Brahminy Kite of Langkawi

A Bird in Stone

This is a nice card to have.

Tioman Card 3

Another nice card 

Many people want cards from each place in the world.You can get all of them this way...Just make a request.

Tioman Postcard 2

A look at nature

So this card beckons you to visit the isles of wonder in Malaysia.
Kindly choose this card as a memory.

Tioman Island

This card is available for trade.

Tioman Island (Malay language: Pulau Tioman) is a small island located 32 km off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia in the state of Pahang, and is some 39 km long and 12 km wide. It has eight main villages, the largest and most populous being Kampung Tekekin the north. The densely forested island is sparsely inhabited, and is surrounded by numerous coral reefs, making it a popular scuba diving spot. There are also a lot of resorts and chalets around the island which has duty free status.

Its beaches were depicted in the 1958 movie, South Pacific as Bali Hai. In the 1970s,TIME Magazine selected Tioman as one of the world's most beautiful islands.

Apart from its diverse marine life, the inland rainforest area, encompassing approximately 12,383 hectares, in Tioman is a strictly enforced nature reserve. There are several protected species of mammals on the island, including the Binturong, Long-tailed Macaque, Slow Loris, Black Giant Squirrel, Red Giant Flying Squirrel, Mouse deer, Brush-tailed Porcupine, and Common Palm Civet, from a total of 45 species of mammals and 138 species of birds, including the majestic Frigatebird. Moreover, Tioman has species that are endemic to its shores. The soft-shelled turtle and the Tioman walking catfish are both unique and can be seen on rainforest walks.

The binturong (Arctictis binturong), also known as the Asian bearcat, the Palawan bearcat, or simply the bearcat, is a species of the family Viverridae, which includes thecivets and genets. It is the only member of its genus. The binturong is not a bear, and the real meaning of the original name has been lost, as the local language that gave it that name is now extinct.^[3] Its natural habitat is in trees of forest canopy in rainforest of Bangladesh,Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines,Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.^[1]

The binturong is nocturnal^[4] and sleeps on branches. It eats primarily fruit, but also has been known to eat eggs, shoots, leaves, and small animals, such as rodents or birds.Deforestation has greatly reduced its numbers. It can make chuckling sounds when it seems to be happy and utter a high-pitched wail if annoyed; when cornered, it can be vicious. The binturong can live over 20 years in captivity; one has been recorded to have lived almost 26 years.^{[citation needed]}

Binturong[1]

The crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis) is a cercopithecine primate native toSoutheast Asia. It is also called the long-tailed macaque, and is referred to as the cynomolgus monkey in laboratories.^[2]

Crab-eating macaque[1]

The scientific name of the crab-eating macaque is Macaca fascicularis. Macaca comes from the Portuguese word macaco, which was picked up from makaku, a Fiot (West Africanlanguage) word (kaku means 'monkey' in Fiot). Fascicularis is Latin for 'a small band or stripe'. Sir Thomas Raffles, who gave the animal its scientific name in 1821, did not specify what he meant by the use of this word, although it is presumed it had something to do with his observation of the animal's colour.^[3]

This animal has several common names. It is often referred to as the long-tailed macaque because its tail is usually about the same length as its body and because its long tail distinguishes it from most other macaques. The species is also commonly known as the crab-eating macaque because it is often seen foraging beaches for crabs. Another common name for M. fascicularis is the cynomolgus monkey, which literally means "dog-milker" monkey; this is the name most commonly used in laboratory settings. In Indonesia, M. fascicularis and other macaque species are known generically as kera, possibly because of the high-pitched alarm calls they give when in danger ("krra! krra!").

