Wild Hidden Treasures

FOR someone whose idea of hiking is to climb the LRT station's couple of flights of stairs, the trek from the main observation deck for the cable car at the peak of Langkawi's Gunung Machinchang to the other one slightly below was a gasping challenge - a torture, really.
The staff at the observation deck told us (me, stand-in photographer friend Fahmi and two British tourists, William and Caroline Walton), it would only be a 20-minute jaunt.
"No problem."
It took much longer, at times seemingly endless in fact. Heaving and straining, the respites came mostly from William who frequently stopped to track black ants that were fully laden with food.
"Or are those eggs they are carrying?" asked Caroline.
And it wasn't exactly downhill all the way either - first down, then up, and then down and up again.
As we approached our destination, we ran into three Langkawi Scientific and Nature Expedition members who were just starting out on their own trek. "Seen anything interesting?" one asked.
Did we? I wouldn't know, I was busy fighting for oxygen.
They were among 150 local scientists and researchers on the island to undertake a comprehensive inventory of Langkawi's flora and fauna; the main objective of which was to provide input for a plan to manage the environment and economy of the Langkawi Islands in a sustainable manner.
In their company, who needs an encyclopaedia? Ask them anything and chances are you will get an answer on the spot.
Azhar Hussin of Universiti Malaya, for example, can talk about Langkawi's geology all day, if you have the time.
And Amiruddin Ahmad from the Penang-based World Fish Centre is so "fishy" that his room-mate at the Mutiara Burau Bay Resort, the base camp, decided to move out because the room smelled like a fish market.
Azhar will tell you that Gunung Machinchang is the oldest geological formation in Malaysia, dating back at least 500 million years. He can also show you the island's youngest alluvial plains, which are a mere 140 million years old.
He is the man to go to for a run-down on the geological periods too - Cambrian (more than 510 million years), Ord-Silurian (410-510 million years), Camb-Devonian (290-410 million years), Permian (250-290 million years), Triassic (250 million years) and Cretaceous (60 million years).
Ask him what he thinks is in store for Langkawi, and off comes the free-flow of information again.
"(We) have to look at the major activities (in the area)... South China Sea is expanding and Australia is moving upwards between the Pacific Sea plate, but the Sunda Shelf (where Langkawi is located) is stable for now," Azhar said.
But it was Amiruddin who was easily the most excited person in the group. He had caught an Anguilla marmorata (the swamp eel or giant mottled eel) on the night before the launching ceremony of the expedition.
The eel was easily one-metre long. "A female can grow up to 1.5m long," he enthused. A quick check on the Internet showed that these creatures can grow up to two metres long and a maximum weight of 20.5kg. Some of the fish he had caught ended up in the freezer. "If you want to see them, come to my chalet before 11pm. After that, it becomes a specimen," he said matter-of-factly.
Mutiara Burau Bay Resort was a hive of activity throughout the expedition, especially at the end of each day. The researchers started out for their various locations as early as 6am, returning only at the end of the day to compare notes.
Some went out only at night, for example, those interested in bats and mosquitoes, obviously.
The area under study extended beyond Langkawi Island proper to the smaller islands and islets that had special conservation significance and/or ecotourism potential.
The team from the Malaysian Agriculture Research Development Institute went looking for wild ginger, but returned with wild nutmeg instead.
And a freshwater crab, that was collected on Gunung Raya, was confirmed as a Geosesarma foxi by world-renowned expert Associate Professor Dr Peter KL Ng from the National University of Singapore.
The first find of the rare crustacean was made by B.H. Buxton in 1914 at 2,000ft up the same gunung.
Ornithologists meanwhile spotted, among others, the Oriental Pied Hornbill and a flock of chestnut-capped bee-eaters.
And did you know that except for two species (neither are found in Malaysia), only male cicadas "sing"? The biggest cicada is the Pomponia imperatoria, with a wingspan of over 20cm, and it can be found right here!
