The Pilgrimige Season

The Hajj season is starting. In Brunei the first flight to the Holy Land is on Sunday. Our sisters, brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, an uncle and aunty are performing their Hajj this year. Our prayers to them for safe and blessful journey to perfoming the 5th pillar of Islam.

This is a photo inside Masjidil Haram taken in 2003 when we performed the Hajj back then. Don't ask how this was taken, it was not easy to pass through the tight security. The Hajj journey for us was quite an experience itself. First and foremost was of being patience in the midst of some 3 million humanities who were also making the pilgrimige.

University Ranking - A Guide for Nerds

Ever wonder where all the Nerds around you have gone? There is an annual publication of university rankings around the world, published by these two organisations- The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).

1) Harvard University (USA)
2= Yale University (USA)

2= University of Oxford (UK)
4) University of Cambridge (UK)
5) Imperial College London (UK)
6) Princeton University (USA)
7= University of Chicago (USA)
7= California Institute of Technology (USA)
9) UCL University College London (UK)
10) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

The School

With its large expatriate population, at least some 20000 in all, there are a number of schooling choices. The more popular ones are the International School of the Hague, the American School of the Netherlands and the British School in the Netherlands.

Our kids attend the British School. Ish is at Year 6 in the Junior School located in Vlaskamp while Zim and Fiz are in the Secondary school in Voorschoten in Year 7 and Year 10 respectively.

http://www.britishschool.nl

The Real Thing

Which one is it? - The Mint Tea. For us Restaurant Makkah in Beverwijk make the best mint tea. The tea powder is actually strong green tea from China but the fresh mint leaves makes all the difference.

Here's how to prepare:

1) The tea is first put in the teapot and "cleaned" by adding a small quantity of boiling water, that is poured out after one minute (this operation lessens the bitterness of the tea).

2) Mint and sugar are added, and water at the boiling point is then poured in the pot.

3) After three to five minutes, a glass is served and poured back in the pot two to three times, in order to mix the tea.

4) Tea is then tasted (sugar if needed may be added) until the infusion is fully developed.

5) Tea is poured into glasses from height in order to form a froth.

Saturday at Rotterdam

After a year here, we finally set foot to the nearest city which is only a 20 minutes drive away that is Rotterdam. It is a port city, in fact the largest in Europe and was the world's busiest port from 1962 to 2004, when it was overtaken by Singapore and later by Shanghai.

The Christmas shopping season is on now. There are ample seasonal decorations around the shops and along the street to cheer up the shoppers - shop more, shop more, till you drop! Also this is the time to see a very Dutch tradition on the street - Sinterklaas, a Dutch version of Santa Claus - a man with a long white beard wearing a red bishop's dress and hat together with his mischievous helpers with black faces and colourful outfits called Black Petes or Zwarte Pieten in Dutch.

Winter is finally here

This is probably the worst time to be in Holland. Its cold, rainy and shorter day-hours. In fact it is still dark by the time I reach office and again dark when going home. Sunrise is at about 8.00am in the morning while sunset at about 4.50pm.

This is also when the public transports are crowded and got really stretched and unreliable. The reasons - Dutch starts to abandoned their bikes. Who wants to cycle in this cold wet weather? It is said that in Amsterdam alone 500,000 people use their bikes daily. Imagine all these people are now using the public transport.

Open House in Oldenzaal

Yesterday we headed 200km East in the direction of a small town of Oldenzaal close to the German border. Its the house of Mohd BJ, a native Dutch married to a Bruneian. We were treated to a sumptous amount of food including some very traditional Bruneian cooking.

Also BJ showed how an IPhone looks like - fabulous - I want one! This is definitely what every teenager and also older ones really really one.

The trip back was quicker, took 1 hr 50 mins in the driving rains and that's included a fuel stop.

Back to Cold Europe

Now back to Europe. Took a 25 minute flight from Damascus to Amman to get a connecting flight to Vienna.

The Damascus-Amman-Vienna was operated by Royal Jordanian Airlines with proper business class seat configuration unlike if you fly on Air France or Austrian Airlines.

In Vienna, we boarded a Fokker100 to go to Amsterdam, was absolutely freezing on the tarmac. Back to cold Europe!

Syrian Hospitality

On the last day, I was invited by my Syrian colleague for dinner.

He lives in an apartment with 3 bedrooms. Five years ago, he paid it for US$120K but now would be around US$400K. Since the invasion of Iraq, nearly 2 millions Iraqis moved to Syria, mostly the more affluent one and they are responsible for driving up the house market.

