How some friends stopped smoking.

April 21st 2013 is a day when three classmates of mine came to Sungai Petani to visit me. We had lunch at Ma Brown's and then we looked up another Penang Free School classmate who told us to meet hin at SP Club. We had a long talk about those good old day as well as what each of us had been doing.

One of usfound out that he was the only one among us still smoking. I was the only one who had never taken up the habit. I had tried to see how it felt like but it never appealed to me and I never liked it. However, the others did allow it to become a habit. So, they were telling David who wants to give it up how it should be done.

Richard Quah who came all the way from Australia told us how he did it by just telling himself he would stop. That was it and he did stop. Of course, he went through some withdrawal symptoms but he managed to overcome the problem. Then after about two years, he met some old friends and was offered a cigarette. Thinking that he was safe from cigarettes, he took a puff and got stuck with it for the next one year. Then, he told himself that that was enough of smoking and he did stop immediately although the same nasty withdrawal symptoms did wreak his a week or so of his life. The point is that he did it and he has been free from cigarettes since then. Like me, he is sixty six years old.

After hearing Richard's story, Tai told us that was also exactly how he stopped from smoking. For him, it was a health reason. But stop it, he did with the same method as Richard's. However, he told us the urge can easily return whenever he comes across people smoking nearby or an advertisement with someone puffing on the screen. Still, he has not been on cigarettes for more than three years.

Well, hope their experience can be of help to soneone who happens to come here.

A beautiful dumbo betta.

Here is another beautiful fish I wish to share with all of you. It is more towards the purple colour with places more red than purple.

It is so lively as you can see from the video I have uploaded for everyone to enjoy. And those huge pectorals are so clearly obvious due to its size and whiteness. I really wish to have it in my blog as I myself would soon lose the opportunity to appreciate its beauty when I have to sell it.

It is slightly past three months old now and with the more than hundred fish I have, I have to let some go. Furthermore, the more I breed these lovely betta splendens the more I hope to achieve with them. And to be able to do that I have to continue breeding them even though space constraints and time limit do not allow me such a pleasure. Well, I will just have to go the distance and find out how far I can reach.

In the meantime it is my pride and pleasure to enjoy my beauties with all of you. Looking at them, I have no alternative but to realise what a wonderfully beautiful world ours is.

One of my best Dumbo.

This dumbo betta is a favourite of mine as its mustard colour and extremely big pectorals are beautiful. This vieo was made when it was about three months old.

He is among a batch of very beautiful dumbos that I bred. Many of them have big dumbo pectorals while some have merely big ears. The big ears, although their pectorals are smaller, are just as lovely. I have sold a good number of them to Malaysians only as despite having been in this fish hobby for a long time, I have not thought of selling them to other countries. As such, I lack the knowledge of exporting fish. However, I think it is time I learn to do so. It would be my pleasure to share with many more people this beautifully coloured fish. So, there is still much to learn.

In fact, there was this person from Sabah who wanted some dumbos. The couriers were reluctant as it would involve having to put them on a plane.But then, I had known of a person who worked for an exporter regularly sending discus fish to other parts of the world. So what is the difference? Is it only possible to export or send fish by plane through a company? Are individuals discouraged from doing so? Never mind, I will seek for the answers to overcome this minor problem.

I have sold some of my fish to hobbyists in Peninsula Malaysia through 'Mudah.com", sending those who asked for them through the courier services available.

With this hobby taking up a lot of my time, I have not been able to do much sharing in my blog lately. However, I hope to do more as things settle to a more manageable pace.

My Dumbo bettas

Two months ago, I bred my large dumbo bettas. They are lovely with giant sized 'ears' or pectorals. And with excitement I waited for the dumbos' embrace. Oh, so romantic are these fish! Yes, they embraced long and passionately till the eggs emerged from the female. Almost as if drained of their emotional energy, listlssly, they loosened their embrace and each of them sank slowly. However, before their bodies reached the bottom of the tank, they revived and looked around for their precious eggs, took the eggs up in their mouth to place them in their bubble nest.

