This is another animated action produced from a combination of several photos by Colin.  She was just tossing and turning but with this combination, she seems to be fainting and at the end, lost consciousness. 

“I’m good at this…am I?”

I call this, play dead.  :D  It was just one of those moments that she tosses and turns and coincidentally, we were able to catch it with the camera.  It is very enjoyable to look at her funny actions.

Well, after some eyes and ears exercises, she will now demonstrate to you how to give your body a full exercise by… …rolling on the floor! :D  Haha!  Colin has made this animated action with quite a few photographs that he took the other day.

“I bet ya can’t do this… :P.”

Actually, she was not exercising I think.  She was trying to get our attention.  Most cats do that.  In a way, this action shows that the cat trusts us.  Before she rolls like that, she usually does a long stretch of her body too, which is also quite adorable.

Previously, I asked what you would do if hunger strikes.  Now, I am asking, what would you do if your cat winked at you?  Haha :D  Are you going to run away?  Colin has combined two photos of the cat together and created this animated version of cat wink photograph.  And we have discovered that its ear moves along with the movement of its eye.  As for human, I think only the area near our eyes moves when we wink.

Well, we can also put it in other ways.  She was not actually doing a wink.  She smelt food and woke up.  Maybe somebody passed by and she opened her eyes to see who was it.  Or maybe she heard voices or sounds.  What other speculations can you make?

What do you do when hunger strikes?  Looks like this cat’s tummy was rumbling terribly till she could do the yummy lick even without any food around her!  Maybe she was imagining some really nice and tasty food.  And she can meow non stop until you give her something to eat.

*puff* “Oh…where did that fish go?? No…wait…come back!Awww….”

Or she meows and indicates you to follow her to where the cat food container is kept.  She seems to know her way around quite well already!  Looks like she is going to stay for quite some time.  And take a look at that funny expression of her…she was still not giving up.

“So, are you going to give me some food or not??”

Colin’s mother said that she has become the king because she attacked other cats which came for food.  I think she is really serious in making this place her territory and no other cats can ever take over.

“Please…please…I promise I’ll be good….”

She’s playful and she likes her chin to be rubbed.  When I rub her chin, she will lie down and I use my hand to hold her head.  She enjoys that a lot.

“*sigh* My tummy…is full of…emptiness…and despair…I must do something about this…hmm….”

That was what she did.  She left and…followed us with her meows wherever we go.  We fed her when the time was right.  We are not that cruel.

A few weeks ago, a cat dropped by while we were gardening.  She is still hanging around and we are beginning to think that maybe she has the intention to stay.

It began one evening when we were doing some gardening and suddenly we heard meowing from the other end of the garden.  Then…she appeared.  We wondered and are still wondering where did she come from because there were no signs of her before and that was the first time we saw her.

She was not afraid of us, being the strangers around her.  Instead, she came very close to us and kept meowing.  We thought she wanted some food so I quickly brought the feeding container over.  However, she did not seem to be quite interested in it.  Then, we noticed something funny…

She went around the garden looking for a… “potty”!  She jumped into big pots or dug into soil and squatted to poo.  We did not feel good about her idea so I quickly poured some cat litter for her.  She sniffed the cat litter and went into her proper potty to poo.  But, that was not the end, you see.

She stayed in the cat litter box for quite some time but nothing came out.  I thought that she got tired of squatting so she stepped out of the box but…she repeated jumping into big pots and digging into soil to poo again.  After that, she went back into the box again.  On and off, I think she did it for several times but still nothing came out.  She meowed like she was having a terrible stomachache or maybe a constipation!  Poor thing!

Fortunately, she got better and she is not doing that anymore now.  She is very particular with cleanliness.  When we work in the garden, she usually lies down somewhere near us and licks herself for a long time.  No wonder every time we see her, she always seems so clean and her fur always looks nice.

We don’t know how long she wants to stay but we do enjoy her company.

These cactus are living together in a limited space.  It is extremely crowded until there is no way to water them.  I think the only way where the water can reach the soil is to slip through the little space between the thorns.

