Back in Amsterdam

Posted on December 9, 2012 by janstu

Today I flew back from Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam. It is a 12 hour direct flight by KLM, usually leaving KL around midnight and arriving at Schiphol airport early next morning (time difference is 6-7 hours). Always a long tiring night for me, because I am unable to sleep in a plane.

Recently KLM started another option, leaving KL around 10am and arriving in Amsterdam the same day at 4 pm. I tried it and my first impression is positive.

This morning Aric sent me to the airport where we had our breakfast at McDonald’s.

The last few days the weather conditions in the Netherlands had been bad with lots of snow, causing delays and cancellations of quite a few flights, so I was relieved to see that my flight had only a 45 minutes delay.

During the flight I watched three movies, played many games of Tetris, and had a short afternoon nap. At Schiphol two of my brothers were waiting for me, the temperature was 8 ºC, hardly any snow left.

When I arrived at my condo, a surprise was waiting for me…:-). Yolanda, Paul’s sister, who had visited Malaysia a few months earlier had come to my place and left some Christmas presents for me. And switched on the central heating. So sweet…;-)

After a cup of coffee, I went out to the supermarket for my traditional first-day shopping. Herring, cheese, strawberries, bacon, bread. Delicious Dutch food…:-)

The last few weeks I have gained weight, a few kg, and I am afraid that these three weeks in Holland will add another 1-2 kg. When I am back in Malaysia I will have to start dieting!

Journal 8-12-2012

Posted on December 8, 2012 by janstu

A few months ago, in August, when the health of Aric’s father was still quite good, we have been thinking about celebrating Christmas and New Year in Holland. It’s not my favourite season, but it might be interesting for Aric. Maybe even a White Christmas?

When the condition of his father became worse, we cancelled that plan of course and now that his father has passed away, Aric is quite busy with sorting out his fathers papers etc, staying often in Sabak Bernam. Why don’t you go to Holland to visit your family, he suggested, last weekend. At first I was reluctant to go alone, but a few days later, chatting with my brother, I changed my mind.

So, tomorrow 9-12 I will fly to Holland, where I will stay until 1-12013! And where it is winter at the moment. Here is a picture, sent by my sister, a view from her living room of her garden. Quite unusual, as officially winter starts only on 21-12 and generally January and February are the winter months.

The weather here in Malaysia is also unusual with lots of heavy rain, landslides etc. Global climate change! As a contrast here a picture taken from our living room of the hill opposite our condo. When we moved in it was a beautiful forested slope, now it is a noisy construction site..:-(

To end this post, a few food pictures, as this is Malaysia. Last weekend we were invited by friends for a “real” Chinese dinner. And a delicious dinner it was!

And here I have lunch with IKEA friends. Location: Jalan Bellamy near the old Palace. A simple Malay shop, famous for its Mee Rebus.

It is durian season and these days they are very cheap. Even supermarket Tesco sells them, and for the first time in my life I decided to buy two, although I have no idea how to pick the good ones..:-). Later Aric’s cousin brought more, so we had a durian feast today.

Stabat Mater (Pergolesi)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by janstu

The Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was only twenty-six years old when he died in 1736 from tuberculosis. In the year of his death he wrote a masterpiece, the Stabat Mater.

For those readers without a Christian background, the Stabat Mater is a sorrowful hymn, dating back to the 13th century about Maria, the mother of Jesus, during the crucifixion of her son. A mother watching her son dying is very emotional, also for non-Christians. It has been put to music by many composers, Vivaldi, Rossini, Dvorak, etc. If you are interested in the full text (Latin and English) of the Stabat Mater, click here . The singers are Emma Kirkby and James Bowman

Nowadays, with YouTube accepting video clips exceeding the ten minute limit, there is a wide choice of interpretations available. Here I will give a few links with some personal comments.

Originally Pergolesi composed the Stabat Mater for a male alto and a male soprano (a castrato!), customary in his days. Here is a performance by counter-tenor Rene Jacobs and boy-soprano Sebastian Hennig. Can you hear that actually two males are singing?

Beautiful performance, although the vocal parts are sometimes a bit loud, IMHO. Here is a traditional interpretation by Dominique Labelle, soprano and Meg Bragle, mezzo-soprano.

Alto, mezzo-soprano, counter-tenor, pick your choice. This performance is in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, walking distance from my former domicile. Soloists here are soprano Johannette Zomer en counter-tenor Maarten Engeltjes

Here is an interesting performance coming from Armenia(!), where several of the solo arias are being sung by a choir. Impressive!

Finally, here is my favourite. Performed by Les Pages & les Chantres de la Chapelle, conducted by Olivier Schneebeli. Also here soloists and choir. I like the instrumentation very much.

