Four Hour Nature Walk and A Cat At The House of Mary

This Sunday morning, Jabbar, Maimon, Anita and I went for a four hour walk from Macritchie Reservoir all the way to Bukit Timah Nature Reserves.

We started at 0700hrs and reached BTNR Hindhede Park at about 11-ish. Went straight to the row of coffee shops infront of beauty world shopping center to eat back all the calories that we lost.

The funny things was that this time it was not as tiring as I felt the last time we did this, which was last month. That time, we had Bobby and his wife, my wife, Kat's husband and his colleague joining us as well. Maybe this time I was already fitter fro mthe last trip, though I sincerely doubt so.

We took the same route as last time but today we included the tree top walk as well. I can't wait for next month's walk. It sounds crazy but I truly enjoy these walks.

The photo of the cat, if I remembered correctly, is of the cat that I saw at the House of Virgin Mary in Turkey.

I prefer radio

I went to Ubin for a camera shoot for a TV show, 'Once Upon a Tree 2' on Friday. I needed to raise the awareness of Chek Jawa being up for reclamation in four years time. I hate cameras but as usual, the cause was more important than me.

I prefer radio interviews. TV needed me to say the same thing again and again and again. Sometimes I cannot remember my lines and it was really painful to say them again and again and I am used to giving long boring lectures.

Anyway... here is a cat that we met at Mount Olympus. This cat was just below the snow zone. The temperatures were freezing and this cat was just cool. He does not seem to be affected by the temperature at all.

Look at that fur! If this cat is in Singapore, I bet it wont be a street cat.

CNY Reunion featuring the Cats of Hagia Sophia

It was a nice Chinese New Year's eve. My students, about 22 of them came back to visit their Cedar. Let me see... there was

Shao Wei, Grace, Leon, Xin Yu, Eli, Eve, Jany, Jonathan, Zhen Yu, Yong Jie, Sharon, Pamela, Ras, Sendil, Sin Hao, TJ, CC, Paul, Jeanne, ZX, Fiona, Eugene. Did I miss out anyone?





They were all so big and grown up! What happened to all my cute little students??!! Hah hah hah.

Some really changed a lot. The most changed would be Brenda of my Panther House. I really could not recognize her. Even my other students could not believe that she was Brenda

Students from my previous 4-4 also came. Shengnan, Vincent, Zhixian and Chun Wee. Sorry guys if I took some time to recall your names. It has been a while since I saw you.


What I really need to say is that the most rewarding moments in my life as a teacher is not when they revise our pay (of course I always welcome increments)... not when I win awards or stuff like that, but when wonderful students like you guys, especially my wonderful P6-1'o7, come back and visit me, with donuts or without.


You guys serve as a reminder that teaching is meaningful, and that I must work even harder for my current and future students. So to all those who visited me, a big thank you. To those who did not and could not (like Aaron, Albin, Nancy, Anisha, etc, etc), we still and will always remember you.

Oppression

Ziya Gokulp

What's that? Well... that's the name of the guy whom I have been asked to study and present to the rest of my reading group. He is Turkish, of course, and I was asked to present his ideas because I went to Turkey. I cannot see how visiting sedimentary rock churches has got anything to do with Ziya, but hey... I think it is worth a study.

Like many other wise people, Ziya Gökalp was many things in one. He was a sociologist, a poet, a political writer, and a of course, Turkish nationalism. His work influenced the father of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk. Ziya was influenced by contemporary European thought and rejected Islamism in favor of Turkish nationalism.

What was interesting to me was that he was in a veterinary school. How cool is that! More of him when I have the time. Now, I have to prepare my Master's paper before I meet my supervisor on Thursday.

Of Beautiful Horses and Wonderful Students

Just found out that the name Cappadocia was probably derived from Katpatuka, land of the beautiful horses, in Hittite language. Though I did not see any horses in that region.

Anyway, my students came to visit yesterday. Eli, Pearl, JZ, Jeremy and Pam. It is always nice to see the gang, no matter how busy I am with markings and meetings. They have grown a fair bit... all becoming young men and women. All of their cuteness have almost dissapeared. Hah hah hah... I did not get to see Zhixin though and for that I was a bit sad. I am very happy that he got his appeal though.

I do hope I could join the gang on the 6th. I was just told that I have yet another meeting that day. The school might be closed half day and they probably have to find a new venue. I wonder where would be a good place?

More on pigeon poo

I did more reading on ancient people who used pigeon droppings as fertilizers, just like in Cappadocia. Apparntly many other civilizations did. The ancient egyptians too used them for their crops. Studies have shown that they are rich in nitrogen.

Basically, these pigeons will go fly around in the day, eat wild seeds and berries elsewhere, go home and poo. Farmers take these nutrients and concentrate them on the soil they need to cultivate. So what these pigeons do is really just concentrating available but scattered resources.

