming of several river systems - namely, Kranji, Sarimbun, Poyan and Tengah - did not seem to eliminate the ‘naturalness’ one still feels and sees especially from the vantage point of a boat ride along this strait.

In a word, it is a visual feast; one which is fundamentally enhanced by the remaining coastal vegetations that had survived such change and the diversity of coastal birds that grace the sky above.

At the heart of this naturalness, Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve sits like a crown jewel. ‘Gem’ was how Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew described Sungei Buloh in his congratulatory note written in the Visitor Book during a recent visit.

He is not alone in this sentiment. Of the 5000 Singaporeans ‘from all walks of life’ solicited for feedbacks to URA’s Concept Plan 2001, ‘they all felt there was a need to protect nature areas and Sungei Buloh was mentioned at the time’ - Mr. Wong Tuan Wah, Director of Park Management, National Parks Board (ST, Nov 12, 2001).

Indeed, this gem is highly valued and a great price has been paid for it. ‘The land was actually zoned for an agro-technology park. It would have been a profitable economic venture. Instead, we decided to turn it over to the birds’, said Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong when he opened Sungei Buloh as Singapore’s first wetland nature park in 1993. ‘Considering that we have a very high population density of about 4,400 persons per sq km, this is a big commitment to nature conservation’, he said (ST, Dec 7, 1993).

Come December 2003, another 10 years of ‘opportunity cost’ or investment would have been added to this value. However, one should not forget the crown for the jewel.

The gem, that Sungei Buloh is, has in the millennia been set securely in the ‘silver and gold’ of adjacent ecosystems (see map). All are linked as close ecological partners, and any detrimental changes to one may affect the others irreversibly. Recent exclusion of Sungei Mandai from URA’s draft plan poses questions about this vulnerability. If ecological links are ‘broken’, our crown jewel and all our investment may be lost at sea forever.

Prof. Murphy D. H., a well-loved lecturer whose decades of tutelage at the National University of Singapore had moulded several generations of biologists, had this ecological link firmly in mind when he wrote his paper ‘Birds, Mangroves and Man: Prospects and Promise of the New Sungei Buloh Bird Reserve’ published in 1990. (Essays in Zoology, Papers Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Department of Zoology, National University of Singapore).

Simply put, the bird life at Sungei Buloh will be adversely affected should ever Mandai mudflats be reclaimed. His study revealed that ‘Mandai does not provide the conditions required for roosting waders but the mudflats next to the Mandai mangroves are a major feeding area for the birds that roost at Sungei Buloh.’

Clearly, the management of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve cannot be confined within its boundary. At stake are not only the birds, but the collective investment put in through years of commitment and hard work by the National Parks Board, volunteers, NGOs and business partners alike. Also at stake are the opportunity cost invested in Sungei Buloh ever since and our reputation as a serious conservation strategist.

Sungei Buloh’s destiny is ecologically tied to Mandai mudflats. Undoing it could jeopardize everything we hold dear.

Map of Western Johor Straits
Legend:
PS - Pulau Sarimbun
SR - Sarimbun Rocks
HR - Herald Rocks
HSR - Horseshoe Reef
LCKM - Lim Chu Kang Mangrove
SBWR - Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
SBM - Sungei Buloh Mudflats
KM - Kranji Mudflats
SMM - Sungei Mandai Mudflats

A new painting: Thunderstorm at Chek Jawa

Poems by William Henry Davies

Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Thunderstorms
My mind has thunderstorms
That brood for heavy hours
Until they rain me words
My thoughts are drooping flowers
And sulking, silent birds.

Yet come, dark thunderstorms,
And brood your heavy hours;
For when you rain me words,
My thoughts are dancing flowers
And joyful singing birds.

Footnote: Painting the dramatic dark sky of a stormy evening at Chek Jawa and remembering the courageous life of my mother whose ash were released in this very sea.

The Singing Bird Returns: Ailanthes integrifolia

Here I am
Born to fly
A little bird
Returning
Singing
Beneath
A tree
Of my Heart
Aglee.

Footnote: The seed was amongst the many I searched for and found in March 2016 in MacRitchie forest. These were immediately sown and nurtured by the wonderful team of workers at Pasir Panjang Nursery. I subsequently planted out a 1.5m tall sapling in Pulau Ubin in January 2018. It has since rocketed four times in height - photo above recorded in August 2019. The blog post reporting the finding of the winged seeds can be found here.

Going Bananas!

I am speechless! Never have I seen a banana behaving this way all my life! My goodness, what is happening here?! No longer behaving like a thyrse, the lateral branches of the inflorescence have developed into mini indeterminate terminal buds too. In another word, they no longer are hands and fingers! Though, there seem to be some sparse but 'normal' formation of fingers at the very base (nearest the main peduncle) of the inflorescence. Is the ultra multi-branching phenomenon a result of meristem disruption? I am going bananas and tearing my hair to know! See photos below:

Here is a good read: Morphology of a banana plant

Celebrating World Rainforest Day 2019 Singapore

In anticipation of World Rainforest Day 2019 (22nd June) , I am posting a long-overdue video of our awesome rainforest to share with fellow Singaporeans in the hope that in the weeks preceding the big day that you will go out there with friends and family to vote for its preservation with your feet, your heart and your voice. The rainforest needs your voice badly.

Video here:
Rainforest Singapore
https://youtu.be/pPTaAwPsTsk

Another video on streams in MacRitchie:
https://youtu.be/U398zWl-SBY

How to write appeal and why:
http://flyingfishfriends.blogspot.com/2013/11/postcards-to-our-dear-prime-minister.html?m=0

More Than Words

More Than Words

Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It's not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real.

(lyrics extracted from Extreme)

Above: My painting of Thomson's Rock at Pulau Ubin done with acrylics.