They look nice when they are packed together, we are reluctant to separate each of the cactus apart.  However it needs to be re-potted.  Put them in a bigger pot is the best option, but it is challenging because the process will either hurt my finger or the cactus might get hurt.

Some people like to be at crowded places because they feel lonely easily or they feel that they have missed out something whereas others always avoid the crowds as they feel uncomfortable where there are too many people around them.

Crowd of people that look like ants can be seen here (in Kuching) when a new shopping mall or a new hypermarket is just launched.  Whereas in some countries, a big group of people can be found at the popular beaches especially during the weekend or holidays.

We do not like to be part of the crowds, especially when the traffic jam is terrible.  The only time we joined the crowd was when we went to watch the parade, some exhibitions, and some special events - such as the Malaysia Day celebration last year.

Do you like crowded environment?

I was shocked when I first saw them in our garden.  I thought they were baby cobras.

It was actually the tails of these bloated worms instead of cobra’s head.  I guess that they must have eaten too much of leaves and they store the food in their tails, and make their tails swelling.  From what I observed, these worms are vegetarian.

I told my mother and she said that she has never seen this type of little creatures before.

They were very small.    Each of them is about 1 cm long.  they have many little legs.  They look like mini cobras, and very scary although they are small in size.

They destroy leaves in a special way:- instead of making holes on leaves, they eat only the upper layer of the leaves and make the leaves semi-transparent.

I am not sure where they came from, but they appear only on the leaves of the noni plants.  I hope they wouldn’t hurt other insects and other plants in my garden.

SiewPeng told me that there was a type of dinosaur called “Ankylosaurus” which  also had a similar shape of tail.

This plant has bloomed and produced a lot of seeds.  The branch full of seeds in green has high contrast with the sky in blue.  With my camera in my hand, I quickly took the photos while this plants swung intensely in the sky.

It is called “Mat Cao” in some Chinese Dialects such as Hakka, Hokkien and Teochew.  The leaves make it look like wild plants or weeds, but it has a little nice smell.  Some Chinese believe that it can chase away evil spirits.

When the seeds are all ripen, this section will turn into brown, and a lot of little black dots will drop from each of the bud.

Have you seen this plants before?  This time I can’t find its scientific name from the Internet.  I do not know what keywords should I use to search for it.  ”Mat Cao” is not a good keyword for searching engine because it does not give me the search results that I want.

If you know what is this plant’s name in English or its scientific name, please let me know.

Last Sunday, we went to a bonsai exhibition in a famous shopping mall in Kuching.  It reminds me that one of my father’s bonsai also produces fruits.

In the exhibition, we saw different types of bonsai.  Some of them were even leafless.  They were shaped according to the real natural environment but in smaller sizes.  One of them is in the shape like being blown by strong wind, because all the branches and leaves were facing one side.  There is a category where the trunks of the bonsai are partially dried but carved into shapes such as antler.

This was the second time we visited a bonsai exhibition this year and I was surprised because I did not find the bonsai of FuJianCha (Hokkien Tea in mandarin).  I told SiewPeng, they can give name to each of the bonsai such as “Stand Still in the Wind”, “Riding the Cloud” etc.

My mother came along with us, and she guessed that I would be taking more care of the bonsai in our garden for the coming weeks after visiting the bonsai exhibition.  Yes, it might be true.  :P  The bonsai in our garden have been abandoned for quite some time, it is time to repair them again.

Last weekend, while I was doing some gardening work, suddenly something hit my back.  I found 2 hibiscus buds and my brother was not far away.  I know he had thrown it to me.

He seldom reaches this area, and I asked him when was the last time he stepped into our garden.  He said he has stepped into this garden for the second time within this year.  He suggested me to take the photo of these hibiscus buds.

Yes, it is a good idea because I have taken some photos of hibiscus, but  I have never taken the photos of its dropped buds.

Related Posts:-
1.  Hibiscus in Backlighting .
2.  Orange Hawaiian Hybrid Hibiscus .

We went to a big lake where there are countless of big and small water lily leaves.  We did not use a boat but we used our eyes to see and heart to feel the surrounding of the big lake.  We enjoyed the liveliness and peacefulness of this beautiful place.