Again and again, they locked each other in their arms, or rather their bodies. as passionate as any two lovers can be. Eventually, exhausted, they stopped. Then, with fatherly concern over the safety of the eggs, the male told his lover to move off from the nest, fearful of the now hungry female devouring the eggs. So, he sent her off to a corner of the tank while he continued with the task of picking up every egg at the bottom.
I instantly sprang to the aid of the male as well as the female. For the male, it was to remove the fear that the female may return to eat the eggs. For the female, I removed her to ensure her safety from an angry male parent.
For the next three days, usually without food, the male has to work constantly, 24 hours a day, to make sure that any egg that falls out of its bubble will be cleaned and taken back to the safety of its bubble. And on the third day, the male is rewarded with tiny little fry darting out from their nest in search of food. Once the fry can swim in search of food, the male should be removed for the safety of the fry. However, there have been times when the male left with the fry did not eat or kill them.
While I am writing this, there may be some who know not what a betta is. It is a Siamese fighting fish. What is a Dumbo fighting fish? Well, it is a fighting fish which has giant pectorals. And so, some people call them 'big ears'.    

 And now the fry of my first batch of Dumbo bettas are more than two months old. They are mostly of good quality with huge pectorals. Below is an example of my first batch of Dumbos. Since I have a big number of them I am selling them to other hobbyist. And all of them are surprised at the size of the pectorals. Well, take a look. 

Let us take a look at some of my Dumbos.

Fish Breeding: Bettas

Since I was a teenager, perhaps a little younger, I have been interested in fish. I have been keen at observing their behaviour, the differences among the males and the females and the different ways of breeding. It has held my interest all the years and today with even more time to enjoy myself, I have gone more deeply into the hobby.

Although I have bred fish as a teenager, caught my first wild betta splendens in a paddy field at my uncle's house in Bukit Besar near the little town of Kota Serang Semut approximately ten kilometres from Alor Setar in Kedah, and saw and bought  my first pair of crown tail betta in the 1990s , I found it difficult to breed the fish then.

Looking back I must have thrown away minute fry so many times. Each time I saw the two fish, male and female, embrace, pick up their eggs to have them placed into the bubbles that comprise their nest, remove the female when it was driven away from the nest by the male to protect the eggs from being eaten by it.Then there was the waiting period which ended a few days later with the bubbles more or less gone but my eyes saw not the fry in the water. No fry means failure and so the water was removed, the tank cleaned and another attempt was made.

Failure did not deter me from going on. I was not a total failure at breeding, as I was already a very successful discus breeder, selling my young discus from home. (Today, I am still breeding discus although there is hardly any demand. I now have more than a hundred 3cm line-bred blue discus.) However, the guppy seems to have such great demand that I soon had red flamingos, metallic dragonhead, red glass and blue glass guppies. Since they are live-breeders, they were, of course, so easy to breed.

In fact, the number of guppies increased at such a tremendous rate, I had to buy three large fibre-glass tanks to breed just the flamingos. The joy of successfully achieving better colours through line-breeding was so great that I went on to the metallic dragonheads, hoping to create bigger and better coloured fish. Eventually, another three even bigger, seven feet length, fibre-glass tanks had to be bought.

Of course, my breeding of the bettas continued, breeding plakats, halfmoons, crown-tails and the latest, the dumbos (big-ears). Well, that's all for now. I will gradually introduce them to you. 

It's interests in life.

I have been away from this blog for some time as I have gone deeper into my hobby of breeding fish and chickens.Besides those, I was also contacted by someone who knew I could write to do rewriting of articles.All these have taken up all my waking hours with nothing much to spare.

Yes, it has been a busy time but I have no complaints as there was so much to learn and accomplish. When I was first contacted for rewriting I did not even ask the people how much I was going to be paid as it offered me a new experience. At first, I thought it was a summary or a totally new article that I had to produce based on the points they wish to have inside. Well, that was not what the people wanted. It has to be a rewriting of an article with most of the words replaced and the sentences restructured a times with everything grammatically correct. I saw it as a challenge to my capability. So, although I had not much time to allot to it, I agreed to the task and has so far rewritten more than ten articles.