Some modern garden composters too recommend using pigeon poo as starters. Though most warn of the fact that these poo from pigeons might contain somewhere around 26 known diseases. But hey, tell me which poo might not?

Valley of the birds

These houses and holes for bird are in a valey called Valley of The Birds. According to my tour guide, pigeons have long been a source of fertilizer to the farmers here.

Many believe that Cappadocian fruits are sweet because farmer used pigeon droppings. I wonder how they handle the bird flu threat?

My First Sedimentary Toilet Break

I was looking for the rock type of these carved mountains. I found out that these churches were carved out from sedimentary rocks and ignimbrite deposits erupted from ancient volcanoes millions of years ago.

What are sedimentary rocks? Well there are the three main rock groups: (1) igneous, those that came out of volcanoes as lava and then cooled, (2) sedimentary, those that has been eroded washed away somewhere, settled down and then hardened, and (3) metamorphic rock, are any of the two that, under pressure and heat is changed into something else. Actually, it is more complex than this but you get the idea.

In this picture, you see how neatly you can cut the sedimentary rocks in cappadocia, goreme region. Here you see tourists getting into one of the caves, now converted to be a public toilet. The toilets in Turkey are ALL super clean. I am amazed. When I asked the tour guide why this is so, they say it is because, 'we are muslims.' How I wish they can tell the Malaysians to do the same.

The only thing about the public toilets that I don't like is that you have to pay 50 liras to get in. That's about 60 cents each time you go. That means if you have a weak bladder plus the very cold weather, you will be spending a whole lot of money on toilets a day.

T'was A Good Friday

First of all, I must say that yesterday was a happy day for me. Manda and Xinyun came to visit me and it was so nice to see them happy. It was sad though that I could only see and talk to them for about ten minutes of so and that was because I sneaked out of a meeting. It is also nice to see my old students, all taller and bigger now, coming to visit me. I do hope it happens more often and how I wish my meetings would be less frequent.



Anyway, this photo here is the picture of all the churches in a row in the Gorame Open Air Museum. The rock type in this region made this all possible. It is soft enough to carve but yet strong enough to remain intact as monolithic structures.

IXOYE

Our guide explained to us what IXOYE meant. It means 'Jesus, Christ, Son of God, Savior'. According to him, it is all represented in the Maltese Cross. This picture here I took from one of the Gurame Churches. What happened was that during the reign of Emperor Nero in Rome, Christians living in that city were persecuted so they hid themselves. The cross became a secret code to mark this secret movements, where they had to meet secretly and practice their religion.

I believe forms of discrimination is wrong. I believe in the freedom to practice one's faith without being persecuted. As long as of course, your faith does not involve harming another. I think if you have the time, please read Gordon Allport on Prejudice. Worth the read.

On M.C. and Environmentalism

Today I am on MC. Have a chance to updte my blog. Strange thing is both my wife's and mine i-pod died today too.

Inspired by St. Basil's prayer, I have decided to look for some material about environmentalism in the catholic tradition. I found this:

In 1990, Pope John Paul II issued his World Day of Peace Message, Peace with God - Peace with all of Creation, in which the Holy Father announced, "There is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts, and continued injustice among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature.... Moreover, a new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which, rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives." (source: http://conservation.catholic.org/background.htm)

More later

My wonderful day...

Today, while I was in a very long meeting. Jeremy sms-e me telling me that he'll be visiting. I said I was in a meeting and it might end late. Nearing the end of the meeting, I sms-ed him and he said he was already on his way home and he LEFT ME SOME DONUTS!

After the meeting, I went back to my table and there it was... SIX BEAUTIFUL DONUTS! Beautiful because they came from 6-1'o7 *sobs* My very first lunch treat from 6-1'o7

Actually he gave 24 but the other teachers got to it before I did so they left me only six. I would not be able to finish all 2 dozen anyways. Then Sharon, Eli and TJ came to visit too!

We had a nice chat but felt bad because I they were already starting to lock up the place. At least I feel better now being able to meet my beloved 6-1'o7. I do hope such moments are more frequent.

Till then...

Turkey Göreme

We then went to the Göreme Open Air Museum, still at Cappadocia. There we saw several churches carved out by monks more than a thousand years ago. I lost count of how many churches we went to but there must be at least 7.

Let me see, there was the Church of St. Basil, The Apple Church, The Church of Santa Barbara, St. Onuphrius and some others whose name I cannot remember now.

