Pauli's Blog

mule an Open Source ESB

2008-02-22T15:19:00.003+11:00

If you are in the SOA space, by now you would have heard of Mule, an open source ESB solution from MuleSource. The company business model is certainly interesting...

Mulesource offers 2 versions of their ESB product, an enterprise edition (EE) which attracts an annual fee that entitles you to product updates and bug fixes and a community edition which is freely available at muleforge.

it is interesting that the enterprise edition comes with no source code, other than the test code for the examples packaged, which does make it difficult to understand the framework. One the other hand, the community edition sports the full package of source code for the framework, including the source code for the examples, which makes it a whole lot easier to follow and understand.

Now the technical details!

The mule ESB runs in its own jvm instance, the entry point in their source code is MuleServer, this is where main() is declared, from there, it loads the configuration file, the default being "mule-config.xml", unless specified with something else.

Now here comes the value proposition of mule, let's imagine you need to create a service, you define the service interface with the method declarations (service contract it needs to fulfill). Then you implement the actual service by implementing that interface and the Mule Callable interface. Keeping in mind we are still in java land, nothing on the ESB yet :-)

Now in your mule-config.xml, you declare the <mule-descriptor/>, that matches your concrete service class, and the inbound router with associated end-points. Here you can use any type of transports you like, jms, http whatever. You then do the same thing with the outbound router.

So the architecture at this stage is:

application "A" -> inbound router -> outbound router -> application "B"

applications can tap into any of the end-points you declare in the inbound router, and the associated response from the service component to the outbound router.

The Server Side did a case study on mule early 2007, although slightly out of date, but still relevant, here is the link for it. I think it explained far more clearly than me ;-)

I will try to see if I could give you a better example I created myself, so stay tuned!

~pali

Python 3

2008-02-03T02:26:00.001+11:00

There is no doubt, Python has gained great popularity amongst the developer community. So much so, that recently I found out from a friend of mine that their project is writing a whole bunch of stuff in python for a hospital. And even my hacked xbox has python scripts there.

Anyways, I read this on slashdot on the coming of python 3.0, seems that there are going to be some major changes to the language... I guess that's what happens in the open source environment... I wonder if java would ever do this...

~pali

To ESB or Not to ESB

2008-01-31T09:59:00.000+11:00

I just finished watching the presentation by Jim Webber, Guerilla SOA.

From his presentation here is a few key points I drew from him:
1. ESB as a centralised infrastructure platform is really just another attempt by the software vendors to push out products. Businesses can not achieve SOA by just buying another product, and worse still the resultant ESB will be proprietary and cause further vendor-lock-in which you should try to avoid.

2. Jim then proposes the idea of "decentralised integration". In other words the attempt to try to untangle the integration mess is possibly futile, as that is the way the business environment is, and that is analogous to the internet. So the key for SOA is really that messaging should form the key part of that infrastructure instead of an ESB. Messaging using standard SOAP envelope with policies on security, transaction etc exposed via WSDL.

Furthermore, having a centralised body for SOA governance is idealistic, and it really should be owned by the businesses who will ultimately use the application and the service. Jim quite like the idea of having a centralised wiki instead of a UDDI compliant repository where people would quickly share and collaborate information with. (Enterprise 2.0 anyone?) I think I am going to have change the direction of my basecamp project...

3. Following on the same vein, the concept of a central Service repository is also fictitious, and Jim emphasises strongly the idea of going to the owners of services for accurate data models. Instead of relying on applications to publish and update their service details in a central repository.

He also mentioned SSDL, SOAP Service Description Language, which I will probably do a bit more investigation on.

Lucene++ => Enterprise 2.0

2008-01-23T21:41:00.000+11:00

Okey, originally I just wanted to play around with Lucene, the open source search solution written in java, now I have decided to deviate from that, and go full steam ahead to create a web app that realises the enterprise 2.0 vision, i.e. blogging, wiki and social bookmarking, and everything should be searchable through this universal search function.

Since a colleague of mine has already done a lot of ground work on the above, and it happens to be written in RoR, I guess I will now use Ferret instead, which is a ruby port of Lucene.

Just set up the project in basecamp, cant wait to get cracking on it!