So, shouldn't Langkawi's promotion be consciously extended - beyond just swaying palms, sun-bleached beaches (gorgeous as the ones at Datai Bay and off the Andaman Sea are), and duty-free shopping - to include nature?
The Waltons, who were on a five-day visit, concurred. William, a forester, was enthusiastic when invited to join the trek. Caroline, a teacher, was equally eager.
"It was a wedding present, but we only managed to get away recently," she said. They married two years ago.
There are many, like them, who prefer the jungles - and the nature guides in Langkawi are known to be the best in the country.
In fact, some guides participated in the expedition too. They not only took the expedition members to their various locations but also actively participated in the nightly talks.
"I don't think you need any more physical development on the island," said a Swiss couple, met on the cable car up Gunung Machinchang. They were on the third week of their holiday in Langkawi.
"There are enough hotels already. Also, the basic infrastructure is sufficient. And the people are nice.
"Improve on the nature trails, and put up signs and tag the trees, tell people what can be found at each place. It would make visitors like us enjoy the island more," they suggested.
Certainly worth considering.

Perahu Big and Small

ABDULLAH Muda has come a long way from the days when he made toy boats with coconut husks. In the half a century or so that he has been making boats for real since, he has crafted million-ringgit 65-footers that sail the seven seas.
He builds both conventional wooden sail boats and ornamental vessels, which boast genuine traditional craftsmanship.
And his clients come from far and wide - Singapore and Australia to Algeria, Denmark, England, Italy, and France, and even Canada and the US.
These days, however, the 60-something Abdullah seems to be coasting, but full retirement has to be put on hold for a while yet. He is still grooming a successor to take over his trade.
"Saya dah tua dah, takut bawa mati (I'm old already, fear I may take it to my grave)," he says, obviously taking pains to keep his Terengganu accent in check to enable us to understand him.
Abdullah's hope is his only son, Khairul Azwa or Wa, who is only now showing some interest in the family business.
"If he doesn't take over, who would? He's a bright boy... jumped class twice. I wanted to send him to South Korea to study boat-building before but he wasn't interested. I want to teach him to draw boats but there is no new project currently," Abdullah says.
A technology graduate of Universiti Sains Malaysia, Wa has quit his job and is spending more time at the workshop to "tolong sikit-sikit" (help out a little), according to Abdullah.
Wa is not only expected to take over the business but also to inject modernity into the operations.
In fact, Abdullah longs to see the day when his boats are fully designed on the computer, not like he does now, on pieces of paper.
"Kerja sekarang dah senang. Dulu, semua buat atas kertas. Sekarang dah ada komputer (work now is easy. Before, everything was done on pieces of paper. Now, there are computers)."
Unlike his son, Abdullah did not have much formal education. "God gave me this gift... but people nowadays with high education do not want to make boats. When I was in school, my friend, who wasn't schooling, was already making boats. I joined him until I got a job offer from Rida (now Mara). I left (the agency) in 1965 after working there for five years and started my own business."
He is currently completing a project for Putrajaya Corp, which has ordered 10 20-footer Payang and Kolek ornamental vessels that are to be used at the Putrajaya lake.
Abdullah is charging RM72,000 per boat, with RM10,000 of the cost going to the intricate carvings alone.
It took a long time to secure the contract, he says. "Pergi, balik Putrajaya... nak sign kontrak (to and fro... to sign contract)."
The instructions given to him were for boats "stail lama-lama (old style)."
He currently has eight craftsmen working on the boats.
The difference between the Payang and the Kolek is in the hull. The Payang's is straight, and the Kolek's crescent-shaped.
Abdullah also makes two other styles of traditional boats, the bigger Pinis and Bidor, which are simply known as Perahu Besar, or "big boats".
He still has a few more boats to complete for Putrajaya Corp. The first two have been delivered to Putrajaya, which were first launched into the Terengganu River, and then transferred at a landing point upstream onto lorries to be transported to the administrative capital.