St. Basil was the special one for me at least. He was the guy who wrote the Catholic 'Prayer for a Deeper Sense of Fellowship with All Living Things'. It goes like this:

"O God, grant us a deeper sense of fellowship with all living this, our little brothers and sisters to whom in common with us you have given this earth as home. We recall with regret that in the past we have acted high-handedly and cruelly in exercising our domain over them. Thus, the voice of the earth which should have risen to you in song has turned into a groan of travail. May we realize that all these creatures also live for themselves and for you - not for us alone. They too love the goodness of life, as we do, and serve you better in their way than we do in ours. Amen."

We were not allowed to use flash to take photos of the church's interior, and becaue I could not figure out how to switch my digicam's flash, I just the outsides. Here I show you some.

Turkey (Kaymakli Underground City)

We visited the Kaymaklı Underground City. It is this huge underground city that the ancients dug underground. The ground they dug should not be imagined like the one we have in singapore though. This one is made of rocks that are strong enough to hold the structures but soft enough to dig using anything sharp. I think even a pen can carve out a room if you are given enough time.

Only four of the 8 floors are opened to tourists. There are ventilation shafts to ensure that fresh air can get it. There are even underground stables, a church, toilets, kitchens, and bedrooms of course.

This picture below shows a stable. See how they have carved a place for the horse to eat grass, hay or whatever they feed their horses with?



This photo below shows how deep the tunnels can bring the inhabitants of these caves into the earth below. The labyrinth also allowed them to hide from the people that might want to hurt them.

The photos below shows a church. How did we know it was a church? They left signs all over. The picture on the right shows a cross. Can you spot it?

The grindstone below is used to grind grains into flour. I took these shots in the kitchen.

This is a huge heavy stone that they use to block some strategic entrances within the city so that their pursuers could not get them.




Last, but certainly not the least important... toilets! I really do not know if they just leave it there or what, for they did not have any flushing system.

Turkey - Caravanseray

At the end of day, we got into our tour bus once again and headed off to the area of capadochia. During the journey, our tour guide said something about giving us a surprise. What happened was that he brought us to this old 'caravanseray'. The caravanseray is not the surprise though, as it was part of the itenary. More about the surprise later.

During ancient times, long before globalization, when there were no planes, no large container cargo ships plying the sea routes wrecking damage to the environment and poorer countries with their conspicuous consumption, there was this famous route called the silkroad.

The silk road was not a road made of silk, my dear students, but a famous path where goods from the east was carried to the west to be sold and vice versa. These goods were carried on camels, who could travel long distance. For safety reasons, these traders and their camels travel in large groups called caravans.

These caravans look out for safe places to spend the night, refuel their camels and themselves with water and food and sheltered themselves, their camels and their goods from bandits and the weather.

The Ottomans and many other nations recognise the economic importance of these caravans and therefore made safe stop-overs for them. In the Ottoman Empire, these camel hotels are called 'caravanserays'. As you can see from the above photo, the Muslims were very proud craftsmen and are aesthetically inclined people, so even a camel resting place were nicely crafted.

It was behind one of the two caravanserays that we visited was the real surprise. A huge crater with super black water can be seen. According to the guide, it was a volcanic crater. I can just imagine the camels giong down here to drink. It was a nice surprise. As a geography student, I truly appreciate this humungous geomorphological feature. I don't think it is a volcanic crater though. It looks like either a mined quarry or an meteorite hit landscape. I need to check this out with my geog lecturer.

After that, we continued to travel to cappadochia. More of that later.

The Temple of Artemis

From Ephesus, we went to see one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In case you don't know what the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are, let me list them for you:

1.

The Great Pyramid of Egypt
2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
4. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
5. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
6. The Colossus of Rhodes
7. The Lighthouse of Alexandria

I went to number 4, The Temple of Artemis. From the photos, you can see that not much is left. In fact only one and one third of a pillar is left, out of a huge temple. How did it get to be like this? The temple was built probably around 800 BC. It was said that the temple took 120 years to be built. It was destroyed on one day, July 21, 356 BC by one madman by the name of Herostratus.

He wanted to be famous so much that he decided to burn down the temple. Today we call such need to be famous, as 'herostratic fame'. The ancient people there was so angry that they decided to remove not write his name in history records so as to not make his plan successful. They suceeded, well almost. One historian did recorded it and that's how we now know who this madman is.

The same night the temple was burned, Alexander the Great was born. Some ancient people believed that was why the god Artemis could not save her own temple.She was too busy helping Alexander's delivery.

The Youtube video below shows how it might have looked like and how it is now.

Turkey (Hierapolis)

Just beside the hot springs of Pamukkale, is Hierapolis. Because of the belief that the springs could cure sicknesses, many sick people came here with the dream of getting better. Many of these dreams did not come true. We know this because there is a large necropolis (a large cemetery or burial place) in Hierapolis. The word 'necropolis' literally means, "City of the Dead".

Hierapolis ancient ruins can still be seen here. Huge blocks of rocks made up the still visible public baths, library and even gymnasium. One of these ancient buildings have even been transformed into an archaeological museum that tourists can enter.