The lake is big until we can’t see the shore of the opposite side.  We saw some dolphins jumping out of the water surface.  Some waterbirds were walking on the water while some were flying in the sky.

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Well, it was actually the big bucket of my father where the water lilies are grown.

At a certain angle where I placed my camera, the blue bucket has turned into the sky as the background for the water lilies.

Actually, I wanted to take the photo of the reflection.

As I have shown you before, there are 3 types of water lilies live in this “lake”.

1.  Dark pink water lily.
2.  Pink water lily.
3.  Purple water lily.

The leaf in dark colour above belongs to the dark pink water lily.  Although they have limited space, but they take turns to bloom.

This leaf was dotted.  It might be attacked by sickness, or it is the sign of its age.  Soon, the whole leaf will turn brown.

A toad or frog has made this place its home.  We can find some tadpoles easily in the water.

This is another medium-sized bucket filled with water lilies, but it does not look like a lake.

Humans might not call them a lake, but I am sure the ants will …

This type of fern is called Paku in local languages.  It has grown naturally and wildly in our garden, and its population has increased because it likes to hide between the fence where it is difficult to be removed.

The ferns can appear in many types and shapes, some of them are edible.  I have collected 3 types in our garden.  The type of fern that I show you here is the strongest and widely spread paku fern among the 3 types of paku ferns in our garden.

I am not sure if this type of paku fern is edible, but I have the other 2 types which look nicer where many people use them for flower arrangements.

These ferns do not have seeds, but they are helped by the wind to propagate.  When the leaves are getting matured, the circles appear underneath the leaves.  When the leaves are getting older, the circles turn dark and produce a lot of powder-like spores.

Although they look soft, but they are strong.

What is your feeling when the file you are downloading stopped at 99% especially for those huge download of a few gigabytes?  Frustration?  Wait?  Find other sources?  Or the worst case - lost patience and delete the file?  If the files were in compressed format such as zip, rar, iso etc.,  it might be useless even with a little bit of incompleteness.  Most people will wait, and hopefully it would complete one day.  I am lucky because it completed on the next day.

I guessed the server might have been overloaded since my download was not using a P2P downloading.  For P2P downloading, it is a different case, the only peer that share the file might be unavailable at the most important moment.

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P2P downloading of copyrighted material is illegal, but the download which I have done above is legal, because it is the video of Master JingKong who teaches Buddhism.  Most Buddhism material are copyright free, it even welcomes people to duplicate the copies and distribute to the public.

I am learning the “JinGangJing” or “Diamond Sutra” explained in detailed by Master JingKong.  I have tried to find the DVDs from temple but not found.  Luckily I found it on the Internet.  But I still have not finished download all of the episodes.  The total would be about more than 100 GB and I do not have enough hard disk space.

I hope I can watch the complete set of “JingGangJing” explanation by Master JingKong, and the download does not stop at the last episode.  Please tell me where I can get this set of DVD if you know, then I can save a lot of time for the downloading.

It does not mean that I will disappear for 1 month.

It can be 30 days,
it can be a fortnight,
a few days,
a few hours,
and also a few minutes
or even a few seconds.

Long time ago, I said “See you next month” to a colleague at the end of a month, he asked me if I were taking any leave and when would I come back.  I told him, I was going back on the next day because the next day is a new month.

At 31 Dec 1999, you can say, “see you next century“.

At 31 Dec of any year, you can say, “see you next year“.

At 28 Feb, 29 Feb, 30, or 31, you can say, “see you next month“.

To a friend who you may never meet again, you can say, “see you in the next life“, or “see you in another world (Heaven or the Pure land at the West may be)”.

I am not sure if dream can be programmed before we go to our bed, but I have a real dream of computer programming which came to me for one or two times since last week when I slept at night.  I know the reason - I have been doing computer programming for long hours recently.

In my dreams, the PHP codes appeared, such as “echo” and a lot of dollar sign - eg. $_abc and $_xyz used for each variable, etc.  The CSS codes were also joining the party in my dream - there were a lot of curly-bracket ( {} ) and semicolon (;).  In my dream, I was sitting in front of computer doing the coding.