Asked about his costs, Abdullah says a 65-footer, for example, requires some 60 tonnes of wood costing RM400,000 or more. "Senang-senang setengah juta harganya, itu baru harga kayu (easily half a million ringgit, that's just the cost of the wood)."
Cengal from Terengganu and Sumatra is the best wood for boat-making, he says.
"Foreigners buy my boats, Malaysians don't... our own people do not value local quality work," he laments.
"It's like buying clothes. We normally look at the labels and buy the foreign ones, thinking that they are better than the local ones."
His local customers also tend to bargain a lot, while the foreigners would just pay any price quoted, he adds.
Finding him was not too difficult as Abdullah is a local celebrity at Pulau Duyong, about two km from Kuala Terengganu. Just ask anyone for directions to his workshop, and chances are that person will even volunteer to lead you to the place personally.
Abdullah gets some 40 visitors daily, mostly foreign tourists as his workshop is on local tour itineraries.
He used to receive many more visitors, and by way of explanation, notes: "Ekonomi tak berapa baik (the economy is not very good)."
For someone who builds million-ringgit boats, Abdullah leads a simple life. He recalls having been asked how many Mercedes cars he owns. "People said with the kind of business I do, I should have at least three. I told them I own an old, battered car."
He also tells of a visit by some Singaporean boat-makers in the late 1980s, who came to press him to hike up the prices of his boats. They scolded him for offering his boats at a much lower price than theirs, Abdullah says.
"Cukup makan sudah lah (enough to eat is sufficient)," and that seems to sum up his philosophy in life.

Evening Bouquets

STANLEY Foong stands on a plastic chair with a water spray in his right hand and two stalks of roses in his left. Raising the roses to his mouth as if they were microphones, he bellows: "Happy hour, happy hour, three dozen for 10 ringgit."
His voice resonates, easily the loudest, at the Bangsar pasar malam in Kuala Lumpur.
"Roses are red and flowers are cheap for you. Men love roses and roses love water," he prattles on while spraying the roses with a mist of water.
Well, happy hour for the flower seller begins when he starts business at 4pm right up till packing up time at 10.30pm. He does this twice a week - on Sundays at the Bangsar night market, and Mondays at SS 2.
"You can hold hands but better if you buy her flowers," he tells a young couple walking by. The lady seems to agree, the man just smiles.
Stanley has been selling flowers for the past six years and has accumulated some loyal customers along the way. For one, Australian Monica goes to Stanley for her weekly supply of freshly cut flowers. She and her son, Carl, have been frequenting Stanley's stall since they first came to Kuala Lumpur. "I've been coming here since Carl was very small... in 1997," she says. Carl is now nine years old.
"I like to buy my flowers from the same stall... same goes with the other things that I buy, always from the same stall," she notes.
Each time, Carl would have a jolly good time spraying water on all the flowers at the stall. There must be some 2,000 stalks in all.
At the end of it, he is rewarded with a bunch of flowers. On that day, he chose a dozen red roses for his mum.
It is not too difficult to see why people buy flowers. A behavioural research conducted at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, shows that flowers is an effective way to improve emotional health. Flowers trigger happy emotions, heighten feelings of life satisfaction and affect social behaviour in a positive manner, far beyond what is commonly recognised.
In the 10-month study, a team of researchers explored the link between flowers and life satisfaction by observing participants' behavioural and emotional responses to receiving flowers.
The results of the study, posted on the Society of American Florists' website, show that flowers are a natural and healthful moderator of moods. It has an immediate impact on happiness, a long-term positive effect on moods and encourages intimate connections, leading to increased contact with family and friends.
Probably, that's why people go back again and again to Stanley and daughter Jeanne.
Father and daughter talk to their customers and non-customers alike, happily answering all kinds of queries about flowers despite being shorthanded at times. Flower power at work maybe?
Stanley also has three workers to help out. According to Jeanne, one of her customers also helps out at the stall at times. "You can join us if you want. It's fun," she says.
