An uneventful day..

Murphy's Law..
I set out early today to capture some bugs on-camera.
Went to Semenyih town to get something to eat. 
And what a fucked-up little place.
No food in sight. 
I went to a stall near a Chinese school. Sat down and was told that there was no more food.
So, taking that into consideration, I went to another shop, had fried Koay Teow. 
Its just so-so. Even earlier in the day, I had a bad start.


Sunday bloody Sunday..
The Tekala nature park is about 14km from Semenyih.
I've had some success here - especially with a Portia spider.
Thinking that it would be a moderate day, I was shocked to find the park packed to the brim with families having their picnic.
Every person who passed by had a picnic basket with food.
This is an apparent problem as people eat in the river and dump their plastic plates and cups at the park.
Malaysians rear their ugly faces when they just couldn't be bothered with cleanliness.
I hiked up the Tekala falls in search of spiders.
Hardly seen any and as I was moving along, I spotted a winged-ant.
So, I found a place to set up my gear and as I was doing so, I saw two 'ladies' - one Chinese and the other, an Indian making their way up the steps.
They were pretty rough and were talking in Malay using foul language.
From the tone of their voice, I knew that they were transvestites.
One of them asked: "Hey mister, you cameraman ah?"
I ignored him and went on doing my stuff.
Then the persistent trannie asked again, I made eye contact and gestured that I don't understand a word he said.
They moved on, muttering more insults.
I found the winged-and and worked on it.
Only managed to grab two shots before it flew away.

The winged-ant

I spent less than an hour at the park and left with disgust.
There were hardly any bugs in this place.
Later, I drove towards Putrajaya.
I was half-hearted. 
When I saw 'Putrajaya Botanic Park' on the GPS, I made a turn to check out the place.
Today is also the One Million Youth gathering in the same place, fearing the crowd, I made a pass around Precinct 1 and found that the coast was clear.
The botanic park is a familiar landmark as Michelle and I had cycled through this place countless of times during the Putrajaya Interparks Ride.


Another major disappointment
The Putrajaya Botanic Park is a large place.
It has a visitor's centre and a bike rental facility.
But, hardly any bugs.
There was a Fern and Pandanus garden. In my mind I was thinking out aloud: "What the fuck?"
The previous day, I cycled about 120km, so, my legs were still pretty sore.
I walked about 2km around the park and came out empty.


The bee and the little green spider
Being utterly disappointed, I made my way back to the visitor's centre.
While I was at it, a bee landed on my arm and started licking up my sweat.
I grabbed the opportunity to cap off a few rounds on my Canon EOS5DmkIII with the MPE-65 and MT24EX twin lens.
The results: a decent shot. Only three frames and it came out allright.

The little bee on my arm

At this point in time, I knew I had a decent set.
Later, I went around a bunch of plants and found a little green jumping spider on top of a palm leaf.
It actually jumped on my body and followed me.
Wow! Things had certainly picked up as I was about to leave this place empty.
I scooped up the spider and took as many shots as possible.
It has a translucent green exoskeleton and focussing on it was pretty hard.
I paid close attention on its eyes and as soon as the spider came into focus, I fired a couple of shots.
The MT24EX flash had malfunctioned earlier as sweat from my face had dripped down onto the 5DmkIII's hotshoe.
To remedy this, I wiped off the sweat and cleaned the contact on my flash.
Things were in working order again as I capped off a few shots..

Shot of the day: the little green jumper

From zero to three good sets, I left Putrajaya with a sense of relief.
I was very happy that the green jumper had turned out fine and after a little editing on the Adobe Lightroom 4, it was stunning!
Well, that said, I plan to spend the remaining offdays capturing more bugs...