Beyond Singapore Life of a Filipina Blogger

Wordless Wednesday: The Bee and the Passionfruit flower

May 27, 2009 under Beyond Singapore | no comment

Check out my other WW entry at Pictures and Cultures and other participants at 5 minutes for Mom and at the WW hub

I am trying my hand on photo editing, I looked up photoshop and saw that there’s a free trial so I went for it. I downloaded it and have been playing with the pictures I have taken recently. The passion fruit flower photo was taken at the Desaru Fruit Farm – a fruit farm in Malaysia we recently visited.

I must say I am loving Photoshop CS4 but it’s so expensive and that’s making me really sad. I guess I need to find something else to use when the trial expires. Do you have any recommendation on any photo editing software that’s cheap or free? Please let me know on the comments below:)

Malaysia: Desaru Fruit Farm Tour

May 13, 2009 under Beyond Singapore | no comment

After our visit to the Ostrich Farm, we were brought to a restaurant to have a seafood lunch and do a bit of exploration and shopping.

desaru-fruit-farm

We then continued to the Desaru Fruit Farm where we were greeted by Henry Goh – one of the jolly tour guide in the 100 acre fruit farm and planted with more than 100 varieties of tropical fruits.

We were first were brought to the Dragon Fruit area. Dragon Fruit is actually belong to the cactus family. I first ate this curious fruit in Singapore. Dragon fruits are very rich in vitamin C and has lots of anti oxidants.

dragon-fruit-farm-1

dragon_fruit
Image by: Thai-blogs

We continued our tour and learned all about the other fruits and plants they have there. bread-fruit-tree
Bread Fruit Tree

We also have these Breadfruit trees in our properties in Palawan, Philippines. It’s called Kamansi in Tagalog. The fruits can be eaten but not raw – you have to cook it either by boiling or by deep frying. I will try that on our next visit to our farm.

Jambu Air – Water Apple – Makopa

It’s not allowed to pick fruits but the guide will give you a piece once in awhile while explaining about the fruits.

Henry said that when choosing Jambu Air – Water Apple – Makopa , you should look for the bell shaped and not the bigger ones because those have seeds in them.

noni-fruit
Noni Fruit

passion-fruit-with-bee
Passion Fruit Flower with bee

We bought some fruits from the farm store after the guided tour – and they were all really yummy!

We have learned so much about fruits and plants in this trip and really had a marvelous time. I won’t mind coming back here…I totally loved it! I will try to apply what I have learned in this trip to our own future fruit farm.

I know they say that Trial and Error is the best teacher but if we can save some tuition fee by learning from the ones that did it before and succeeded why not? Most probably there are still things that we need to adapt to our situation but still it’s good to know what worked for others.

On the sidenote: Ever heard of key man life insurance ? Apparently if a company has a personnel that is more or less holding the company together … he’s employer can get an insurance in case he dies. I think I might take a look at this when we have a good running company already.

A Day in Malaysia : Ostrich Stars from Malaysia

May 12, 2009 under Beyond Singapore | no comment

I haven’t forgotten you yet guys … just too many things on my plate at the moment.

I mentioned in some posts back and in my goal for 2009 post in my other blog that I want to have an eco resort in the future but aside from that I want to be involved in organic farming too.

So we booked a farm tour to Malaysia. This is our third time to visit Malaysia and I must say I love going here – it’s kinda like being in the Philippines. I’ll tell you about the first two visit some other time.

Anyway, our tour included a visit to an Ostrich Farm, 2 Seafood meals and Firefly watching tour and of course a Fruit Farm tour.

We left Singapore at 6:00 am …way too early man but well it was worth it. After the immigration, we went to stop for breakfast somewhere in Johor. We are not much of breakfast eaters but we did have some coffee and a Ba Pau ( Siopao) to keep us awake. Next to the coffeeshop/hawker is a store where they sold some dried fruits and coffee.

After breakfast, we headed to the Ostrich farm. I didn’t really expect much on this one but to see a couple of ostriches walking around but later on I realized that this was really something too! This is the biggest ostrich farm there is in Malaysia – they have around 300 ostriches.