After listening to these five different interpretations of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, you may be in the mood to listen to something different?

Here is Andreas Scholl in the Stabat Mater by Vivaldi. My favourite counter-tenor.

Take care that you view the YouTube clips one by one, or it will become a chaos..:-)

Waterfalls of Malaysia

Posted on November 28, 2012 by janstu

In my post about the Pisang waterfall I wrote that about 9 years ago I came in contact with Khong. He had started a website about Malaysian waterfalls, but had recently become more interested in birding. We became friends and I took over the maintenance of the waterfall site. On 28-10-2003, we registered the domain name waterfallsofmalaysia.com.

Khong had used several free web hosting services for his site, so my first task was to integrate all his material in this new site with a new design. In the beginning only falls in Peninsular Malaysia, later Sarawak and Sabah were added. Here is the original design.

In the past nine years the number of waterfall pages has increased from about 75 to more than 150. Also there have been many structural changes like a news section and the possibility to add comments. This is the present design

For more information about the history of the site and the members of my team, click here. The website is quite popular and attracts on average ~ 1000 visitors daily. Regularly I receive email from visitors, asking for more information, or with suggestions for new waterfalls. It is a nice hobby, some friends nickname me the Godfather of the Malaysian Waterfalls, LOL

One year ago I added a script to the site, that gives nice statistics about the website visitors and where they come from. Below is a screenshot, taken on November 16.

A total of 300.000 visitors coming from 160 different countries. It is interesting to see the geographical distribution. Not surprisingly most visitors come from Malaysia (75%) and Singapore (12%). USA is third (4%). But there have also been visitors from Cape Verde, Kyrgyzstan, the Aland Islands etc.

My ancestors

Posted on November 17, 2012 by janstu

As you probably know, our species, homo sapiens, evolved, 200.00-150.000 years ago in Africa. From there they migrated all over the world. All humans living now, have common maternal and paternal ancestors.

How do we know this? By studying mutations in our DNA!

The idea is simple. Every now and then mutations occur in our DNA. If a mutation occurs in the DNA of an individual, will this mutation also be present in the DNA of its offspring? In the reproductive process the genes of father and mother are mixed, so that is difficult to say. There are however two exceptions!

One is the Y-chromosome, which inherits exclusively from father to son.The other one is the DNA in the mitochondria, the power plants of a cell. They come from the egg, and therefore from the mother.

By studying the mutations in the Y-chromosome we can trace back our paternal lineage to the Y-Chromosomal Adam. And in the same way, studying the mutations in the Mitochondrial DNA, we finally go back to Mitochondrial Eve

Here are the approximate migration patterns for the paternal lineage. When you click on the picture, you will get an enlargement, where you can see the numbers in the various branches, like M173, M175, etc. This are the markers for specific mutations in the Y-chromosome. In the table estimates are given when this mutation took place. People with the same mutation in their genes are said to belong to a haplogroup

Last year, surfing the Internet, I found the website of the Genographic Project, managed by National Geographic. For 99 USD you could order a DNA ancestry kit to determine either your paternal or your maternal lineage.

As I was just reading the impressive masterpiece by Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale, I became interested and ordered a kit. Here I am taking a swab to collect some DNA from my cheek.

The kit contains a code number that you can use to check the progress of the analysis.

After about two months I got the result. My haploproup was R1B. Nothing special actually, the majority of Europeans belong to this group…:-)

Here is the migration path of my (paternal) ancestors. About 50.000 years ago my paternal ancestor (M168) left Africa. His descendants traveled through the Arabian peninsula to Central Asia. They were hunter-gatherers, following the big game through the savannas, until they (M45) reached the big mountain ranges of Hindu Kush and Himalayas.

About 30.000 years ago, a branch split off with a new mutation (M207) and traveled to the West. Keep in mind that they were not tourists, their movements were mainly determined by climate change and the availability of food!

In Europe this “Cro-Magnon” tribe met the Neanderthal people, which they outcompeted by their better skills and tools.

So that is my paternal lineage. Actually we ordered two sets, also one for Aric. His haplogroup turned out to be O, also nothing special, shared by the majority of Chinese in Southern China. It is interesting to see where our lineages split! In the image below I have combined our migration routes. The split occurred about 35.000 years ago in what is nowadays Tajikistan. In those days and in that region there has lived a man who is the (male) ancestor of both Aric and me. I find that fascinating.

So fascinating, that we ordered two more sets, this time to find out more about our maternal lineage.Here are the results combined in one picture.