An elderly Malay man who, Jeanne says, is another loyal customer, approaches. She addresses him as uncle as she does not know his name. "He buys the same flowers every week, without fail," she confides while wrapping up his purchase of the night.
When she ribs him about buying the flowers for his girlfriend, he replies good-naturedly: "For ex-girlfriend, now wife." Who says romance is dead.
The flowers are cheap, going for between RM2 and RM60 a bunch. "B-Grade" roses are, among others, priced at RM10 for three dozens, while stargazers cost RM13 a bunch of three stalks with seven blooms. The five-lot stall also offers more exotic blooms like bird of paradise, cat's tail, and cigar and ginger flowers.
"That is probably our strength," says Jeanne. "Unlike florists, we are able to offer low prices because we do not pay rent. As such, we can pass it on to our customers. We only pay an annual licence to operate at the pasar malam."
Some of the flowers are brought down from Cameron Highlands the night before. Others arrive on Sunday morning itself. The stall carries about 20 varieties of flowers. The bestsellers are fragrant tuber roses, lilies and orchids.
Flowers are normally graded by stem length and bunched by weight in one- to two-pound bunches. Some are also graded by stem count depending on flower type.
For the two nights a week, Stanley, Jeanne and their workers drive from Bandar Sungai Long in Kajang (where their company, Sunny Garden, is located), reaching the night market as early as 4pm.
Even before they are done arranging the flowers in buckets by the roadside, customers are already picking out their favourite blooms!
"We sell about 80 per cent of what we bring. We bring just enough because at the end of the day, if no one buys the flowers, we cannot even offer them at a discount because they will no longer be fresh," Jeanne says.
Her mobile phone rings incessantly, mostly from customers requesting her to keep aside some of her best flowers. Yes, one can place orders by cellphone.
"This is an extra service we offer to keep our customers, times are hard," she says.
On "easy" days when there is enough help around, Jeanne also does flower arrangements, and occasionally makes home delivery, especially to houses in the vicinity. Nearby restaurants such as Flams, Le Bodega and Telawi Street Bistro are her clients, as well. And there are the Puan Sris and Datins too.
Sales are good but can be better, Jeanne says.
"Our business dropped a little when the pasar malam was moved from Saturday to Sunday about a year ago. Most people prefer to do their marketing on Saturday and stay home Sunday as Monday is a working day," she concludes before excusing herself to tend to another one of her loyal customers.

Cell Culture

LOVE him or hate him, he is the man who freed some one billion people the world over to communicate with one another anytime, anywhere; and in the process irritate the hell out of those seeking a quiet meal in a restaurant or enjoying a movie or a concert.
Unlike Alexander Graham Bell who stumbled upon his invention of the conventional land-line telephone by accident (he spilled acid on his clothes and cried into a transmitter, "Mr Watson, come here!") in 1876, Dr Martin Cooper's 30- year-old invention stemmed from his strong belief that wireless communication should be "attached to a person".
Back in 1973, the only mobile phones were car telephones built into automobiles. The American company AT&T, then the world's largest company, had invented the concept of cellular, but did not believe that a handheld device was necessary.
"I strongly believe that wireless communication should be attached to a person, so it can travel with them, and not tied to a car or other physical location. People are inherently and naturally mobile. So my team and I began work on creating a portable cellular telephone.
"With the creation of the cellular phone, we showed people that they could have the freedom to be anywhere and still remain connected to society," he said.
The first working prototype mobile phone was called the Motorola Dyna-Tac. It looked like a brick, weighed 2lbs, with no display screen, a talk time of 35 minutes and a recharge time of 10 hours. Its only features were dial, talk and listen.
Indeed, it was something of a mammoth compared to today's cellphones that weigh about 3oz or 4oz and can easily fit into users' palms. And last year alone, a total of 423 million handsets were sold to consumers.
For as long as he can remember, 74-year-old Cooper said he knew he was going to become an engineer or a technologist. As a child, he wanted to know how everything worked.
