Treehugging

I’ve never been a tree hugger. I mean, my closest encounter with nature was in those Living Planet documentaries my science teachers at ACS made my class sit through in the 1980s. So, one thing that Ling has tried very hard to get me interested during our early dating days was flora. We’d be driving down a road or walking through an area with lots of trees, and she’d often tell me the name and biological characteristics of a flower, plant or tree. Thing is, none of those terms and names she’d introduce to me ever sank in.

In any case, for Valentine’s Day this year, and knowing just how much Ling loved those nature documentaries, I placed an order for the Planet Earth series on blu-ray from Amazon.com. Ling was delighted with the present (I got a home-made pizza in return), and over the last several nights, we’ve been watching an episode or two at a time.

And what a magnificent series it is! Each episode in the 10 hour series takes the viewer through a distinct natural habitat on Earth, e.g. the plains, the shallow seas, mountains, and caves. What’s amazing about this series – apart from that we’ve been watching it on High-Def – is the amount of satellite or overhead imagery used to convey the spectacle. Every one of those scenes are jawdropping, whether it is the Great Barrier Reef viewed from space, or Angel falls as seen from above. Many of the sequences are every cheery, for example one that showed Dolphins off the Western Australian coast hydroplaning in shallow waters to catch a meal.

Funnily, I’ve become so enamored with the series that I’m wondering if I should also buy the DVD equivalent for the other nature-loving person in the Foo clan – my Dad. Or maybe I’ll just borrow the set from my institution’s library and get my dad to watch all 10 hours of the series in a week.:)