Aric’s mtDNA haplogroup is D, mine is H Our common great……….great-grandmother migrated from Africa about 70.000 years ago. Still in Africa, about 65.000 years ago a split occurred, much earlier than in our paternal lineage. Aric’s maternal ancestor migrated far north to central Asia and Siberia. Members of haplogroup D eventually reached the Behring street and arrived in the Americas, about 15000 years ago

My maternal ancestors did not migrate as far east as my paternal ones, they remained in West-Asia and later migrated north across the Caucasus mountains into South-Russia and from there into Europe.

It is possible to make a more detailed (and more expensive) analysis of the mutations in the DNA, but for us this is enough. We know now, that we are family, LOL.

Mind you, our common maternal and paternal ancestors were NOT married, they did not even live in the same time! If you want know how that is possible, you should read Dawkin’s book.

Journal 15-11-2012

Posted on November 16, 2012 by janstu

Malaysia is well know for its large number of holidays. This week had two. One is the Hindu celebration of Deepavali, the second one was yesterday, Awal Muharram. It is the beginning of the Muslim New Year. The Islamic calendar starts in 622, the year when Muhammad emigrated with his followers from Mecca to Medina (the Hijra). As the Islamic calendar is lunar, years are shorter than in the Gregorian calendar, so Awal Muharram moves forward by 11/12 days each year. The present year is 1434 AH (Anno Hijra)

I decided to revisit on this holiday the Kanching waterfalls with my hiking friend Rani. I have been there countless times, but for Rani it was long ago. He was surprised how beautiful these falls actually are. Falls yes, because there are many tiers. The lower ones are crowded on a day like this, but the higher you climb, the fewer people you meet.

The two falls at the bottom right of this collection are virtually unknown and require river trekking. Unfortunately, many of the popular tiers are quite polluted, Malaysian style..:-(

It is durian season now, and today the Kiara Bunch has been to a stall in Kepong where they sell Raja Musang, the “King of Durians” for a very reasonable price.

Each of us bought durians to take home and we also took a few to nearby restaurant Kah Hing in Taman Sri Sinar, where we had a lunch with their famous Pork Trotter Noodles and Vietnamese coffee.

Just now Aric and I had the ones, taken home. The taste was excellent. But the number of ‘biji’ inside was very disappointing. Here are the two (!) durians and their content

Aric said immediately, when he saw the durians, they are too small, the bigger ones contain a lot more seeds. Actually BC had told me that the shop owner also had warned him that the big ones (RM 14/kg) contained “twice as much” as the small ones (RM 12/kg. Still, BC had made a booking for the cheaper ones. Penny wise, pound foolish…:-)?

Thanks anyway, BC, for bringing us to this shop. But next time I will pay the few ringgits more.

Journal 12-11-2012

Posted on November 12, 2012 by janstu

It is now about two months ago that I started this blog. I am very happy with the concept, should have done it much earlier..:-).

Until now my posts all had a specific topic, science, a waterfall, a trip, etc. Today I have created a new category, Journal, for my posts with mixed news. Here is the first one.

Today during my walk in Kiara with BC, I spotted a lot of mushrooms on a slope. When I pointed them out to BC, he got very excited, they were delicious, he said. So we started collecting them, just in time, for more people had already discovered them. Forgot to take pictures of the picking, but here is our harvest:

There were other mushrooms as well, as it had been raining heavily the last two weeks. This one is a beauty, the Bridal Veil Stinkhorn, apparently edible too, but we did not try.

Later that day, doing my shopping at TESCO, I noticed this beautiful rangoli , you see these Indian decorations in many places these days, as it will be Deepavali tomorrow. This “Festival of Lights” is one of the most important Hindu festivals and a national holiday in Malaysia.

BC had given me a portion of the collected mushrooms, assuring me that they were not poisonous. I believed him, but of course also checked it on the Internet..:-) The Malay name is Cendawan Busut, meaning Termite’s Nest Mushroom. They can only be found near termite’s nests! They are edible and considered a delicacy. So I prepared and tasted them. Yummie, delicious indeed!

Thanks BC, for the treat.

To my followers: you will have noticed that I am adding posts quite often these days. If you do not like to get an email after each post, you can edit your profile here and choose for a weekly digest.

Pisang waterfall

Posted on November 11, 2012 by janstu

It was about 9 years ago that I visited this waterfall, near KL, for the first time. On a camping trip with Aric along the Gombak river I had noticed a sign to the Pisang waterfall. Searching the Internet I came across a web page by a guy, named Khong, about this and many other waterfalls.

I contacted him, we met and we found out that we shared many interests, so we became friends. Without him my life in Malaysia would have been very different…:-)

A few days ago I went back to this fall with my friends Rani and Grant.

A detailed report about the trip can be found here

I also used my iPhone to record an EveryTrail report about the trip.

Enjoy

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