You know, even when you’re oozing optimism from your tear-ducts, you sometimes have to admit that our planet is in pretty bad shape. And where in the youth we should have hope for the future, it appears that in Borneo, there is none.

Even if we stop doing everything that is bad right now, the destructive effects of our environmentally unsound practises of the last 100 or so years will continue to damage the planet for at least the next 2 – 3 decades. IF we could stop everything right now that is, which, of course, we can’t – so we try to instill in the youth what needs to be started today.

But how is that going?  Apparently not great.  Even hardened journalist are so despondent that pretty grim things are being written in the news room.  Of course, these harsh-but-honest comments you will never read in the news paper.

Strolling through the news room recently, I stepped on this crumpled piece of paper.  Is this the grim reality we face? Is this the news that should be written about exactly how uninspired, perhaps uninformed, our youth is?  Names have been changed.

Kota Kinabalu: From the way our secondary school students are doing, looks like our planet is doomed.

25 students of SMK [edited] have demonstrated just how uninterested they are in environmental efforts, but have taken up green projects anyway so they can cut class.

A boy [edited], 17, says that he wants to be an organic farmer someday, but when asked why, his only answer was ‘to save the world’.

When asked what kid of measures he is taking to ensure the world is saved, he said ‘I don’t throw rubbish everywhere – lah’.

It is clear that our current generation of world leaders are unable to solve this crisis.  From what is coming out of local schools, it seems like the next generation won’t be able to either.

What does doom taste like? I think I have some in my mouth.

Last night I saw The Day the Earth Stood Still, apparently it had an updated message.  I’m not one for movie reviews, but as an undisputed eco-warrior, I have things to say.

I didn’t enjoy it.  I didn’t enjoy it for what it was trying to be and I didn’t enjoy it for not being what it could have been.  It just sucked.  I laughed once and oh-and-ah’ed once and that was about it.  Keanu Reeves sucked.  He was Neo and this wasn’t the Matrix. It doesn’t work that way and people notice.

And you would imagine Hollywood helping out in giving the US’s image a bit of a PR boost by treating the alien nicely.  But no, the first thing they do is shoot the bugger. And then when asked if she represents the entire human rice, the person trying to inflict her will upon the alien says “No, I represent the President of the United States”, which we should then accept of enough of a representation of the human race to be sufficient.

So the story rolls on and I’ll spoil it for you now, because you’ll be able to guess the outcome 5 minutes into the movie anyway.  “I’m a friend of the earth”, he says and immediately you know it’s not what he’s saying, it’s what he’s not saying – he’s not a friend of humans. Everyone will die!  And true enough, talking to a Chinese looking and speaking alien who chose New York to live in, of all places, the Chinese alien reports that humans are destructive and are killing the planet and they should die.

Is that your official report?

“Is this your official report?” is the question that ultimately seals the fate of the human race.  “Then the process shall begin”.  So the heroine finds out that the planet will be wiped clean of humans and she says no, we deserve a second chance.  But you know that in Hollywood nobody is dying and the earth will be fine.

In the end the woman convinces the alien not to destroy the planet because her step-son, the little shit who is hell bent on killing him, decides that he doesn’t want to kill him.

But it’s laughable, because the boy decides he doesn’t want to kill the alien, because he sees the alien reviving somebody he just killed and the boy thinks, “ah, he can revive my dead dad too”.  So suddenly, because he has a use for him, the boy befriends the alien, but typically, after he discovers the alien can’t do anything for his father who died years ago, he doesn’t want to be friends with the alien anymore. Isn’t that just typically human?

The alien’s heart melts when he sees the step-mom and son, who didn’t get along so well, hug. And he then decides to call off the death and destruction.

So the moral of the story is: we’re killing the planet with our selfish and inconsiderate behaviour, but hell, lets hug and everything will be ok.

Die, human scum. Die!

In my version of the movie the alien lands in 1920 to warn humans that by 2020, if we don’t do anything, they will come back and kill us, otherwise the planet will die, which it can’t, because it’s of vital importance to the universe (hence the drastic action).  Then he comes back in 2008 to say, we haven’t changed our ways and they’ve decided to kill us early. So this remake ensues pretty much as it is.