There is a proverb in Chinese, “RiYouSuoSi, YeYouSuoMeng” which means “what we think during the day will appear in our dream at night too“.  I believe it because I have the first hand experience.  Try to concentrate on something very hard during the day, and I believe you will get this experience too.

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A Funny True Story

I still remember years ago,  the deputy principal in my secondary school told us a way to improve our Bahasa Malaysia (B.M. or Malay Language).  He said, we should talk to our classmates in BM, talk to teachers in BM, talk to our parents in BM, write more in BM, sing in BM and also have dream at night in BM too.  :O  How to control our dream to change its language to BM?  I wonder how many students and teachers were using his method.   Anyway, he must have worked out his brain so hard to come out with this idea.

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Can you guess where did I get the picture above from?  The bear is having a sweat dream.  I took the picture above with my camera, it is the bed sheet and pillow case.

Recently, I have been using a laptop which has a different key layout compares to  my usual keyboard.  My usual way of pressing Control key (Ctrl) is by moving my fingers to the first button of the bottom left corner on the keyboard, but the laptop has Function key (Fn) at the first bottom left, the control key has became the second left key.

When I first used this laptop (which is not mine), I always made mistakes when I wanted to press on the most frequent used key - “Ctrl” but accidentally press the “Fn”.  Later I started to get used to it (Ctrl at second place).

Now here comes another problem.  When I use my own keyboard, I always made some mistake by pressing the second key for Ctrl, which is the Window button and it never happen to me before I use the laptop.

Now occasionally, I still made some mistake on both computer keyboards.  :(  I hope I can adapt to both keyboards at the same time.

This experience tells me that if I want to get a keyboard or laptop in the future, I won’t choose those that have FN key as first left button  and then Ctrl key at the second place.

Although this is a small matter, but the non-standardize keyboard actually decreases the users’ performances if the users need to switch between keyboards.

I have encountered another poorly designed keyboard owned by my friend, where the Power button is under the Delete button.  Every time when I wanted to press the Delete button, I accidentally pressed the Power button and the computer went into Standby mode.  I don’t like this type of keyboard.

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However, I have encountered other types of keyboards, such as a German keyboard where “Y” swaps with “Z”, and UK keyboard where “@” swaps with ” (double quote).  Besides, they also have strange characters on them which I have never seen on the US keyboard which I usually use.

If I were going to design a computer keyboard, I wish I can design a keyboard that can prevent foreign small objects to slip between the keys and drop into the keyboard which cause it to malfunction.  May be it is available in the market now which is similar to a laptop keyboard.

Many users especially those from the accounting department of some local companies which I have worked with previously stored a lot stapler bullets in their keyboards.  :P  There was one time, I found about countless of  stapler bullets when I turned it upside down and shook it.  Amazing  !!! ….

After the rain, we found quite a number of snails appeared in our garden.  This type of snail is the largest species (in size) and the largest population in our garden.

Its shell can be as big as 3 inches (max, usually is about 1 or 2 inches).  The unique and artistic patterns on their shell in brown and yellow stripes or dots are actually their camouflages when they hide themselves among the soil and branches.

I invited some of them to visit my light box so that I could take their photos.

From what I have learned, they are under the category of land snail (as opposed to sea snails and freshwater snails).  Their scientific name must be close to one of the following species which are either Helix pomatia and Helix aspersa.

The snail looked shy in my light box.

I was also worrying about their comfort in my light box.  They may feel not comfortable there because it might be too bright or too hot in the light box.  Therefore, I quickly took their photos, and released them back to the garden.

In our garden, we have tried to communicate with the snail so that they won’t hurt our plants.  They were following the rules, and we give them a section where we plant vegetable as their source of food.  They are our pets instead of pests.  Sometimes, we hardly find them in a hot day.

Snail is always considered as a “slow” animals, but do not look down on them.  It can destroy a plant by biting the main trunk or leaving many holes on the leaves.

In the computer world, we called traditional mail - snail mail in contrast of email which reach the recipient mailbox almost instantly.

