Do’s and Don’ts

What not to do when going on a Trek (through hell ).

DON’T wear sneakers!

Don’t be deceived by the image. These shoes aren’t designed for rough terrain. They’re no different from Sam Vimes’s cardboard sole shoes. Yeah sure, Sam likes it that way ’cause he can tell where he is just by feeling the cobblestones on the street, but when you’re legging it through a trail, and a rough one at that, the last thing you want is to feel the ground!

With sneakers on you’ll first feel EVEY single stone. A bit later each stone will feel like a sudden spark of electricity shooting up your foot. If you press on, eventually, your foot becomes numb. Yup, sneakers are a definite no-no! If you’ve got nothing else when taking on a trek, go buy yourself a proper pair of trekking shoes.

Do eat and get plenty of rest before your trek

You need to be charged up for it. ’nuff said.

Do take water and food along with you.

If you think you’ve got enough food and water, you haven’t. Take more. And then some…

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Do’s and Don’ts aside, I got a fair share of cuts, scratches, leech bites and bruises.

Got a cut on my wrist trying to fish for some mackerel… out of a tin can.  Yeah, alright that may not seem very ‘rough n’ tough’, but when there’s nothing else but can of jack mackerel, and 10 people share it right out of the can… THAT’S… ok, pure desperation caused by hunger. Heck, if we didn’t have that tin can we would have resorted to cannibalism and eaten each other by night fall.

The leeches weren’t too fond of me though. I had only two of the little blood suckers bite me. One at my ankle and the other on my clavicle (shoulder blade). St.Fallen and Little_Boy_Blue on the other hand… The leeches were drawn to them… possibly the effect of the weed in their blood

Here’s how leeches suck blood:

A blood sucking leech attaches itself to the skin of its victim using its suckers. It makes a small wound in the surface of its hosts skin using three serrated jaws just inside its mouth. It then releases saliva into the wound, which contains the anti-clotting agent called hirudin. This keeps the blood flowing freely. The saliva also contains a substance that blocks nerve transmission from the pain sensors in the skin, so that the victim does not notice its bites.

It may sound like something out of a horror flick but it’s fine. You don’t feel it. You’ve got nothing to worry about ’cause the only superficial blood vessels are your veins. So at the very most you’ll just have a bit of a scar for a few days.

And here’s the bruise I got after a buffalo pulled a Zinedine on me…

The picture was taken this morning, it’s turned a ripe shade of deep purple now.

It was a crazy trek but the guys were awesome. All the rest of you girls should join them on their next adventure. You’ll be in safe hands I can vouch for that.

As for me, I’ll be sitting out the next one. My parents weren’t too pleased that I hadn’t kept them up to date every second of the day about where I was and whether I was still alive. So I’m going to have to wait for this to fizzle out before I can go anywhere with friends again

Caricatures of Bloggers II

Makuluwo was my first caricature so I played it safe and stuck more or less to a proper profile instead of exaggerating her features in true caricature style. This time around I thought I’d be a bit more adventurous and well… here’s PapareBoy

At the risk of blogger anonymity being at stake… but I don’t really think anyone who hasn’t met him before will be able to recognise him after having seen this.

So, while I’m polishing my caricature skills by drawing Kottu.org bloggers, if you are on my Facebook Friends list, you might just be my next victim!

Crazy Elaborate Dreams

I don’t really know why I have sci-fi dreams, I haven’t watched a sci-fi movie in… a very long time! Well, here’s what I dreamt last night…

I took another bite of my bar of Snickers while shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “Not much longer”, I managed through a mouthful of chocolate, malt and peanuts to a friend beside me. He nodded with nervous concurrence. We were among a horde of others clumped together at an open field, gazing into the vast expanse of the sky. Just then the curtain of grey altocumulus clouds began to disperse. The time had come.

