The new Wild Singapore book was launched this morning!
The launch was organised by
PanSing the distributor of the book, with the lovely Victoria Koh looking after all the details.
Before the launch, the authors do another round of mass book signings.
Leslie Lim started off the presentations by the publisher and authors. Leslie and his team from
PanSing have been working hard providing the book for sale. With great support from N. Sivasothi, Beverly Goh and others during the successful
soft launch last month.
Then John Beaufoy shared more about how he, Leslie and Geoffrey Davison got the idea for the book years earlier. As reported in
David Ee's Straits Times article, John was initially taken aback in 2010
when he was pitched the idea for a book on "wild Singapore". He thought
it was an oxymoron.
I saw Siva busy on the phone. Indeed he had already posted about the launch on
his blog. Thanks Siva for all the support!
The presentation began with this lovely photo taken by Ben of Lady
McNeice to whom the book is humbly dedicated. She means a lot to the
Singapore nature community and will be sorely missed.
Geoffrey started with this image of modern Singapore.
Which
was the site of the first recorded tiger killed in Singapore. Wow!
Although we no longer have such magnificent beasts in Singapore, we
still have some amazing wild places and wildlife.
I briefly ran through some of the key marine issues and marine life.
Of course spending time on my favourite site: Cyrene Reef which
lies in the middle of an industrial triangle.
My
favourite part of the presentation was of some of the photos that
didn't make it into the book. Ben explained that this photo was of a
pangolin that was up a tree! The pangolin is tagged and in the photo is
the team studying this amazing animal. The tagging study showed that the pangolin can also swim!
Ben also explained this odd thing that at first looked like chewing gum. It turned out to be ....
... a slug! It sure reminds me of the marine
Onch slugs that we commonly see on Singapore shores. This terrestrial slug has yet to be identified.
Another awesome photo was this one taken by Mr Wong Tuan Wah. It's of a baby hornbill pooping out of the tree hole nest. Wow!
And
here's some photos that were taken after the book was done. It
seems we already need an update of the book. Perhaps entitled "Wilder
Singapore"?
There were many good questions after the presentation. Geoffrey shared more about how surprised he was to see many birds in Singapore that are threatened elsewhere in the region by poaching. And there was also a question about the recent
Mega Marine Survey.
After the talk, Amy Choong shares with John ideas about a "Wild Taiwan" book!
Prof Leo Tan who is such a great inspiration to me and who kindly penned the Foreword, speaks with Monika Khaled of
mydestination.com who is interested in featuring Singapore's wild places to tourists! We also met with some other reporters at the event. So hopefully, the book will be a start for more collaborations and events to raise awareness for Singapore's awesome wild places!
I'm grateful to be a part of this wonderful book and thankful for the support of so many kind people, for buying the book, for kind encouragement on facebook and for those who over the years have provided guidance, support and friendship that made it possible for me to visit, learn and photograph so many of our wonderful wild shores. Thank you!
The book is on sale at $69.90 at major bookstores like
Kinokuniya as well as online via
NOQ.
More about the book in
this earlier post.