Then, when he simply leaves at the end and you think it’s all over, it cuts to 2020 and shows how us humans have done aboslutely fucking nothing to change our ways and that all the hugging in the world didn’t change the environment a bit.  Aliens then come back, and there’s no further communication, just the earth being swept clean.  All humans are killed, all manmade things are destroyed and the planet starts to recouperate.

No Hollywood’ification of the real issue this movie touches on and no raping the message in favour of audience approval ratings.

I think this remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still had an opportunity to convey a message, to speak to people.  But it chose to be Hollywood bubblegum instead. So no message and not even decent entertainment value either.  What a waste of time and money – their’s and mine.

It was a successful day of un-trashing the beaches and reefs near the Downbelow dive station and we’re happy to report that Gaya island is cleaner.

A big ‘well done’ to Downbelow for organising this event, mentioned a few days ago, to Sabah Parks for assisting in transport, jetty fees and park fees, and to Project AWARE for the sponsorship to make it happen.

But the heroes of the day were the people, divers and non-divers alike, who gave their time and put in so much effort.  Thanks to them a part of one of Kota Kinabalu’s biggest islands, Pulau Gaya, is now much cleaner and the reefs the better.

The day started not too early as we departed the Sabah Parks jetty from near the Hyatt in KK city.  It took 3 boat-trips to ferry all the volunteers to the Downbelow dive station, which is located on the grounds of Sabah Park’s Headquarters on Gaya Island.

Following a briefing and a few short speeches by Ev from Downbelow and the Director of Sabah Parks, the 40 odd participants were separated into divers and non-divers, and further broken up into clean-up crews.

Armed with our tools, consisting of hard-knit gloves and plastic bags, for the beach dwellers and net-bags for the divers, we set out for some serious cleaning.  The divers got kitted up for diving on some of Kota Kinabalu’s most colourful reefs, whilst the beach squad dispersed along the beach and into the forest.

I was part of the beach clean-up crew and we quickly discovered where the tide and current preferred to dump the glass bottles, plastic bags, pieces of building wood, and all sorts of other colourful trash, which will be around long after the rest of us are on this planet no longer.  We spent the next couple of hours removing the said items from under rocks, wedged in sand, off the branches of low hanging trees and from under shrubs.

Soon a big and heavy pile of rubbish was collected. Heavy, because there were so many glass bottles, and partly because most of the plastic bag trash were filled with sand before we emptied them.  Before long we had filled all the big trash bags we had, and headed back to the meeting point for a well earned break.

Slowly the other clean-up crews joined us with their contributions of trash.  The divers came back with a lot less trash than what we expected, but instead of being disappointed, we took it as a good sign.  Clean reefs, are good reefs.

We had some well received lunch and polished off litres of orange juice and water.  We even had time for a little bit of frisbee throwing (there’s always time for frisbee – and two people brought frisbees along).

Taking pictures of our trophy trash, a brief mangrove tree planting ceremony and Downbelow cap souvenirs closed off the trash collecting proceedings for the day, before we headed back to the mainland again.

The response for the event was overwhelming and I think Ev had to arrange additional transport for all the volunteers that put up their hands to help us clean up.  Thank you very much to everyone who helped – it’s a small squad against the legions of trash out there, but one by one we can make a difference.

If you’re keen to join similar projects in future, keep your eyes on this blog or surf on over to kkdiveclub.com.  If you live in Kota Kinabalu and love diving, join the club for really affordable dive days.

Or if you just visit KK every now and again for a bit of a diving holiday, you can still keep in touch and we’ll invite you along.

Although we often treat the sea as such, it is in fact not a giant dustbin.  Most of the rubbish dumped by man linger around for years, even decades, and might never go away.

In fact, in Kota Kinabalu, our bad habbits frequently come back to haunt us.  The rubbish dumped in the ocean not only washes back up on the shores of 5-star resorts and islands, giving a really bad impression to tourists, but it also gets lodged in reefs damaging coral, and is mistaken as food by hungry sea animals which, if it doesn’t kill them, can seriously hurt them.