"I still have recollections of imagining a train operating by magnetic levitation in an airless tunnel when I was eight years old. It was very natural that I went to a technical high school where I took every shop available, from woodworking to foundry, including chemistry and physics. I always knew that I would go to an engineering college, and of course I did," he said.
Cooper grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and earned a degree in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. After four years in the navy serving on destroyers and a submarine, he worked for a year with a telecommunications company.
Hired by Motorola in 1954, Cooper worked on developing portable products, including the first portable handheld police radios, made for the Chicago police department in 1967. He then led Motorola's cellular research programme.
While he was a project manager at Motorola in 1973, Cooper set up a base station on the roof of the Burlington Consolidated Tower (now the Alliance Capital Building) in New York with the Motorola Dyna-Tac.
On April 3 that year, standing on a street near the Manhattan Hilton, Cooper decided to attempt a private call before going to a press conference at the hotel. He picked up the chunky Dyna-Tac and pressed the "off hook" button. The phone came alive, connecting him with the base station and into the land-line system. He dialled a number and held the phone to his ear.
And whom did he call?
The first call he made was to his rival, Joel Engel, Bell Labs' head of research.
Did he ever imagine that his invention of the first portable handset would turn into such a booming business?
"The impact of cellular telephones was in one sense a surprise and in another sense predicted. There was no question in our minds when we created the cellular that everyone would ultimately use cellular phones for their personal calls.
"However, at the time that the commercial cellular service started, a portable cellular phone cost US$3,500 in 1983, which is equivalent to about twice that today. It was hard to imagine the huge market we have today at those kinds of prices.
"The surprise is that in a mere 19 years the price of a cellular phone has gone from the equivalent of about US$7,000 to a situation today where people give cellular phones away for nothing in order to acquire a subscriber."
And Cooper does not believe that there is such a thing as a "universal device" that does all things for all people.
"Just as there are many types of people - teenagers, business people, seniors - there will be many types of phones with characteristics that are perfectly suited to them.
"Likewise, there will be varying types of voice and data services to meet their needs, with many different prices and features to help people communicate the way they want to," he said.
Cooper left Motorola in 1983, the year the first cellular systems became commercially available. After starting, then selling a company that managed billing for cellular companies, Cooper worked as an independent consultant until he established his current venture, ArrayComm, in 1992.
When he co-founded ArrayComm, he was motivated by the unfulfilled promise of cellular. "It has not replaced the land-line phones as we expected, because wireless access is still not as reliable or affordable as a wired telephone."
ArrayComm's core technology increases the capacity and coverage of any cellular system while significantly lowering costs and making communication more reliable. This technology is what is needed to fulfill the dream of the cellular industry."
Five years ago, the company conceived of using its "smart antenna" technology to make the Internet personal and portable. That concept has become the i-BURST Personal Broadband System, which delivers affordable high-speed, mobile Internet access.
"It's very exciting to be part of this movement towards delivering the Internet wherever you want to use it, just as I helped deliver that mobility to voice communication," he said.
He said wireless voice service still frustrates many consumers because of dropped calls, poor coverage and expensive fees.
"The technology exists to solve those problems, and as the wireless industry matures it will adopt technology to give customers a completely reliable and affordable communication experience. In addition, people now rely on the Internet for a large part of their business and personal communication, and existing cellular networks are not designed for effective Internet delivery. So mobile wireless broadband, with systems designed specifically for Internet access, whether with a computer or some other Web-enabled device, will be the next wave of major innovation," he added.
His ArrayComm is currently addressing both the existing cellular problems and the new wireless Internet opportunity.
And at 74, Cooper is still very much running the business. Will there come a time when he will retire? "Retirement is being able to do exactly what you want to do every day, and I'm already doing that!"
Neither of his children have followed in his footsteps as an inventor or a technologist. One is an attorney and the other an accountant.
"The difficult part of inventing is to understand the problem, the opportunity, that the invention attacks. We literally lived the business - 24 hours a day - and that takes a toll on family. But my family was always very supportive. I have high hopes that one of my four grandchildren will follow in my footsteps."