The snail wants to tell the world, “Although I am slow, I can reached my destination no matter how far it is, and eat up the whole plants no matter how big it is.”

My heart sank to the bottom when I saw this the day she returned her report card to me.  I think most of us have had this experience before.  It was a horrifying feeling because first, you would be scolded for not meeting the benchmark, second, your report card was not signed, which means, you might need to face another round of punishment, by the teacher of course.  Well…unless you could reason with the teacher.

I asked her what happened.  She tried to recall.  Before she could say anything, tears rolled down her cheek.  From that moment, I knew I must not ask anymore.  I sent her back to her seat.  A lot of thoughts suddenly came to my mind.  After that, we were doing some sentence writing exercises.  I went around to check everybody’s work.  She wrote, ‘I am sad.’.  I am sorry I brought this unhappy memory back to her.

She is a fast learner in class.  She is obedient, helpful and finishes her work quickly.  I checked her marks for the semester exam.  The mark she has got was quite good and above the class average.  Her mother must have very high expectation on her.

I am not a parent.  Therefore, I don’t know much about setting expectations on children.  I think having expectations are good but results from an examination don’t give the whole picture.  It is the matter of whether the child can apply what they have learned in their daily life.  At least, that’s what I think.  Do you agree?

Colin once seen an introduction of a talk show on TV.  And coincidently, that part was talking about a father talking about his expectations towards his son.  First, he said previously he doesn’t expect his son to be good in sports and he also doesn’t expect his son to get into famous universities.  Then, his wife reminded him that if he said something like that, means that he is still expecting his son to achieve all those.  In some point, that’s quite true.  Then he said now, he doesn’t even want to think about all those any more.  Having expectations is good but too much can be depressing for both the child and the parents.  What do you think?

I did past simple with regular verbs the other day and I was eliciting past tense verbs from the students to see if they know how to apply the rules to transform the verbs from their base form to past simple.  Derrick was showing his utmost interest and was jumping up and down to get a chance to say his answers.  He did well that day and received his rewards.

Derrick isn’t the brightest in class but he is often trying his best in his work.  He doesn’t do well in his spelling tests and always has to do lots of corrections after that but he has never given up hope.  Neither have I. :)  And that’s what he said to me before dismissal that day.  Keep it up, Derrick!

If I am not mistaken, I heard this song from radio broadcast between 1988+ to 1990+. It might be a popular song at that time. I only remember the melody and incomplete pieces of its lyrics. I have searched on the net using incomplete lyric but did not find any results that refer to this song.

Well, click on the play button below to listen first and I am going to let you know more clues which I have used in google for searching.

The voice of the singer is similar to a singer called “ZhengZhiHua” but I did not find the broken pieces of the lyric in any of his songs which contain the important keywords:-

1. Yuan1Yang1 (in Chinese). - which means mandarin duck.
2. Xian4Mu4 (in Chinese) - which means “envying”.
3. Zi4You2Zi4Zai4 (in Chinese) - which means “freedom”.

Part of the chorus keeps on repeating “WoHaoXianMuTa … XianMuTa” which means I envy him…. envy him“.

I really hope that I can listen to this song again, but I do not even know the song’s title and singer, how do I tell the DJ at the radio station to play this song or even tell the search engine which song I am looking for?

We continued to walk and we went deeper into the cave.

The dripping of the water in the cave is called “Titisan Air Fairy” which means fairy’s water dripping.  I guess this is how the cave gets its name, and I am not sure where the statue of the fairy came from.  Someone must have put it there for quite some time, because the moss has grown on it.

The believers have burnt the incense to worship the fairy statue.  I guess someone might come here to do this every day!?!

At the inner part of this cave, there are some statues which really look like the gods of some religions.

The light from the windows of the cave is still able to reach this place.  But if you have a brighter torch light, you can see more things.

We continued to walk further in.

The concrete walking path gave me a feeling that I was inside a mining tunnel.

Somewhere around this area, there are naturally carved stones.

When I have done there - is to setup the tripod, take photos, close the legs of the tripod, and move to other angles and the processes repeated again.