The clouds wafted slowly, first revealing two blue grey moons, perfectly aligned. They scattered further to reveal another two and then two more. The sea of people surrounding us began to stir as they pulled out hand-held telescopes and cameras and zoomed focus into the lunar spectacle. The atmosphere was eerily somber though. 14 celestial bodies perfectly aligned were in plain view but there wasn’t a single utter of amazement.

Within minutes rich plum dusk seeped across the heavens making the 14 moons more prominent. Little sparks of electricity shooting from one moon to another were now visible. With a heavy sigh I swallowed the last of my bar of snickers. The prophecy was real. The elimination of the human race by a mighty alien force had been set in motion.

Okay, done rolling your eyes? I know it sounds silly but this isn’t some story I’m making this up as I go along. I’m just relating what I dreamt!

But fine, I’ll just write the rest of it in points, leaving out the details.

My friend and I return to his home, where the other to of our gang are already waiting for us. The friend I went with and one of the other two, are geniuses. They start doing the complex math needed to put into action my plan to defeat the alien force. Yeah, I’m the leading the team . The other friend, like me, is a flying ace. The two super brains, had built us space pods.

Silencing an argument on quantum physics, a holographic image pops up of the alien force that was preparing to destroy us, out of something that looked somewhat like a DVD player. They looked very human (probably why they felt Earth would be the best planet to occupy). And one of them was actually kinda hot.

Anyhow, while I and the other flying ace wait for the genius-duo to sort out the math I strum my guitar (This could be ‘cause I actually miss playing my guitar. I’ve been too busy.) while at a Tai restaurant ordering Tom Yam soup.

And that was when I woke up. Anti-climax eh? But like I said, that’s just how the dream went. It was actually very detailed and lots more happened but it’s just too crazy… like Tom Yam soup! Why? Why Tom Yam?

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a sci-fi dream though. There was one about a rebel AI microchip. Of course not all my elaborate dreams are Sci-fi. There was the dream about a warlock and how I got a wizard from another dimension to defeat her. Or the one where I escape after being captured by gremlins… And lots more!

I do have ordinary dreams too. Just the other day I dreamt that I was driving somewhere in my sister’s car in the middle of the night and the brakes gave away.

Anyone else have these crazy complex dreams, like my sci-fi dream?

Be vewwy quiet…I’m hunting wabbits!

Getting Back at Makuluwo for the Urban Dictionary blog title post.

A caricature of her as a bunny wabbit (as Elmer Fudd would say). On a positive note, Maks, you’re the first person I’ve drawn a more detailed caricature of…

Caricatures require a bit more work than portraits ’cause you have to distort the face while retaining distinctive features so there’s still some resemblance.

And this isn’t perfect… I kinda started out wanting a clean line art sketch but somehow I ended up pencil shading. So now it’s a cross between the two and doesn’t quite look like her, the Kottu Makuluwo, but heck!

Maks The Wabbit

Round and Round the Garden…

…with a Nikon D50

The Ents I

Margosa (better known as Kohomba), Margosa again and Guava

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Strange Yellow Flower

I haven’t got a clue as to what this flower is…

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The Ents II

Burnt Bamboo, stump of Indian Willow (I) and Coconut

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Leaves

Bamboo, Cadju and Coconut

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Out from the Ugly

Yet another plant in bloom in the garden and I haven’t an inkling as to what it is

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Dead Leaf (Cadju Tree)

Once a massive tree with sturdy sprawling branches that supported a tree house and held a quire rope swing, the Cadju tree was cut down a few weeks ago. In its 20 or so years it’d gotten diseased… Its trunk was rotting from the inside.

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Indian Willow

The stump of Indian Willow (II). Both trees were cut down recently, they were towering at about 40 ft.

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Coconut Fiber

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Sludge Monster (In the making)

The neighbour’s stuck bits of glass bottles along the top of the wall at the back of the garden. The neck of this bottle-bit seems to have collected stuff over time that has turned into disgusting goop. Will probably mutate into a sludge monster and eat us in our sleep…