According to the experts, at its best times, Hierapolis grew to have about 100,000 inhabitants (a big deal in ancient times) and many were wealthy. At some points in its history, it was also multi racial and multi religious. There were signs that there were Jews here. There was also a Christian church. Philip the Apostle was said to have spent the last years of his life here. He was also said to have been crucified and his body was buried here.

All these ancient ruins made me think: Will our modern civilizations one day be ruined like this only to have future more generations discovered them and made into a tourist attraction? It sounds preposterous I know, but I bet the inhabitants of Hierapolis, especially when it was thriving, with wonderful stone buildings, towers, libraries and thriving streets would have brushed away similar suggestions by saying that that thought too was preposterous.

At the rate mankind is wrecking havoc to the environment and weathers that are becoming more and more unstable, I think that thought might just be possible.

Turkey (Pamukale)

On day 4, we headed very early in the morning to a unique geographical feature in Turkey, the Pamukale, or 'Cotton-Castle' in Turk.

As we approach the site , we could see a long white cliff face along the mountain. At first we thought it was snow but the tour guide said it was not. It was actually white travertine terraces.

Pamukale is one of the most extraordinary natural wonders in in the world! I did Physical Geography in uni and so geomorphological activities excites me. Somehow, the natural volcanic spring underneath produced water so rich in calcite that as the hot water evaporated, it deposits calcium carbonate, which is white, onto the slopes. What I do noy understand is why it created large bath tub shapes, as if purposelly asking for us to take a deep within these very comfortably warm waters.

The government of Turkey no longer allows anybody to do that now and we have cops or gendarme that patrols the slopes. This is of course understood as Pamukale has been designated as one of the World's Heritage Site by UNESCO. A heritage site confered this title is considered by the international community to be extremely valuable and must be preserved for future generations of humanity.

This is only the third World Heritage Site I've been to, with the first site being the ancient ruins of Ayuthya in Thailand and the second just a few days ago in Ephesus.

We are allowed to get into the pools without shoes and that we did of course. At first, the water that touched my feet was so cold, that it almost instantaneously gave me a bad cramp! But as I walk nearer where the warmer water pools were, it became better.

Historians have discovered that many people during ancient time actually came here from all over the known world, including Roman Kings and other VIPs, to soak in these pools as they believe that the water as healing properties. This, I assumed, contributed to the economy of Hierapolis, which I will talk about in a later blog entry.

This healing property might not be just superstitious. I do not think the warm water from the springs (about 35 degrees celcius) is responsible for the reported positive effects on rheumatism, hyper-tension and any other form of diseases. Scientists has confirmed that there is some radio active gasses that escapes from the volcanic activity below. Or it could just simply be psychological. It is becuase of these healing properties that these pools have even been called as 'Sacred Pools' by the ancients.

My kids of course enjoyed themselves and so did their parents!

Turkey (Ephesus)

When I woke up, the and looked out of the window, the scenery that greeted my eyes was just magnificent. In the dark when we arrived the night before, I didn't know that the hotel was just beside a beautiful bay.



So I went out and with my digicam, took shots of the bay slowly being lighted up by the rising sun. The air was crisp and still cold. It will remain cold the whole day.

We then went on the bus and headed for the House Of Virgin Mary at the top of the "Bulbul" mountain near Ephesus. The cold air made my batteries go berserk. Three quarters of the time, my digicam showed 'low batt'. That was why I could not take any shots up there.

The very small house where Mary, mother of Jesus, had supposedly spent her last days was one of the highlights of my trip. There was a natural spring there and to many Catholics, the water that comes from the spring was supposed to be holy water. I cupped my hands to take some and wipped my face with it, much to the disagreement of some Muslims that were in my group. I really am not sure why I did that. Perhaps, it was just because I was so happy.

I supposed they forgot that Mary is a figure recognised to be special by not just Christians, but also Muslims. So is Jesus and Moses and many others. If Mary was really here, then I feel blessed, as a Muslim, to be able to visit her last place of dwelling.



It was after that when we went down the hill to visit the ancient ruins of Ephesus. Ephesus was a port that used to be the most important commercial centre in ancient times. It became later a religious centre of the early Christianity.



Ephesus was the stage of many important events that has helped shaped the history of mankind. It has been attacked by countless armies: the Cimmerians, the Lydians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Ottomans. Many important people have stayed here: from great poets to philosophers to geographers, from great artists to important physicians. The list of names of these famous ancient people are too many for me to list down on this blog entry.

To be able to stand exactly where many great people have stood, were born, and have lived is somewhat magical. I know all this does not make any sense but to me, it just does. To be able to touch the very same marble and stone pillars that they did, made the huge chunk of my savings spent on this trip, just worth every cent of it.