When we were ready to leave, it was already 6:15pm.  We have spent about 2 hours in the cave.

We planned to visit the Bau town, the lake and a temple there, but the time was already late.   So we just went back to Kuching to have our dinner.

Although we have spent a lot of time there unlike normal visitors, but we have seen many details and taken a lot of photos in the cave.

Related Posts about Fairy Cave:-
1.  Fairy Cave, Bau - Part 1 - HDR.
2.  Part 2 - Climbed Up the Cave.
3.  Part 3 - Balcony in the Cave.
4.  Part 4 - Viewing Platform in the Middle.
5.  Part 5 - Great Wall vs. Great Staircase.
6.  Part 6 - Deep Inside the Cave.  (This posts)

The thing I like the most in the cave is the staircase which looks like the Great Wall of China.

The staircase has made it easier for visitors to walk from one corner to another.

Usually the miniature of this scene can be found on a bonsai or garden landscaping.  I felt that I was crawling on a giant bonsai.

It is the most strategic place to stand at viewing platform to view the entire big window of the cave.

the viewing platform is accessible using staircase.  From the picture above, can you imaging how big is the cave?

Standing at the viewing platform, we can see the balcony;  same vice versa.  I wonder long time ago, the cavemen might have to shout to each other if they stood at different corner in the cave.

There is a mysterious red bench not far from the viewing platform.

And…  there was a piece of red cloth on the bench.  …  Does it looked scary?

We thought we are the only human in the cave because it was already 5 pm and the rain had just stopped.  But suddenly another group of people came.

When we were getting out of the cave, there was another group of a family who wanted to get into the cave.  We met them after we walked down the staircase and before we got into our car.  They asked me how does the cave look like, and how difficult to get into there.  I told them the cave is big and wide inside, and they have to get through 2 level of small and narrow staircases, and I told them it was getting dark.  They did not go into the cave.

After we went into the cave, we walked and climbed straight away to the balcony of the cave.  This cave has a huge window on its upper floor, and one of the viewing platform has been built on the left of this window.

It started to rain again, the sky was in dark gray.  Later, the rain stopped, and it turned into light gray where the surroundings looked snowy.

Later the cloud that blocked the sunlight has gone, and the sky turned blue.

At the balcony of this cave, we could see another mountain which is quite a distance away.  The cloud has turned orange.

Looking at the roof and the balcony, we did not see any bats at that time.

Looking into the cave, we still have a long way to explore.  Can you see there is another viewing platform in the middle of the cave?  It might be too small in the picture above.

Let me zoom in, you can see the staircase which looks like the Great Wall of China.

Let me zoom in again, here, you can see the viewing platform.  I believe it should not be a problem to let 5 - 8 people standing on it.

Standing at the balcony of the cave, the big window is just next to us, but there is another smaller window not far from here.

There is a place in the cave where water is dripping from the roof, makes the top part of the standing stone looks like a tiny pond on the cliff.

The fish might live there even though there is only very little water, but it has the risk to be washed down the cliff.

To be continued. …

As usual we saw another L-shaped sign, but labeled with “Fairy Cave” outside the cave.

Since we have spent hours in Wind Cave, it was already 4:45 pm when we arrived at Fairy Cave.  The sky turned dark and it seemed that it was going to rain.

In order to enter the cave, the visitors have to climb up the 4-stories concrete staircase.  I was taking photos all the way, and when we almost reached the top, it started drizzling.  At that time, SiewPeng and I were discussing if we were going to proceed or turn our way back.  We have thought about our safety.

Less than a few minutes, the rain stopped and we proceeded.

Next to the properly built roofed-concrete-staircase, I saw another very narrow staircase.  It must be the route used by visitors in the older days.  I wonder if it is still being used nowadays.

Opps …  there is another staircase about 1 story high after the 4 stories staircase.  This part is not roofed.

This is the top view of the 4 stories staircase.

Finally we arrived at the entrance of the Fairy Cave.

Right at the entrance, we were welcomed by the healthily grown moss and fern.  They have got sufficient sunlight and water.

