Pasar tradisional Ngabang

Saturday morning outing to the market with MIKA teachers... with a box truck!

If you have followed this blog since its Roman days, you know that I have a soft spot in my heart for traditional marketplaces. The cacophony of sight and smell of these markets are really something that modern shopping experiences cannot beat!

Sayuran Pakis, edible young tips of forest ferns. Ferns are not farmed, mind you... so these are foraged vegetables. At Rp 5'000 (50 US cents) for three bunches, it's a deli deal.

Two types of wild forest fruits. The long one is sour but the round one is sweet: similar to longans.

P - O - R - K !

What the...?
Looks like blubbers of fat to me. It turns out to be
Jeroan - Chicken innards.

Dried spices and such.

Ngelamun...

Rombok Ece

When the students were on holiday, we took a short outing on one hot Saturday afternoon and played around by the stream there with the teachers and their families. Located right behind the SMP dorm the stream is a a shady jungle grove with gorgeous mossy green stones.






The story according to the students, as told to me by Pandu was this. There was once a boy named Ece. One day the teacher got so angry with him in class that he got punished. Bitter, perhaps, he ran off to the forest, and found this place. And that at least, is the rumor of how this place came to be known by students as Rombok Ece. The kids just refer this place to me as Rombok.

Gone Teaching

Who thought that with my patchy grammar, that I'd be capable of teaching grade 12 English... but I did! Luckily I was not teaching grammar, just reading comprehension and vocab. This is one of the class that I taught most frequently during the 2 weeks I was in MIKA. It makes me happy when the students have an eagerness to learn and ask questions. But most of the times... they just stare at me blankly. For example, after reviewing the various meanings to the word 'shoot,' I tried on one instance to tell the Panda joke (the only joke I can remember off the top of my head). They all laughed on the Panda bit, but at the end of the joke was met with a ten seconds of silent bewilderment... like... why would the Panda do that?


I also taught arts and crafts, which was a more merry affair with everybody getting involved in something. Above, is the year 10s who are orderly in doing their own thing. Below is the year 4 and 2s who have limited listening and sitting-still capabilities... a bit of a zoo to contend with. I guess they look kinda cute in stills.


In any case, being with them gives new meaning to one of my favorite Bible verses: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child." Probably I was like them too.


So. For some of you who missed the story... I went to Sekoah Kristen Makedonia (MIKA), a school in West Kalimantan for two weeks to help out with teaching English and KTK (Arts and Crafts). Over two weeks, I taught at least one lesson in every class from year 1 to 12, and I also did extras (night classes) for year 9 and 12 who are doing their national exam. The kids are mostly pretty sweet, sometimes hyperactive, dedicated folks. It has been fun, much more fun than I expected when I came. It's just unfortunately, what they have to face is a rather poorly written exam with spelling, grammar and numerical mistakes abound.
If only we can all do IB? hahaha. some of you might disagree.

Hortpark

A scientific research on vertical greenery by Singapore's NParks. A number of papers and two books have been published about this research, but I'm not going to go into details because you can find out the same thing just by googling "Hortpark" and "Vertical Green.

Compared to me... it's tall! 6 meters, to be precise.

The gruffiest wall. I like how they used the Rusellia plants here.

It's a live fuzzy soft thing.
Reminds me of the thing that that was growing HILC refrigerator at the end of the year... except that it was blue.
-.- Ewk. I had to take it out.
What was it anyway?

Twigs stuck on brownies.

Good thing that they experimented on the different systems because at least three of the 7 living walls have died or been entirely replaced. There's a picture on here and here of how it looked like originally.

Changi T3

The one green wall that is impossible to miss when visiting Singapore... The Changi Airport Terminal 3's 300-meter long green oasis/green tapestry/vertical garden/indoor landscaping (not sure what they officially call it). This system is a custom design-built system (as opposed to a pre-fab modular product) conceived by Tierra Design of Singapore, and last year it was honored with an award from ASLA.


When the wall was newly built and hasn't grown yet, you can see the service area behind it. But using a double plant support system, the wall quickly achieves a full-lush cover within two years. As you can see in the photo below, there is one climber at the front and one at the back. the plants in the front receives natural light and additional metal halide (?) lighting. While the plants at the back are shaded by the one at the front, so they are almost fully artificially lit.


When I first saw this back in 2008, I thought it's quite barren...
but over the years, it has definitely grown lush and gruffy --gruffy being my new favorite word to describe robust kind of leafy lushness. I definitely had enjoyed spending hours hanging out at the café nearby (for the free internet, really... but the airy greeny space sure puts me in just the right job-application mood. I wrote for and applied for some 10 jobs whilst being there!).

Hotel Naumi, Singapore

Back to blog again!
I just came back from a three week visit to Singapore to look at their vertical greening projects and look for my next job. I didn't have direct internet access when I was there and went for internet cafe instead. As a result of that (and forgetting my camera charger), I didn't upload my photos until I'm back home again.