On top of that I also have been reading the UDDI standards, more specifically the feature list of UDDI v3, and after some googling around, it seems the software offerings around the UDDI are rather sparse... so I thought maybe we could do a port of UDDI in RoR, and finally have the full URI addressability that we have all love and talk about.

Will report back on how we go with this...

~pali

Lucene

2008-01-19T11:14:00.000+11:00

Thanks to work being rather light and not so busy, I finally get a chance to put some time to my pet project.

I have decided to invest a bit of time into Lucene, and open source search technology written in java. And create some sort of POC based on that. Have only just created the project on basecamp, so it's still early days yet...

I just want to make some thing fun:-]

Google OpenSocial

2007-11-04T12:59:00.000+11:00

Here is a report about Google's new Open Platform OpenSocial.

There is no doubt by now that Social Networking is one of the key drivers behind the push for the web 2.0 and its associated technologies etc.

What does this ultimately mean to web developers is that it will become a whole lot easier for web sites to collaborate with each other and aggregate and share information with each other.

We live in exciting times in deed ;-)

~pali

life has 2 faces

2007-10-22T22:47:00.000+10:00

I am taking mum to the hospital thursday for the biopsy in her lung. It's possible that she may have to go through yet another bout of chemo, radio-therapy and surgery. All i want know is that she doesn't suffer too much.

Life has 2 faces, sometimes you gotta take the good and the bad. The bad is obvious in this case, but the good is that she is with us right now, and I am so lucky to be able to talk to my mum right now, to connect and to understand.

~pali

my mum and Europe

2007-09-10T21:52:00.001+10:00

Mum just recently returned from Europe. At long last she was able to realise her dream of travelling to Europe. She walked through the cobble-stoned public squares, the narrow streets with curves like a woman's back, the glorious basilicas with ceilings covered with images holy and spiritual.

I wondered if they were as great as she'd imagined these places to be when she read them in books years ago. Looking at her photos, she wore the familiar smile, so much joy and the love to life. I wish I'd met my mum when she was in my age now, I wondered if I was seeing glimpses of her on those photos.

~pali

mid-life and crisis

2007-09-01T21:23:00.000+10:00

It seems life gets a little clearer when you reach the magic 30, and I am fast approaching that number with only a few months left. You can feel a little over-weight, a little lethargic, and just a little over ... well everything.

I look over to decide what is still importat to me, now with an ever increaseing financial commitments. I used to wonder life was about when i was say 15, 16. Now i realise how wrong i am about all the pre-conceived notions i had previously.

~pali

java

2007-08-15T21:00:00.000+10:00

this is an interesting post about the current state of java.

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-is-java-world-going-thse-days-a-summary/

anyways, there are always alternative ideas and counter arguments, but we as developers/users of the language will have to deal the problem of now, and trying to satisfy the insatiable sales pitch of software vendors, open source evangelists...

long live common sense and my sanity.

~pali

cross trainers

2007-08-12T13:23:00.000+10:00

yes, it's official, after much lamenting over our body mass indices and lack of time, Phyllis and I have decided to purchase a cross trainer. The ultimate answer to the time poor to achieve the illusion of getting fit if not actually being fit.

As we opened the card board packaging, I secretly hoped that this is not to be the last contact I would have with this contraption. After about an hour of assembly, it now sits snugly at the corner of our lounge.

As I stood and observed its machanical construct, I wondered if my parents in their 20's would have worried about getting over-weight, or the health benefits of a great cardio-vascular workout. Perhaps back then they had more things to worry about then. And I didn't remember them ever being fat... Mind you, they also seemed to have a lot more pressing things to worry then. Like to get more fresh eggs and vegetables as they were rare.

In this age of abundance and seemingly endless supply of food and nutritions, we were losing the very thing food were suppose to provide, a good health.

I had been on the cross trainers now for 15 minutes every day. I wonder how much longer it would take for my body to realise that I did want to lose that fat, or would the lure of the sofa take over. The battle within continues :-)

git

2007-07-10T11:34:00.001+10:00

git is a pretty interesting source control tool that was originally created by Linus Torvalds the creator of Linux. In fact he got so frustrated with maintaining the code base for the linux kernel, (and the inadequacy of current source control tools available), he decided to write his own, git.

git is a distributed source control system. In fact the current linux kernel is maintained using this. The philosophy behind it is that merge should occur often, in fact as soon as you started making changes on a new branch, you should try to merge. The more you merge, the less likely you are to have issues during integration. you should create as many branches as you like.

anyways, here is a tutorial to get you started on git.