 Furthermore, I hope to progress from rewriting to something even more challenging. With the experience and improved writing, I may be in the position to do more. Whatever the 'more' is, I do not worry about. In my life, I have found that all knowledge and experience will one day come in useful when you least expect it. . Just like this rewriting. It all started with a lady friend who went to Taiwan to study sexology. Although it was Taiwan, she had to write on sex topics in English and I was the one who helped her. Then, one day, she was asked by a friend if she knew of anyone who could rewrite. Of course, my name came up and the guy contacted me. That started me on this rewriting. Now, if I had not helped her out now and then, my name might not have any connection with writing and English; and this opportunity to experience rewriting would not come my way.

 Well, time does not permit me to tell you about my fish breeding although it is one of those wonderful experiences and joys in my life. I have to end here and get back to you as soon as time permits. Bye.

Parents do have competitors in teaching their young.

When our children are young, we give them lots of love With love comes obedience. With love and obedience, all parents need is to tell and show the young ones the rights and the wrongs of things. But then life is not as simple for we have competitors as teachers in the forms of the television and other families or people around us.

Children learn fast, both the good and the bad from every source in and around their environment. And their minds,on the quest of knowledge and understanding, frequently enquire the reasons and what-nots of all that their senses encounter.To satisfy their curiosity and the need to know, they would experiment and research whatever they meet with.  And that is the reason we get children who smoke or drink excessively even though their parents might be non-smokers or teetotallers. Someone somewhere or the television screen caught their attention and gave them their first idea of the seemingly delightful drink or puff. Having to stealthily try the drink or the puff makes it so exciting that it might add to the fun. With that the children could be hooked and once adulthood is reached nothing but awareness could help those children and prevent such activities from becoming habitual or excessive. When it comes to alcohol, such as red wine, having a glass or two can be healthy but certainly not intoxication. When it comes to smoking, it has to be admitted that it is best not started.

But then, this is where love wins all the time. Only with great love can there be sufficient parental patience to persuade and show what can possibly happen when certain undesirable actions grow and develop. Frustration with the child can never help as this could only lead to scolding and nagging which is never pleasant and so could only serve to drive away the child. Love would also disappear under such circumstances. Thus, parents need to be patient with the beloved child to gain his/her attention to what has to be done to cancel out any bad behaviour.

With attention from the child intact, there are so many instances which can be pointed out to show what could happen should the child continue with his action(s). Live examples such as these is the best teaching method for parents. It brings awareness and the mind of the child can evaluate and so choose what is best for him/her.

Perhaps, at this point, I could use myself as an example. Like all children, I was eager to learn and experiment with things. I still do. Well, at the age of about ten, I had my first alcoholic drink. Stupid, yes! But, at that age, it was more the sweetness of the brandy that delighted my mouth. The taste was and still is undeniably good. After more than a glass, I felt uncomfortable and there was this terrible urge to vomit. I suffered many hours after the pleasure.

Fortunately, with no money for such expensive drinks, I did not have any further opportunity to drink such smooth sweetness till I started work. At work I was active in the sports area, in stadiums as judges of events. During the sixties and seventies, we had parties after each sporting event where beer, wine and brandy flowed freely. I reached out for that memorable drink of my childhood and learned to be good at beating others at staying sober longer than them no matter the number of glasses. I learned to cool the body with glasses of cold water and frequent visits to the toilet. It was enjoyable, no doubt about that.

Things could have taken me along the road of disaster if I had not been hospitalised for fatigue which the doctor claimed was a rheumatic heart problem. While recuperating at the hospital I was lucky to see a man with outstretched shaking hands and fingers. I asked him what was his problem and was told that it was due to a burnt liver, the result of years of drinking beer, wine and brandy. And the sad truth was there could never be a total recovery from it.

I certainly would not want to be like that man, unable to hold a cup steadily in his hand or even with two hands! Well, I was not even married then and would definitely hope to hold a beautiful girl's hand steadily as I slip a ring into her finger. My awareness of possible consequences have arrived. I knew that problem was not for me. So, I put a stop to drinking alcoholic drinks. Thus, maturity and awareness helped to bring changes to my life. And the change was certainly good, good enough to have me free of medical problems at this age of sixty-five. Thank God for the revelation!