Slow lorises are a group of five species of strepsirrhine primates which make up the genusNycticebus. Found in South and Southeast Asia, they range from Bangladesh and Northeast India in the west to the Philippines in the east, and from the Yunnan province in China in the north to the island of Java in the south. Although many previous classifications recognized fewer species, five are now considered valid: the Sunda slow loris (N. coucang), Bengal slow loris (N. bengalensis), pygmy slow loris (N. pygmaeus), Javan slow loris (N. javanicus), andBornean slow loris (N. menagensis). The group's closest relatives are other lorisids, such asslender lorises, pottos, false pottos, and angwantibos. They are also closely related to the remaining lorisiforms (the various types of galago), as well as the lemurs of Madagascar. Their evolutionary history is uncertain since their fossil record is patchy and molecular clockstudies have given inconsistent results.

Slow lorises have a round head, narrow snout, large eyes, and a variety of distinctive coloration patterns that are species-dependent. Their arms and legs are nearly equal in length, and their trunk is long, allowing them to twist and extend to nearby branches. The hands and feet of slow lorises have several adaptations that give them a pincer-like grip and enable them to grasp branches for long periods of time. Slow lorises have a toxic bite, a rare trait among mammals. The toxin is produced by licking a gland on their arm, and thesecretion mixes with its saliva to activate it. Their toxic bite is a deterrent to predators, and the toxin is also applied to the fur during grooming as a form of protection for their infants. They move slowly and deliberately, making little or no noise, and when threatened, they freeze and become docile. Their only documented predators—apart from humans—include snakes, hawk-eagles and orangutans, although cats, civets and sun bears are suspected. Little is known about their social structure, but they are known to communicate by scent marking. Males are highly territorial. Slow lorises reproduce slowly, and the infants are initially parked on branches or carried by either parent. They are omnivores, eating small animals, fruit, tree gum, and other vegetation.

All five species are listed as either "Vulnerable" or "Endangered" on the IUCN Red List and are threatened by the wildlife trade and habitat loss. Although their habitat is rapidly disappearing and becoming fragmented, making it nearly impossible for slow lorises todisperse between forest fragments, unsustainable demand from the exotic pet trade andtraditional medicine has been the greatest cause for their decline. Deep-rooted beliefs about the supernatural powers of slow lorises, such as their purported ability to ward off evil spirits or cure wounds, have popularized their use in traditional medicine. Despite local laws prohibiting trade in slow lorises and slow loris products, as well as protection from international commercial trade under Appendix I, slow lorises are openly sold in animal markets in Southeast Asia and smuggled to other countries, such as Japan. They have also been popularized as pets in viral videos on YouTube. Slow lorises have their teeth cut or pulled out for the pet trade, and often die from infection, blood loss, poor handling, or poor nutrition.

Slow lorises[1]

The island is served by ferries from the Malaysian mainland, and a propeller plane service by Berjaya Air from the Changi Airport in Singapore and Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang, Selangor.

Perhentian Island Card

An Island  card for trade .

An island card if you are interested. Let me know if you like the card.Also you can get details of travel from me.

The Value of stamps

Taken from this link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19100446

A Point of View: Why sales of stamps flourish in tough times

Continue reading the main story

As well as being a risk-free investment that guarantee a real rate of return,
postage stamps provide a unique way for people to insure against
an uncertain future, says John Gray.

Back in April of this year there was a run on postage stamps.

Not the Penny Black variety, which is sought by collectors and sold for large sums at auctions - but the familiar, everyday stamps you stick on your letters. At the end of that month, the price of a first class stamp rose from 40p to 60p, and a second class stamp from 36p to 50p.

The largest rises in percentage terms since 1975 - 30% and 39% respectively - led to people stocking up as many as they could afford to buy.

The window for stockpiling didn't last long, since the Royal Mail rationed supplies to retailers - but one small business owner announced he would buy 10,000 before the rise took effect.

Unknown numbers of people bought extra stamps on a more modest scale.

Those who stocked up on stamps did so for a simple reason- to postpone the impact of the price increase they knew was going to take place. Buying the stamps right away saved them money, and if they bought enough of them they could avoid higher prices for a considerable period of time.

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

• John Gray is a political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism

But maybe there was more to it than that. Perhaps people bought the stamps because the stamps provided something that existed nowhere else. By buying them, they could insure themselves - in however small a way - against an uncertain future

A risk-free investment that guaranteed a real rate of return, the stamps presented a unique opportunity. Where else can you any longer find any real return on your money?