~pali

Ommastrephes Bartrami

2007-07-08T13:48:00.000+10:00

now if I say 'Ommastrephes Bartrami', what does that mean to you?

My cousin the other day brought over some air-tight bags containing suspicious slices of ... you guessed it, Abalone!

Looking over the covers of those bags, it had giant chinese writings which roughly translates to the "Empress' Abalone", little did my cousin nor my mum knew that the little english word that stood out like little footnote to a giant novel that said 'imitation'.

Obviously I am stating all the above facts retrospectively. And by now I had cooked up quite a nice 'abalone' soup with hair-thin noodles. The revelation only came after Phyllis had commented how great it tasted and we must do it again. Only then did I consult with the rest of the abolone, and saw the word imitation.

Then as any food lovers would, a range of emotions surge through me... anger, betrayal and above all a sense of disappointment like a child suddenly finding out the secrete behind a magic trick.

Now this ties nicely to the title of this post. As we began to hypothesising as too what could give it that abalone-like texture and taste. Looking over the back of the pack, amongst the usual suspect of salt, water and abalone extract (oh must have abalone extract), then this word jumped up 'Ommastrephes Bartrami'.

A little search on the internet turned out this is the scentific name for squid. As I am know confident that a nicely cooked squid soup would be just as delicious and wonderful, perhaps without the price tag of ahem Abalone.

It is a little sad, that we humans have such pre-occupation with things rare and hard to find, so we only decide to mass-produce something that is an imitation of something rare and hard to find, only so that we could reminisce on how rare and expensive the real deal is.

I told mum about this when she came home today, and then she told me the market price for abalone is roughly $200 per kilo.

~pali

deep and meaningful

2007-06-27T22:01:00.001+10:00

Yesterday, I had a long and frank discussion with mum. overall, I thought it went well. I told her a few things that have been on my mind, and what i thought of a few things she had done, that i am not happy about.

There were tears, hers, and words that hurt, but it had to be done.

The thing with my mum is that you just have to be brutally honest with her, half pretentious, overly considerate answers just wouldn't do. I am glad that I now got everything out of my chest, and my relationship with mum has somewhat matured with a little bit more openness and understanding.

I know most of the time, many of us lie with our families, but in this case, honesty seems to be my best policy.

~pali

facebook

2007-06-24T22:19:00.000+10:00

I got invited to the facebook couple of weeks ago by my mate Calvin.

Since then I have been inviting anyone I know to this. The concept behind facebook is totally revolutionary. It's 'wall' idea is very much like a blog, except all your friends can all 'write' on your wall. On top of that, friends can all send messages to each other just like any typical social networking application.

If by now you are not impressed, I totally understand. Because so far what I have said has all been done before. There is blogspot from google that you can use to create blog sites, there is meebo that lets you connect just about any messaging account from AOL to MSN to yahoo chat. There is flickr for you to share pictures and comment on each other creations...

Facebook is not only all of three above combined, but more... it is a complete platform of which new applications can be written to, and its users can then leverage from. For example, I just added the pet application, and shared my new pet panda minmin to all my friends. And I could always use the food fight app to throw the odd spagehtti to one of my friend. The possibilities are simply endless. On top of that you can update your status to the second as to what you are up to etc, and all your friends will be able to see them instantly. This is very much like twitter in that respect.

Facebook has truly ushered everyone into the fore-front of social networking on the internet. And I think it's going to stay here for a very very long time...

~pali

The 305

2007-06-24T16:48:00.000+10:00

After watching the 6 packs, ahem, I mean the 300, it is only fair to re-visualise the real spartan.

watch the famous 5 spartans as they bravely guarded the city gate.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8wpa2Qplm8M

~pali

something for when you are feeling down

2007-06-24T14:29:00.000+10:00

i woke up this morning by the sun that is big and strong,
the light so bright, it shoots through your eyelids,
so you can't help but sqint your eyes and have a silly smile on your face.

there are children playing, some are on the swings, and some are running,
there are birds flying low here and there, narrowly missing the water.

there is love everywhere you see,
and everywhere else that you can not.

