Ruth and her hair stylist

This is my niece Ruth. Recently, it was reported on National TV, that a monkey worked as a waiter in Japan.

Here is Ruth having her hair groomed. No wonder she has such beautiful long hair. With such a hair stylist, who will have a bad hair day.

Rubber Tree

More than a century ago, an Englishman went to Brazil and stole some rubber seeds aka Hevea brasiliensi. He germinated them and grew them in the Kew Gardens in London.

From those stolen seeds, they grew to supply the rubber gardens in Malaysia and Borneo.
The original rubber trees were very good, but took too long to reach a productive age. Then the good old scientist developed a smaller tree but produced more and called it high yielding tree.

My plant is a miniature tree. It's a tribute to both sets of my ancestry. It was rubber that brought them to Borneo.In 1907, my Great Grand father was scouted to lead a developing company to grow this important cash crop.

I often go on a walk-a-about on the university campus. I found a cluster of five rubber trees. Some one wanted to do an article on the trees of the bygone era. I told them where to find them. I even got Sam to do an experiment on tapping rubber to get latex like his fore fathers before him. We didn't get any latex because it poured that day.

This species is different from a decorative Indian Rubber tree aka Ficus elastica.

***A bonzai is a tree manipulated to form a miniature tree, originally from Japan.***

Our dog eared visitors' book

This old dog eared visitors' book was given by V and H when we left Auckland for Singapore in 1990. There are lots of gems in it, and entries come from friends we just made to friends we have known for a long time.

Our first entry were a New York Couple and two Japanese ladies. I used to go to the Singapore Bird park a lot. We met them, and we invited them home. They did, and they were squashed in our car. They enjoyed our hospitality, and later the New York couple sent us gifts for the girls, including Oscar in his rubbish can.

For privacy reasons, I normally do not upload my visitors photos we took with them. Neither will I include all the others who have signed in the visitors' book, except our magician friend Bernard Bell from UK.

However, this pix was taken so long ago, in 1992. It would be good if my readers recognise them, and make a connection for me. In fact, during the 9/11, I wanted to write them a letter. The other children were our neighbours from Ghana.