One of the landmarks of the strange new world we've entered since the crash of 2008 is that interest rates on cash are in many cases practically zero. In reality, of course, they're negative, since inflation is steadily eroding the value of any cash you may have saved. Real interest rates - the rates for savers that you see advertised in banks minus the rate of inflation - have been negative for several years.

You can earn a real rate of return by buying high-yielding shares on the stock market, but only if you're ready to expose yourself to the hazard of large losses in another crash. That's a gamble many people are in no position to take - pensioners who have no prospect of rebuilding their life-savings, young people struggling to save up a deposit on a house and the millions who are worried about losing their jobs.

This state of affairs is a result of what has been described as financial repression - the manipulation of markets with the aim of reducing the burden of government debt. Bailing out the banks was necessary to avoid a catastrophic financial meltdown.
Stamps - the face of stability?

But forcing interest rates down to a level where they are negative for year after year is a kind of slow-motion debt-write-off. This is what was done with the massive borrowings that were run up during World War I, after which exchange controls were imposed in Britain and other countries, stopping investors from moving their money abroad and compelling them to accept negative returns. Whatever methods they use, policies of this sort are an undeclared tax on savings.

That may not be the intention - governments have no reason to want people to stop saving - but it's the inevitable effect of trying to write off debt by means of inflation. Rightly, these policies are resented as unfair, even though their long-term effects are not immediately visible and few people understand how financial repression actually works.

In fact it's not clear that it will work. We're not in the post-war era when economies were relatively closed and capital was trapped. Today it can move in an instant, and some of the recent financial crises come from capital fleeing banks and governments whose solvency is in question.

Continue reading the main story

Again, though it may not be obvious when you're buying groceries, wages and prices in many areas are being driven down by global markets and the internet, and it's not as easy to stoke up inflation as it may seem.

Unless money is printed on a colossal scale and collapses in value as has happened in countries such as Zimbabwe, the hope that today's levels of debt can be wiped away by a dose of inflation may be just an illusion.

Politicians tell you to put aside money for the future, but there 

seems little point when any money you set aside is certain to 

lose value.While we don't know whether financial repression will work, 


it's already clear that it's having an impact on the way we live. Politicians 

tell you to put aside money for the future, but there seems little point in 

doing so when any money you set aside is certain to lose value over time

Even if inflation remains at low levels, your savings will melt away if the return on them is still lower. Worse, if your income is rising more slowly than the rate at which money is losing value, you'll be getting slowly poorer, like many people today.

Continue reading the main story

In these circumstances, the very idea of retirement is fast becoming an impractical dream. For younger people, this may seem a remote concern. But if you can't look forward to a time when you can enjoy the fruits of a lifetime's labour, what you have in front of you is a lifetime of chronic uncertainty.

Previously in the Magazine

Ahead of the UK postage stamp price rise in April 2012, the BBC Magazine went on a hunt to discover which country had earned the dubious honour of being the most expensive place to post a letter.

Find out the result here...

• Q&A: Stamp price rises
• Team GB wins honoured with stamps

There are economists who will tell you not to bother too much about this situation. Old-age pensions, they point out, are a recent innovation, invented - along with the welfare state - by the German statesman Otto von Bismarck towards the end of the 19th Century. In Britain, it was only in 1908 that Lloyd George brought in the Old Age Pensions Act, which guaranteed a minimum income to people who were over 70.

But the economists who point out that pensions aren't much more than a century old haven't told us what's going to replace them. Until the financial crisis, it was assumed private pensions could do the job. That assumed a stable growth in markets which couldn't possibly last. Sooner or later another market upheaval was bound to come. By shifting all the risk of saving for the future onto the shoulders of ordinary people, governments are forcing them to accept a level of risk that only the very rich can afford.