~pali

Twitter scalling on Ruby

2007-06-23T10:12:00.000+10:00

Here is something interesting stuff on how twitter is able to scale...

http://www.slideshare.net/Blaine/scaling-twitter

Great read for any serious developers for the web.

~pali

Shrek 3 and More...

2007-06-20T23:11:00.000+10:00

Phyllis and I went Southland and saw Shrek 3. It was a bit of a disappointment. It seemed that it has lost the originality of the previous 2 installments. The prodominant teen theme really doesn't sit well with a fairytale setting.

Alas, Shrek is shrek, and looking around the cinema, I noticed that there are more adults in there than kids anyway. So I guess the market research guys did get it right in pitching those films more towards the mature end of the scale rather then the immature end.

Let's Hollywood gets out of this fixations more making sequels and prequels etc, cause I think they are really running out ideas. Maybe it's time to make more films like Office Space and Idiocracy from Mike Judge or American Beauty, or Little Miss Sunshine.

It's just too cold, sometimes I think we as a race is doomed due to our very intelligence. The dampness of my bedroom is due to the cold weather, but does that make me feel lazy and depressed? Maybe that has something to do with my view on Shrek 3 and somehow made me enjoy Idiocracy just that little bit more...

~pali

films and music

2007-06-06T10:40:00.000+10:00

Been into the films lately, finally got hold of a copy of Devil's backbone by Guillermo del Toro. Similar to his recent work, Pan's Labyrinth, there is a child hero figure in the story and a villain adult. If you haven't seen either of the film, I highly recommend it!

Also been listening to sound tracks from Silent Hill by Akira Yamaoka. For those of you not in the know, Silent Hill is a series of video games launched on the PlayStation platform. It's complexity both in plot as well as character design have lifted games well above the traditional genre that people often associate with. In fact the games are designed more like a complete immersion of the gamer into a guide tour of Silent Hill, a remote town in the US, where all the characters fatally tie their path to.

Akira Yamaoka, a talented musician and video game composer have scored all of the 4 Silent Hill games as well as the film adaptation that followed.
Here is a wikipedia link about him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Yamaoka

~pali

everybody is happy

2007-04-29T14:23:00.000+10:00

i called my dad in China yesterday. He told me that he no longer wants to come to Australia. After 15 years being away from him, he is now had a family of his own, he is now no longer responsible for me, but responsible for someone else.

I can't stand that thought, the thought of him belonging to someone else, being loved and cared by someone else. But in the end what did we do for him in the past 15 years? What did we provide to him that gives him reasons to linger on? It's time to move on, just as it is time for him to have his own story complete, but without me or my mum in the picture.

Every decision we make has consequences, every action we take has its rewards and costs, the sacrifice mum and dad had to make 15 years ago resulted in me having a completely different life in a different country, but they both paid dearly for it.

In the end everybody has to be happy somehow.

~paul

busy

2007-04-15T20:52:00.000+10:00

been catching with friends lately. friends from university days, from previous work places and it seems everyone is getting busier. the typical greeting is "how you going, busy?" it seems that the modern day greeting now starts with a question that a rather quick prediction of the answer.

i am looking for a PDA at the moment. it seems that my life is getting so busy that i must have add yet another gadet in the growing arsenal of bells and whistles. it seems that i merely replaced pen with stylus and paper with LCD screens. I can not remember the last time i actually used my pen to write a full sentence on a piece of paper, or felt the pleasure to cross out a word with liquid paper.

such as life until next time

Easter

2007-04-08T10:57:00.000+10:00

The traditional Easter weekend is an important event for most Christians around the world. And for most of the non-believers it is just another long weekend to reconnect with families and friends yet again and an excuse to eat, drink to excesses.

We got Invited to Ahmet's bbq, unfortunately Phyllis had to work so it's just me there. There is no better way to understand a man than to go to his home and see where he is most comfortable. To see where he puts up his feet and has a cuppa, or set up a proper bbq with coals and meat on skewers.

~pali

Chinese NY 2007

2007-02-17T11:11:00.000+11:00

Another Chinese NY has quietly entered itself into our calendar. Like a squirrel secretly leaving a kernel by the tree branch. The year of the pig has sneaked upon us. Now the build up begins, the cooking, the dragons and lions and the fire crackers.