There is another tricky area before we reach the beautiful place in the cave.  We need to climb up another 2 small almost 90 degrees staircases in the cave.  That is the only place which is quite dark, but torch light may not be necessary because we can still see a bit of light from the top.  Later I will show you the balcony of this cave which allows the light to get into the cave.

Another thing about this cave is that these two staircases are not only narrow, but also wet all the time.  My long pants were dirtied by some mud after I went through these staircases.

You can imagine how I carried a heavy tripod and went through the narrow part.

After the narrow part, we reached a very wide open area of the cave which I think the inner length or diameter might be more than 50 meters - 100 meters.

To be continued…

After we left Wind Cave, we visited the Fairy Cave which is about 5 km away.  The fairy cave is a wide area at the internal part of the hill.  We had to climb up a 4 stories concrete staircase to enter the mouth of this cave.  Unlike Wind cave which is long, this cave is wide and tall.

This cave has a balcony where it is a good place to see the scenery and the paddy field near by.  But this is not the entrance for visitors, we entered the cave using the other properly built staircase.

I have prepared to create HDR photos, therefore at each of the angle, I have taken at least 3 photos in different exposure setting.

Do you know what HDR (High Dynamic Range) is?

In a high contrast environment, sometimes if you follow the exposure of the dark arae, the bright area would be too bright (over exposed), if you follow the exposure for bright area, you can’t see the detail in the dark area on a same photo.

HDR photo can be created by using computer software to render and merge photos in different exposure to show good details at higher range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image.

This cave is a good place for me to practice my HDR skill.

I used a software called picturenaut to merge HDR photos.  I have learn something very important:-  The software has a function to help me to realign the photo if there were any camera shaking.  I used that feature and I thought there would be nothing to align since I use a very stable tripod.  But the status told me that the alignment of y (vertical) is always +/- 1 or more which means there is an out of align of 1 pixel among the pictures even I have used the tripod and bracketing mode on camera.

It must happened when I pressed the shutter release button, next time I will use the camera’s remote control.

Another thing is the outcome might not always looks better than the normal range photo (I still need to have more practice).

HDR photos might not look real sometimes because the range might be higher compared to our eyes’ range.  From what I found, I saw most HDR photos over saturated.  I have done some post-editing to increase the saturation on my HDR Fairy Cave photos as well.  Nowadays there are some cameras which have built-in function to produce HDR photos without having to do it on the computer.  Amazing!!!

To be continued…

Besides we have taken quite a lot of photos inside the cave, we have taken some photos of ourselves around this area.  As you can see, the “90 degree L-shaped” sign can be seen in all of the nature reserves, national parks, wild life centers etc in Sarawak.

We parked our car here, and we had to walk 300 meters to the ticket booth of the Wind Cave.  If I am not mistaken, last time I did not have to walk so far to get the ticket to enter the cave.

It was a good exercise for us, we have walked at least 600 meters outside the cave, not including a few hundreds meters inside the cave.

When we were in front of the ticket booth or the external main entrance of the cave, we saw some parking spaces here, but the number of parking spaces were limited.

From this sign board, the time is over estimated, but visitors should walk slowly because it is always slippery at the place where the water is dripping from the ceiling of the cave.

There was something which happened right after we have paid for the tickets.  Another group of visitors came behind us, it was a group of family or friends which is about or more than 10 people.  I heard one of them said, “No need to include me for the ticket.”  :O  Although the ticket seller might not understand their language, but that lady shouted very loudly.

If that lady skipped the process of purchasing her ticket and entered the cave, I don’t think the ticket seller would know about it.  This is because he sat in an office to sell the ticket with limited visibility to the outside area of his office.  He won’t be able to see how may people have passed the entrance.  They might need to build a proper ticket booth.

Before we entered the cave, we walked on this nicely built walkway which is connected to the passages of the cave.

The walkway to the left is connected to passage no.3, and turn right to walk into passage no.2.

There are 2 medium-sized round-shaped huts for visitors to take a break.  It looks similar to the local Bidayuh’s building structure called “Baruk“.  Indeed, there are many government or public buildings structures in Kuching which also have this UFO-shaped roof.

