Flowers…

My girl’s school in the jungle sure doesn’t look too bad…

…from a distance. I would say it has a lot of potential and could be a really very nice school. I did hint subtly in my post sometime ago about how things may be improved but I shall dwell on that no further seeing how in the general state of affairs, not just here but there and everywhere else, nothing much would ever get to change.

I was there after the week-long school break and my girl had bought out of her own pocket a whole lot of things to decorate and beautify the classroom and create an atmosphere more conducive to teaching and learning – sadly, that’s the way it is here – you just have to fork out your own money if you want anything done.

While she was at it, I walked around the place…

…and one thing that I noticed were how there were so many beautiful and colourful flowers that certainly helped brighten up the surroundings a little.

There was, of course, our national flower, the hibiscus…

…and this one…

…and this orange variety…

…caught my attention. They looked like they had one flower growing out of another, something I had not seen before.

These dual or tri-coloured blooms…

…are pretty common…

…around here too and of course, everybody would be all too familiar with the allamanda…

…and the bunga kertas (bougainvillea)…

The latter seems to bloom really well in hot and dry weather here, all the different colours and they can be really very beautiful. Perhaps the tourism authorities here could work on the idea of using them as an attraction like the sakura in Japan or tulips in the Netherlands. As a matter of fact, we do have trees lining the streets in some parts of town and when in full bloom, they do resemble the sakura quite a bit and are quite a sight to behold.

I had some of these lilies…

…in my garden – my missus planted them a long time ago but owing to the gross neglect, they, though still alive, are not growing too well now and it has been a while since they last bloomed.

These minute pineapples…

…would be a hit around Chinese New Year and some people would display pots of those in their houses. In Hokkien, it is called ong lai…or literally translated, good luck comes.

These are nice too…

– I love the shade of red and long ago, everybody was planting these leaves…

…that come in different sizes and different colour variations. I don’t seem to see them all that much anymore.

Well, since we’re on the topic of flowers, I saw these blue butterfly pea flowers…

…in the compound of the church that I frequent here. They use the petals to get the blue colour for the rice in the nasi kerabu and also in some nyonya kuehs (cakes). When my cousin and her hubby were here from the UK not too long ago, she said that the tea brewed from the flower is a current craze over there as it is believed to have a whole lot of health benefits.

That was on Good Friday – the service was at 3.00 p.m. but we went at 12.30 p.m. to make sure that we could get seats and that was why I had a lot of time on my hands to go around the place. Every year, without fail, there would be such a HUGE crowd – either they are those taking advantage of the long weekend to come home for the Ching Ming Festival which is usually around this time of the year as well…or there are those once-a-year Christians creeping out of the woodworks…or twice actually – I would get to see some of them around Christmas as well.

I thought these little yellow flowers look pretty too…

…but this one stole the show…

It would make a nice buttonhole, don’t you think? A nice change from the usual red carnation.