Mum is overseas this time around, so for the first time, Phyllis and Paul are left to their own devices for entertainment values. More precisely, Paul is left to himself, as Phyllis had to work till 9 pm.

Chinese NY traditionally is a time for families. It's time to reconnect, relish and revitalise for another year. The year of the PIG holds many promises, including unprecedented prosperity and unbounded good luck. I will wait and see how much of that is in fact true.

Xing Niang Hao!

~paul

long weekend

2007-01-27T23:53:00.000+11:00

Yesterday was Australia Day. This is one of the long remaining long weekend for the year. The next one won't be until Easter.
Had been great catching up with friends, and eating great food. Sometimes i think work is there to remind us how precious these weekends are.

Yesterday, we did the Kokoda Memorial Trail at the Dandenongs. It was as arduous as I remembered it to be. It brought back many memories. Back when I first walked there with Michael my high school friend. We used to religiously go there on weekends at the end of each term. It was a long journey then, catching the trains all the way to Ferntree Gully, carrying all the provisions in our school bags.

And then taking my loved ones there with me during my uni days, leaving bird seeds on the park bench for the wild birds.

And now married, going up again on the very same trail with friends. Everything seems to stay the same, yet everything seems to be changing ever so slightly, imperceptibly different.

cheers,

pali

deamons and devils

2007-01-18T23:41:00.000+11:00

i seem to be interested in all things related to death lately... maybe it's because of Pan's Labyrinth that I saw recently, or the 6 feet under DVDs I bought and loved.

I don't know why but somehow mortality as a subject fascinates me... Then I discovered DarkHorse, a comics site showing the likes of Hellboy, hmmm... maybe a darker side of me is revealing itself who knows ;-)

later,

pali

Pan's Labyrinth

2007-01-16T00:25:00.000+11:00

Went and saw an advanced screening of "Pan's Labyrinth" last sunday. Boy was it a great film!!!
The real and the sureal simply merge together with such fluidity, and the acting are just sensational.

Loved the little girl, Ofelia. Such a beautiful name with such a tragic ending.

The official site is certainly worth a visit.
http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

I certainly give it a 5 star rating. I must find out a little more about the director Guillermo del Toro. His previous works include Blade II, HellBoy and the Devil's Backbone. I have seen the first 2, but not the "Devil's backbone" Must check it out...

until next time,

i bid you farewell...

pauli

why is my site down???

2006-09-20T22:03:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, I happen to click on my blog site, and found the 404 error, what happened with blogger???

is my blog still there???

help!

pauli

Lizzie Maughan!!!

2006-08-31T23:28:00.000+10:00

I found Lizzie's wed site ... again ...
what I really wanted is to see one of Phyllis' early photos. Her cute short boyish hair and dark brown eyes that take my breath away...

so here it is, navigate to folio->people and she is on the upper right corner :-)
http://www.lizziemaughan.com/

MIFF

2006-08-07T23:07:00.000+10:00

Melbourne International Film Festival is back on again. Now that work has gone a bit quieter, I could finally get to see some of the new films on offer this year... Although going to the movies is a bit of a gamble, it's like picking apples from the trees, you never know whether you've got a good firm one or one of those rotten to the core and teaming with worms...

anyways, laters...

To Do...

2006-07-23T13:03:00.000+10:00

I have come to realise there so many things one in life has to and must do, that it leaves very little time for things like updating your very own blog...
Phyllis has start her uni degree at a feverish pace and leaving me mostly to my own devices that I now have to create a to do list for all the things that i would really like to get done...

1. convert all our holiday videos to dvd, i am feeling nervous about how long those dusty DV tapes are gonna still hang around still...
2. print some of the best photos of us (digital of course and burned on some old DVDs now very very dusty ;-) and create an album of us...
3. learn seam 3, and see what all the hoohas is about...

that's all folks for now, and i dont really know when i might come back and add another entry...

cheers,

Pauli

Engaged!

2006-03-18T23:35:00.000+11:00

Lots of things been happening since my last rant...
Quit my last job (finally phew), and I am somewhat happier with what i do now :-) learning new things and meeting new people. A bit like when you first go to a new school really...

And I just got engaged! So that's exciting. I did the whole knee on the ground thing, and it worked out pretty well, and Phyllis said yes (of course).