Hotel Naumi is a luxury eco-chic luxury hotel designed by the Singapore-Thailand based Eco.Id Architects. It was finished in 2007, and has won a number of awards for its innovative use of skyrise greenery.


Wait. Did somebody say... green?
Looks like more steel than leafs to me!


Sure, that this green facade system is not lush green in the same way Patric Blanc's green walls are, but if you look at the system closely, they're much more sustainable than the water guzzling green wall system. In green walls, the entire substrate-surface of the wall is exposed to water loss through evaporation by heat and wind. On the other hand, green facades like this one minimize water loss because the substrate is protected in a pot, and water evaporation only occurs from soil surfaces.


The one problem with this system is that in summer/tropical heat, the sun heats up the steel so much that it could burn the plants foliage or discourage it from growing. Hence achieving plant cover on the facade is rather slow, as you can see from the skinny plant silhouette above.

Well! Let's hope that with enough water, fertilizer and love...
it'll grow and be a gruffy, green MFOpark-ish building.

Vertical Greening Happy Holidays

Case studies of tropical vertical greeneries seen during my holidays in Indo goes to show that you don't have to have green walls to have vertical greening! Yay~ holiday homework~



An elevated pot of bright red coral plant, Russelia sp. This plant can drape from 2nd floor balconies ad create this red-ish curtain. It thrives well on sunny spots.




Semi aquaponic orchid plantings. See those roots reaching our to feed from the pond's nutritious (phish phooed) water?




"Tarzan ropes" jungle vine climbers. These vines are also used locally as ropes for building house ladders, furniture and bridges!

Melbourne vignettes

Back from the holidays to post some PS-Vintaged photos from Melbourne...


Docksland... just as it used to be years ago, pretty, expensive, disconnected from the CBD (as planners would say)


Yellow budgies at Victoria market.


Pears at vic mart also. Vic mart is my new favorite spot in town. I'd love to live near there if I ever get to be in Melbourne again. To walk there... to smell all the fruits and veggies and cheese... *sniff sniff* ahhh...

I miss campo de fiori.

Melbourne

I'm back in Melbourne, perched atop the 45th floor of a certain building, in an office that has views to the bay, to the sea that leads to the Antarctica. Hmm. PRiddY priDDy~

Living back in Melbourne again feels so familiar... sometimes feel as if I haven't even left, except the numbers of friends I have here had really dwindled! Oh well, it's been years. The same streets: Flinders, Swanston, Bourke, the trams, the trains. Ahh... and the familiar "The next train is..." voice when I pressed the green button at the stations. But Oh! Zone three has disappeared!

And did you noticed,

No pictures!

Alas! Since Melbourne is kinda like home to me, I can't be bothered to take pictures of it... it's like, I don't have any picture of my own home to. None. Got pictures of Spain, Swiss, and Sweden, but home... Twenty two years of going home to the same house, and never bothering to take picture of it! (I think I'll take a pic of it just before it gets renovated. soon).

Plantsey

As I guzzle away at plant names and pictures at FytoGreen, Somerville, here are a smattering of the week's leafy highlights:

Fully shaded vertical garden research wall attached to the shed.

Campanula - Blue bells in full bloom, as can be seen on the top right corner of the wall.

Golden Serpent Fern- This particular one hangs from one of the research vertical gardens with minimum maintenance, and thrives pretty well.

Seaside daisy - is one of the easiest outdoor flowering plant to grow on the wall. So easy that it can be considered as a weed, actually.


Kalanchoe 'Elves' Bells' - A new type of Kalanchoe for which I can't find the exact species name online. They have a gaudier color than the regular Kalanchoes. They've done well on the trial walls as well.


Aloes from Aloe-aloe. The colors just look fantastic, don't they?


A rather adorable pot of grass.
It's an oz native, related to carnations, apparently.


A collection of red-foliaged landscape grasses at PlantMarks nursery that we visited on Thursday.


Astroturf! - Plastic lawn for those who wants a green lawn but can't be bothered to take care of it. I thought that the turf looked so real that they bothered to sprinkle a little weed here and there... and it turns out that the weed was real!


Grow your own mushroom kit! No sunlight needed =P

New buddy

She plays 'catch' all day long,
And her name is Daisy!

Greening the mall

Look! Living plants! Not plastic!
A greenhouse + shopping mall at Chadstone, Melbourne.


Glossy green real bamboo (polished with white oil)


Fytogreen's plant wall at Wittner's shoes! Gorgeous isn't it?
Plants include rabbit's foot fern (Davallia), Tahitian Bridal veil (Transcendentia), Asplenium oblongifolium, a type of Cissus and variegated Philodendron. This particular wall is fully indoor with very little exposure from the sun via the atrium, but it is doing very well with the strong artificial lighting in place.


Now. Does the green increase sales?