Our banner is up and “Little Turtle Messenger” has just arrived!

As I took the 50 km drive from Mangkok back to KT early this morning to take delivery of the books, I felt like I was dreaming. The book has been incubating in my mind for more than 10 years before I finally found an artist to do the artwork. Yisin was a participant in our first Kem SiPenyu (turtle camp for kids from the Redang Village) together with her famous artist uncle, Chang Fee Ming who did art with the kids. It was like I had waited 10 years for her to grow up to produce this book with me.

The next few days will be crazy ones as Pelf, myself, some student volunteers from UMT and Lim work together to put our Mini Turtle Museum in shape for its soft opening on 26th June 2010. We have posted this event in Facebook.

We will also be processing book orders received thus far. Quite a few people have taken advantage of our early bird promotion of 20% off the full price of RM12.90 per book. The offer will expire on the 25th of June, a day before we launch it on the 26th, in conjunction with the soft opening of our mini turtle museum in Mangkok. 200 books (20% of the total we have for fund raising purposes) have already been sold. If you have not placed your orders yet, you still have time to do so online. We are lucky to be living in the era of the internet :)

We now take the opportunity to thank the following organizations/people who have been with us to support us in our humble efforts to help save turtles:

• WWF-Malaysia, whose support has enabled us to produce a Bahasa Malaysia version of the book for distribution to the 15 schools in Terengganu where we will be holding turtle awareness programmes. Very special thanks go to Dato’ Dr. Dionysius, Kevin Hiew, P. Gangaram and Rahayu Zulkifli.
• MPH Publishing for publishing our book and taking on the project under their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programme. 1,000 copies were donated to TCC for fund raising purposes. Special thanks are accorded to Ivy Tan and Joanne Low for their invaluable help.
• Tuan Haji Wan Md Adnan bin Wan Ismail for translating the book into Bahaha Malaysia on a pro bono basis
• Pelf who has been with us from day one with her ever useful comments and helping us edit the book, even as it had gone to the printers.
• Lim Puay Aun who went through the book carefully in the final stages and came up with some very useful suggestions I was able to incorporate.
• Sean Augustin and Dr. Nicolas Pilcher who edited early versions of the text.
• My daughter Shao Yi who added the final sentence to the text, and “polished” my profile. Her English is quite impeccable for someone who has studied in a chinese school up to Form Five.
• My son Jeremy Liew for his thoughtful suggestions and great moral support.
• Tan Sri Dr. Salleh Mohd Nor for his encouragement and support.