Here I am............a year later!

Waaahh! How time flies! A year has flown by since I have a blog entry. I am sure all of you have given up clicking on this blog. My usual excuse...........too busy lor...

Anyway, the following is a summary of the last 12 months:

We had a house extension; starting from the last week of July and ending the week before Christmas. The following are some pictures of the work that went on.









So after lots of dust and the builders getting in the way of our daily life, the following is the result:



I have to say that though it was a fairly hectic time for us, it hasn't been too bad. Having said that, we were without a kitchen for almost 5 months. We had to do most of our cooking on the BBQ stove, which I had positioned in front of our daughter's Wendy House in the garden. The microwave was also in use a lot. I almost burned the house down one night, when I came home late and tried to cook a jacket potato in the microwave. I had programmed it for too long, and the potato had turned into charcoal and caught fire in the microwave.

While all this work was going on, I had nipped back to Malaysia for a quick trip for my 25 year reunion with my school friends. In fact for me, it was actually a 30 years reunion, as I had left home just after my primary school years. It was very good to catch up with old friends; some of whom I have not met for 30 years! While I was there, I also managed to squeeze in a dive trip to Pulau Tenggol. Yep! All in one week. Hope you enjoy the following shot. Took me all of 22 snaps to get the 2 clown fish together.




In October, I made my usual trip to the US for my annual conference. This time, it was in Orlando. Again, managed to squeeze in a trip to the coast for a swim with the manatees. Amazing creatures!

Two weeks after I got back from the States, I took a a group of divers to the northern Red Sea for a liveaboard. It was supposed to be 10 of us in total. Unfortunately, due to the collapse of XL Airways, the dates were changed slightly, and only 4 of us could make it out there in the end. It was great diving all the wrecks in this part of the Red Sea. However, I have to say that the sea life was quite sparse on tnis occassion, compared to my first trip there. I think this must be due to the fact that this part of the Red Sea has been over-dived over the years. Perhaps, the best thing would be to shut off this part of the Red Sea to tourism for a few years for it to regenerate.

Over Christmas and New Year, we were just settling into our new house extension, and taking it easy. Not for long though. In February, we went to St. Lucia for 2 weeks to attend a wedding of a friend. It was sooooooooooo expensive. At least, I managed to do 10 dives while we were out there. This time I managed to use my Nikon dSLR for my u/w pics. Some of the results are posted below........errr, for some reason, not able to upload the photos to blogger at the moment. Will do them later.

So, there you go. My last 12 months in brief............see you guys in another 12 months' time...maybe...