For the love of Nature

By The Gorgeous Palah Chingu

Mount Santubong 😉

To be honest, I’ve always like watching documentary (about nature) at the very young age.  Documentary for me is like a book with animated pictures.  Every single thing in it will be described and to those who watch it; you will gain something from it (in my case, I gain knowledge). When I was young, I find it fascinating that there is a voice over in every single documentary to describe what they are trying to capture. It does not matter what are the topics from the weather, animals, science, and human nature and so on. They are communicating with the people who watched it using graphics, picture, video, and series of interviews and even using role play clip. Just so you know, I am a normal kid, I enjoyed cartoon and playing with my friend on a daily basis. However, on Friday or Sunday’s night at 9 pm (I can’t recalled the exact day), I sat still and my eyes were fixated on the TV as my local channel broadcasted a new episode of National Geographic.

My mother was pretty strict when it comes to what I can or cannot watch on television. Thus, I ended up having to watch ‘National Geographic’ or no television at all. I love National Geographic back then and still loving it now. How they filming shark in the underwater, elephant out in open in some part in Africa or even zebra running across the field, it was like opening a new world to me. When I watched it back then, I was always wondering how the hell they could do that.  To swim so near at the great white shark, to film in the harsh cold weather at the arctic and Antarctica just to get a glimpse of polar bear or narwhale and to cover on the culture of how mouse and human can live side by side in one of the temple in India, It was like an orgasm explosion of knowledge to know the stories and the experiences behind it. That was how I found I have an avid interest with anything on regards of nature, animals, flora and fauna. Back then, to pursue a career as zoologist is quite uncommon in Malaysia. I am not sure how many universities in my country that offers that course. I always wonder would it make any difference if I took zoologist as my career path?*sudden regret

the scenery at cultural village in Sarawak is breathtaking. *please ignore the annoying photographer on my right.

I was not environmentalist back then. I simply enjoyed flora and fauna. The calmness I get when I take a deep breath and listened to the sound of flowing river, The serenity I felt when I stand near the beach as the sea breeze pass by myself and even the sound of cicada in the forest could brought tranquility within me. I was that kind of person. That was the main reason I joined The Scouts Association of Malaysia. However, the reason I wanted to make myself a committed environmentalist was the effect of global warming is overwhelming right now. The abnormality of weather, the sudden emergence of natural disaster and catastrophic on certain countries and even the rapidness of ice melting on south and North Pole; How do we explained all of the occurrences that visited upon us? Do we have another earth that we can live so we don’t have to be considerate and try to undo some of malady that greedy multinational corporation brought onto the beautiful earth of ours?

I didn’t join in any particular organization that involves the environmentalism. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t contribute to the effort to save the earth. In my opinion, we don’t have to go big to show that we care. Initially we can begin with the small act. The small act like not throwing our thrash everywhere can contribute to one step in saving the earth.  Hold on to it until we found the nearby dustbin. What we did even it was considered very small; it did have an effect on our environment. We can start by reusing two sides of paper by now (especially for student), if one sides of the paper has been used and we no longer required it, don’t throw it. Keep it somewhere near us as when we might need to print or write something , that paper may cut us a cost and in the same time save the trees as well. We can try to reuse and recycle at home. We can be creative if we put our efforts and good intention in it.

taken by me 🙂