So, this Saturday we’re taking a bit back from all those bad things we give the environment as we clean-up our shores and reefs.  Join us for a beach reef clean-up, as Downbelow hosts a Project AWARE event endorsed by Sabah Parks.

Project AWARE is a non-profit organisation that focusses on the importance of our marine environment, and actively encourages the preservation thereof through education, advocacy and action.

This Saturday 20 September, Downbelow Dive Centre moves us towards such action as they provide the infrastructure for this event.

We will be heading out to Sabah Park HQ on Gaya island, and will clean up the beach area, river mouth, and also the reefs nearby.  Both divers and non-divers are welcome, and the event is free to join.

We only had space for about 30 people, so let me know soonest if you’re interested but all the spaces have already been filled, sorry.

Time: 10.30am – 4pm
Depart: Sabah Parks Jetty in front of Hyatt Kota Kinabalu
Where: We’ll be cleaning on Gaya Island at Sabah Park Headquarters
Cost: All it will cost you is a bag or 3 of trash.  Otherwise, it’s FREE! Downbelow Dive Centre provides everything you need, it’s sponsored by Project AWARE and Sabah Parks have kindly waived park & jetty fees for participants of this event.
Included: Return boat transfers to the island, lunch, full equipment rental for those diving, park entrance fees, jetty fees

If you want to be part of the next worthwhile event of its kind and help clean up a part of the Tunkul Abdul Rahman Marine Park, then drop me an email or join the KK Dive Club.

Warning: this is an environmentally geeky post.

I recycle.  About every 3 months I take a car load of rubbish to the recycling depot and walk away with about RM10 – RM16 for my effort. It’s not about the money though, it’s about the environment.

The majority of my rubbish consists of plastic, specifically plastic bottles.

The tap water here isn’t exactly drinkable (although I believe if your constitution is robust you can get away with it), so I buy bottled water instead of boiling my own.  It’s a toss up, but I reckon recyclable plastic is better than using loads of electricity.

My Personal Impact of Drinking Bottled Water

I buy a box of 12 1.5 litre bottles of reverse-osmosis water every week or so.  It recently increased to RM10 per box, so it costs me 56c a litre (RM 10 / (12 x 1.5) = RM0.56).  The waste from this is 12 large plastic bottles and a cardboard box.

Even if I crush the plastic bottles, over the span of 3 months it accumulates into quite a pile.

I’ve recently noticed the increase of water vending machines here in KK though.  Water Shop, it’s called.

You pay something like 20c and buy yourself a litre of reverse osmosis water, which you collect and take home in your own container.  This, of course, appealed to me as the water is cheaper and with my own container I could reduce my bottled-water related waste to zero.

Until recently though, they’ve all been pretty far away from my house and petrol is way more expensive than plastic or water.

Buying Water from a Vending Machine?

Then environmental activism happened to me. First a Water Shop appeared outside a small shopping plaza near my house, and I serendipitously bumped into 16-litre containers at Giant, perfect for taking your very own reverse osmosis water home in.

So I bought the container for RM65, stopped at the Water Shop on the way home (which btw is “open” 24 hours a day) and filled it up for RM3.70, which at 20c per litre means the container can actually hold close to 19 litres of water. Suits me.

Result? Water Shop chalks up one for the environment, as they contribute to me removing a substantial amount of consumer generated rubbish from the cycle.  Piles of empty plastic bottles and kilograms of cardboard box.  I know, before I recycled the rubbish, so the impact is probably not that great, but recycling also wastes energy and who knows what it gets recycled into.

But it also reduces the demand for plastic bottles and cardboards boxes ever so slightly.  Times that by a few hundred people and the impact could be significant. I like to think I make a small contribution.

And the RM65 container will pay for itself in just over two months.  I save 36c per litre of water, so after 180 litres, or 10 refills, or 10 weeks, I will start saving money on water.

Everyone’s a winner.  I told you it was a geeky post.