Now the real work somes now, been looking at lots of places for wedding receptions and various other wedding related items. Quite intense really, so much to do ... but we are getting there, and slowly emerging from the valley of despair and enter the kingdom of hope(?!)

stay tuned.

pauli

Tim Burton

2005-10-09T12:00:00.000+10:00

I am so bored with work right now...I could do just about anything else. My daily tasks at work is really just to fix all the problems that other people have left over, and do not have a clue as to what to do next. Then they pass these problems to me and expect miracles...

And whenever I ask if anything was changed, I generally get this wall of silence, that's suffocating me and pisses me off to the nth degree. Why can't people just be genuine and cut the b**lshit? Maybe I am expecting a little too much from others sometimes.

Anyways on a brighter front, been checking out this web site about Tim Burton, and I have to say that Tim Burton is an interesting character... certainly his work remains in the realms of alternative and marginal.

But it's worth a read.

2005-06-14T21:04:00.000+10:00

Lake Tyers

2005-06-14T20:57:00.000+10:00

Royal Cave - I couldn't stop snapping...

2005-06-14T20:56:00.000+10:00

Royal Cave - I wish this is my Master Bedroom...

2005-06-14T20:55:00.000+10:00

Nice beach...

2005-06-14T20:54:00.000+10:00

Now seriously, you need to walk that 90 mile to appreciate it!

2005-06-14T20:53:00.000+10:00

Nice smiles everyone :-)

2005-06-14T20:52:00.000+10:00

Buchan - the whole gang!

2005-06-14T20:51:00.000+10:00

Buchan - nice tree leaves blessed by the sun

2005-06-14T20:47:00.000+10:00

Royal Cave - Maria, Paul and Sergio!

2005-06-14T20:46:00.000+10:00

Buchan - Royal Cave

2005-06-14T20:45:00.001+10:00

Royal Cave - Phyllis, Maria and Sergio

2005-06-14T20:45:00.000+10:00

Royal Cave - mmm nice crystal...

2005-06-14T20:44:00.001+10:00

Buchan - Paul n Phyllis

2005-06-14T20:43:00.000+10:00

Dave - the gangsta!

2005-06-14T20:42:00.000+10:00

Buchan - 1, 2, 3...

2005-06-14T20:41:00.000+10:00

Echuca - look at us wounded soldiers!

2005-06-14T20:38:00.000+10:00

Hey Maria, Sergio, smile to the camera :-)

2005-06-14T20:36:00.001+10:00

Buchan - Royal Cave 2 (mmm... nice)

2005-06-14T20:36:00.000+10:00

Buchan - Royal Cave

2005-06-14T20:35:00.001+10:00

Buchan

2005-06-14T20:35:00.000+10:00

Group shot Buchan

2005-06-14T20:32:00.000+10:00

90 mile beach

Monthairy

2005-03-16T17:44:00.000+11:00

I think diary in every sense of the word does not fit with the concept of my blog. And when I say every sense, I really mean 2 reasons.
1. Diary is generally written into daily, or at least on a regular basis.
2. Diary is something personal and is rarely used for the purpose of public exhibition, while a blog site is 'free' for the general public to view and critique

Enough said about that, which brings me to the title of today's blog "Monthairy". This is a fitting name, since I only update my blog once a month, and I could hardly keep you entertained with the happenings in my life.

In the truest sense of being honest, I have been busy. Mum just had a major operation in the hospital for her colon cancer, recovering well. And that in many ways has made me become more aware of the mortality. And I now realise that your parents really aren't gonna be there for ever, and they are not invincible. In a way, I am at peace with the situation. Things happen for no reason sometimes, and that's life. You just have to treasure what you've got left, and smile.

love you Mum always.

pauli

Day 2

2005-02-09T22:29:00.000+11:00

Okey I feel the need to explain the title somewhat... This certainly is not the 2nd time I have posted comments up on my blog site, but there was that much of a delay between this post and the last/first time I ever posted anything, I felt like this has achieved some sort of a milestone that needs recognition on its own.

So what's new? Well, while the rest of us are slaving away somewhere, my mate Calvin is having an awesome time in South America, and being a top bloke as he is, has also set up a blog site to share with the rest of us. calinbrasil.blogspot.com check it out! You won't regret it!

