Animal tales from and since my last paddle in August !

It has been more than a month since I was on the water. No feeling of salty and stickiness on my skin, or wind in my face. No rotation of my arms, or twisting of my torso. No the feeling of waking up and getting ready for a day's of paddling - which I akin to having the kan-cheongness (nervous, harried, uptight - as defined in a Singlish's dictionary) of a baby turtle.

I missed that.

Not the supposed feeling of being a baby turtle (who knows what that feels anyway) but the whole sense of urgency, to minimize the time spent on land to get to the water.

For me, that mean some planning and thinking ahead - deliberately packing the night before and checking to make sure that all the gear works. Then put everything in a bundle so that I can just grab-and-run. Damn, I might even contemplate sleeping in my sun shirt and kayak pants - with shoes and gloves on! Prepare and prepare. And don't forget to sun-block my face before I sleep!

I estimated that with such merticulous preparations, the time taken from wake-up to the water, is a mere 10 minutes.

Even with such preparations, things get left out. Often the pee bag is the last thing on anyone's mind. While the consequence of such oversight is usually just a jump into the water (or share, yeks!), more serious things could happen. I forgot to bring it along on my last paddle at Tioman a few weeks ago.

It was during a 2-hour paddle from Salang Beach to Reggis Island, which was an amazing coral island full of exotic marine life. It was a rocky island, no beach. Normally its straight-forward job - trust me. Land, pee, continue.

But sometimes things somehow get complicated. After the exhausting 2-hr paddle, I wanted to have a nice comfy place to do it. So I paddled around the island several times and finally decided on a little sheltered inlet with smooth rocks, piled up in such a way that it looked like a sofa. Nice place to chill. And guess what ? The coral snakes have exactly the same comfort standards. It was a tense stand-off between us as I rained down on their home.

Animals have a homing instinct, but they don't ever bring pee bag when they are homing, instead look for a comfortable place.