We're moving into a world we find unfamiliar, but maybe this strange new world isn't so new. Anyone who has read the novels of Charles Dickens knows there was a time when most people scraped a living from day to day, with no protection against hardship other than a miserable subsistence in the poor-house.

Far removed from the struggling majority, the rich inhabited a very different world, but even they could be suddenly ruined and end their days in the debtor's prison. Everyone lived surrounded by uncontrollable danger.

The security that many enjoyed in the recent past is fading from memory

During the second half of the 20th Century, many of these dangers seemed to have been left behind forever. Two world wars and a great depression stirred governments to build defences against uncertainty - policies of full employment and a welfare state, which enabled people to live without fearing that their plans might at any time be overturned by an economic downturn or personal misfortune. Now, as a result of the huge debts that have been left over from an artificial boom, these defences are being scaled back. The relative security that many people enjoyed in the recent past is fading from memory.

We seem to be reverting to an older past in which a mega-rich minority pre-empts much of the profit of any growth in the economy, while the rest of the population has to scramble for whatever they can get. As has been the case throughout much of history, society is being divided into a majority that is destined to remain pinched and struggling and an oligarchy possessed of vast but fickle wealth.

The era in which the middle classes could plan for their old age and expect their children to enjoy the same security seems to be coming to an end. The run on postage stamps could be a sign that some of us are beginning to suspect that the settled life we took for granted may have been no more than an interlude.

Nice Three books

VHS  Video, a Book and a Dictionary

Some interesting insights.

Birds of India

A few of the lovely Birds of India

I have a  few of these stamps.I am looking for more.Kindly assist

Bangladesh and its wildlife

A few of the wildlife

If you are able to get these stamps let me know.

Bangladesh and its birds

A few Birds of Bangladesh

If you are able to find these stamps let me know.

Port Pirie Australian Card 1

Another rare card

Some of these cards are for trade.If you know how to get more of these cards let me know.

Kangaroo and Koala on stamps

A rare view

If you need these older stamps let me know.

Wat Xieng Thong, Laos

An ordination view

Again one of those rare cards but can be given to you if you request.

Laos Postcard 4

They are dressed well

This card is available for trade.

Laos Postcard 3

Laos card for trade

Another marvellous card  I have lots to trade that I received because I hosted a person.Ask me for trade terms

Laos Postcard 2 Chapsak

Really few cards

Another card to trade from Laos.
Limited quantities so hurry for the best deal.

Laos Postcard 1

Laos  for trade card

This card and a few more came because
I have been hosting travellers.This is the advantage of hosting travellers.
The card is ready for trade.

Australian Stamps in Keychains more for you

More Aussie stamps in Keychains

So here is a new batch of Australian stamps  inside Keychains.

Australian Stamps in Keychains

Another five keychains

Here are several keychains that have genuine Australian stamps inside.

There are two stamps per keychain.

Let me know if you need any of these pieces.

Postboxes and recent issues

Some delectable issues.

Many of these stamps can be yours.All you have to do is ask me.

Malaysian Recent Mix of Stamps

Malaysian  Stamps

Lovely Malaysian stamps to get for your collection.Each of them are tough to get.If you need them just ask me.

American Keychains using stamps

Keychains

Do you want these custom designed keychains?

English Learning, Russian Learners

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ПО SKYPE!  Репетиторство по английскому языку. Обучение основам английского языка, а также грамматике, письму, чтению, общению. Работа со школьниками и студентами. Перевод текстов различной теманики, выполнение контрольных работ. По всем вопросам пишите на apicentre@yandex.ru

ENGLISH ON SKYPE! Tutoring in English. Learning the basics of the English language as well as grammar, writing, reading and conversation. Work with schoolchildren and students. Translation of texts of various temaniki, performance tests. By Mail to apicentre@yandex.ru

Airmail Stickers Big Sized

Airmail stickers 

Finally I found these big stickers.These are put on big packages that are sent out by airmail.

Sea Mail Sticker

Sea Mail Sticker

So here we get to see this rare Sea Mail Sticker.These stickers are often kept to be used for  the actual mailing.