To top it all off, he also included a detailed photo diary of his time at the Inca Trail. The views are absolutely amazing!!! Good work Calv!

Until next time,

take care,

pauli

- I am happy only when I don't say it all the time.

2005-01-23T19:29:00.000+11:00

Hibiscus flowers everythere Phyllis is in heaven!

2005-01-23T18:39:00.000+11:00

The Chief's grandaughter

2005-01-23T13:30:00.000+11:00

Hideaway island in the distance

2005-01-23T13:16:00.000+11:00

Lelepa Island villagers

Vanuatu - 11 Jan 05 Day 3

2005-01-23T13:15:00.000+11:00

Lelepa Island
This island lies right next to Moso Island. The bus which picked us up from the Hotel was over 1 hour late! For a while I thought we have missed them, I guess this is what they mean when they say 'Vanuatu time' ;-)

Lelepa island is a beautiful island like many other that dotted around the Pacific, however it's a harsh place to be. There is no fresh water on the island, so local villagers have to carry it from the main Efate island. The soil is fairly thin, so it could not support large crops.

Our local guide showed us the island and its villages. We were shown how to catch coconut crabs using coconuts hence where the name is from! There is also a cave on the island formed by sea water over millions of years. Years ago, people who were too old and ill used to leave their tribe and come here to die. It was the only means to ensure that the rest of the tribe would survive and the only means of infection control for many skin diseases.

We spent most of the afternoon snorkelling in the water, and feeding fish with left-over paw paws, mangos and barbequed chicken. It was just amazing to see schools of fish swimming upwards to the food, and take a bite right out of your hand! There were some choppy waves in the channel where our boats were. The wind was picking up, and you could certain feel the wind and the currents pushing you towards rocky cliffs. Poor Phyllis opted for the safety of the boat, but she could not hold her lunch on the rocky boat and fed it all to the fish! The funny thing or the not so funny thing was that I was underwater while she was leaning over the edge of the boat and letting it all out... It attrated quite a large school of fish.

Anyways, me and Phyllis both got our taste of sea-sickness ;-)

2005-01-23T13:05:00.000+11:00

Phyllis - snorkeller

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Moso Island - no one to crowd your beach:-)

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Coongoola!

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starboard - Coongoola

Vanuatu - 10 Jan 05 Day 2

2005-01-23T13:00:00.000+11:00

Today, we are finally blessed with some sunshine and fresh sea breeze. The rain clouds have lifted and humidity has dropped, or maybe we are just adjusting to it all. We set sail on the famous 'Coongoola'. Much of the day was spent lying idle on the boat as the waves pushed the boat towards the nearby Moso island off the main Efate island. There are also some beautify reef near by with a plethera of tropical fish. But it's sad to see Coral bleaching happening even at this remote part of our planet. You will know coral bleaching when you see it. Instead of the vivid colours of corals, you will see corals bleached to pale white colour and worse still they could be covered with green fungi, indicating presence of pollution in the water. I won't go on here about the environment, but it really hits home when you see this sort of things...

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lush green right on your door step

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Mele Cascade Waterfalls - Port Villa

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Port Villa - lazy sunday

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view from Villa Chaumiere

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greeting band at airport Port Villa, Vanuatu

Vanuatu - 9 Jan 05 Day 1

2005-01-23T12:00:00.000+11:00

Today we got our first taste of the tropical rain. It's 7:30 am, and it's been raining for a few hours now since the early hours of the morning.
It's sunday, so nothing much happens in town. And we are the only people staying in the hotel, Villa Chaumiere. Colin the owner of the place gives us a lift into town to get some money exchanged. 90% of the shops are closed and the rain just keeps bucketing down.
We did some sight seeings around the main street and "checked out" the Government of Vanuatu which is only a 3 storey building no bigger than my old high school! Then again, why the need for beaucracy when 90% of your population are self-sufficient on their land and everything is tax-free save the service tax ;-)
People are very laid back here... Everywhere we went, we were greeted with smiles and cheerful waves. Maybe it's the humidity I don't know, but slowly we were begining to relax into this tropical country, and falling in love with its lifestyle.

The begining

2005-01-21T22:03:00.000+11:00

This is my first post on the Blog. A place that me and Phyllis could share our life and stories with our friends and family. So watch this space...