We first entered the cave through passage no.3.  And we got out of the cave from passage no.2.  These huts are just not far from passage no.2.  Then, we walked into one of the huts, took out and enjoyed our food and drink here before we continued to explore the cave.

This is the roof of the hut.

This is the floor of the hut.

We continued our journey in the cave by entering the cave again from passage no.2, and explored passage no.1, but we had to take a U-turn because of the closure of that entrance.  Then we got out of the cave at an entrance between passage no.1 and no.2.

Generally, the cave is a nice place to visit.  Next to the parking area, many people were swimming in the river next to the cave.

Related Posts:
1.  Close Encounter with Bats at Wind Cave, Bau.
2.  Visited Wind Cave, Bau.
3.  Wind Cave - Part 2 - Glowing in the Dark.
4.  Wind Cave - Part 3 - Deep Inside the Cave.
5.  Wind Cave - Part 4 - No Entry.
6.  Wind Cave - Part 5 - Besides the Cave.  (you are reading now)

Later, we went to another cave which is about 5 km away from the Wind Cave.  I will show you in the coming posts.

This is the other end of the Wind Cave where the river is not far from this area.  This is part of passage no.1.  The river nearby is the Sarawak River which is connected to the Kuching Waterfront.  :O

I doubted about it when I read the word “Sarawak River” somewhere, because this place is 45 minutes drive from Kuching, but the goggle map shows me this river is really long.

This is another entrance of the cave, but we had to take a U turn here.

While I was taking the photo of this “no entry” message board, someone was coming.  They were an adult (the father may be) and 2 boys.  One of the boys told that man, “Yes this is the place, I have come here before… …  …  the stones have fallen down and they closed this area.”

I am not sure how true it is, but there must be a reason.  I agree if they close it for safety reason, but I do not agree if they close it because of lack of maintenance.

The river is connected to the stream in the cave.

It looks muddy.

If I am not mistaken, our car was just outside this entrance, but we had to walk a big round to reach our car because of the closure of this entrance.  If I am not mistaken too, last time they had a ticket booth near this entrance but now we have to walk 300 meter (per way) to reach the car park area.  The car park area near the ticket booth is limited.

Somewhere not far from the viewing platform deep inside the Wind Cave, there is a hole on the wall of the cave where the little amount of light can shine into the cave.

The indirect sunlight shines on the stones has encouraged the moss and little plants to grow around this area.

I don’t think this is one of the cave entrances for human, but I am sure that the bats can use it as a door.

It was not raining, but the water was dripping from the above of these stones.

Naturally-carved limestones are common artistic things in any caves.  But in this Wind Cave, most of the ceilings of the cave look quite smooth (look at the last picture).

We stopped here for a while to study the map.  But SiewPeng said that this spot was full of mosquitoes, we quickly moved ourselves away.

I am amazed because all the passages in the cave are built with the wooden walkway.  From the map, I saw that it is labeled with a type of wood called “Belian”.  It must be durable for at least a few decades.

This cave is a long tunnel with many entrances.  We chose to enter the cave from passage no. 3.  The first moment I stepped into the cave, I found that some parts of the walkway are painted in a bright colour.  They looked as if they were glowing in the dark.

It is a good idea to paint the walkway in bright colour especially at the staircases’ steps.  It makes it easier for the visitors to watch their steps.  It also makes itself glows in the dark which attracted me to take its photos for about 15 minutes.

This is the entrance (looking from the inside towards the outside of the cave).  Under the bridge or the walkway, there is a stream underneath us.  Throughout our way in passage no.3, there were some places that had wet walkway and were very slippery because the water was dripping from the ceiling of the cave.

The light was getting dimmer as we walked deeper into the cave, and soon it turned dark completely.  In my photos, the dim light appear in green.  May be the light was reflected by the green plants outside of the cave.

This is the outside look of the cave entrance at passage no. 3.  Doesn’t it look mysterious?  - Especially for the visitors who are visiting this cave for the first time.  From the outside, it looks like a typical cave where the treasures are kept ( which can be found in many novels).