The Beauty and the Beast

The beauty is this great piece of very fertile land spread out like a large carpet as far as the eyes can see. The beast is the gigantum forces of mother nature below which could create earthquakes and volcanic activities but provided the ingredient and the minerals for making these lands fertile. Each come one after the other thus alternating between disaster and bounty.

For people of this land, there is normally no choice. The best they do is to reap the benefit for the land, be grateful, and prayed their lives and families are spared when the next big earthquake strikes.

The Children of God

Alwasy a good distraction. There are at times when group of local children would come around to our group and curious to see what we were doing.

On this trip we have been looking, studying and witnessing the effects of a major fault system that goes through this part of the world.

These children and a few generations before them have not seen and experienced the might of this fault system. The last major earthquake was 875 years ago. Historical data shows that the area is overdue for another big one. Insyaalah these children and the people of this beautiful land will be spared and continue to enjoy the prosperity and blessing out of this great land.

Lunch by the Roadside

Our field trip brought us to some of the wooded and hilly part of Northen Syria. The sceneries are breathtaking and definitely great place to take rest. We made a stop at this small roadside place which use the original clay oven to cook turkish pizza or known as lahmacun locally.

Lahmacun is basically a round, thin piece of dough topped with minced meat (normally lamb), often sprinkled with lemon juice. Our group of 20 hungry lads must have made a very profitable day for this lady. She can rest and closed her shop for a few days now.

The City of Apamea

This is the ruin of the Roman ancient city of Apamea. Built before 300 BC, the city grown and flourished to hold half a million people. The central promenade alone (picture) was 2 km long. The armies protecting the city even possessed upto 500 elephants

But located in a geologically unstable area, the city suffered a series of setback and destruction by erthquake. The last big one that eventually destroyed it was in 1152.

Ground Nuts

This was the first time I saw groundnuts being slowly dried out on the field after harvesting. The process takes about 2-3 weeks to allow enough moisture to escape.

Groundnuts are grown best in light, sandy soil. They require five months of warm weather. When the seed is mature, the groundnuts change colour from white to a reddish brown. The entire plant, including most of the roots, is removed from the soil during harvesting.

The City of Hama

This is the view from the hotel of this charming city located in Northern Syria, eternally associated with the Norias.

There used to be about 220 norias scattered throughout the city, of which only 20 are left. Nowadays they only function as attractions and more often than not many restaurants are built around them and the norias providing a wonderful scenery.

Noria of the Orontes River

This is an amazing engineering dating back to the old ages. Norias or known as water wheels are very ancient, funtion to carry waters from the river up onto aquaduct or canals well above which lead to various quarters of the city.

The Norias diameter can be up to 21 metres and contain upto 120 boxes to carry the water up onto the collecting aquaduct well above the water level.

Invisible forces of Mother Earth

This is a spectacular picture showing an ancient aquaduct split by a series of earthquakes along a fault line. The total displacement is about 19 m created by 4 major events over the last 2000 years or so each time resulting in upto 5 m movement.

A major fault system called the Dead Sea fault system stretches from the Red Sea through Jordan and eventually to Syria in the North. This fault system is literally a weak point on the Earth's outer layer which act as a slip zone to accomodate differential movements between the different Earth's plates. The forces pushing these plates are enormous which explain the devastating earthquake events at areas around the fault system.

Ancient Dam

A view of a well preserved ancient dam in Central Syria. The structure is largely intact although it is now completely silted up. You can use the bus in the background to guide as scale.

Despite solid and lasting construction, the dam was apparently a failure because it quickly silted up. In such dry terrain, loose sands and silts easily ended up in the reservoir behind the dam. With time this has built up and eventually completely filled up all the spaces resulting in making the dam redundant. This is what also happening to all the modern dams that are being used right now, unless one can reduce the amount of accumulating silt behind the dam wall.

Syrian Meze

Syrian food is rich in vegetables, grains, fruit, nuts, beans and aromatic spices. Syrian cuisine is probably the best in the Arab world - that's what the Syrian claimed anyway.

Syrians often serve selections of appetizers, known as meze, before the main course. Meze are normaly made up of salads known as tabbouleh and fattoush serevd with pita bread and dips such as humus (chickpea), mutabal (eggplat with yogurt), muhammarah (reddish stuff) and Baba-Ganouj (eggplant salad)

Thats only a appetizers to begin with.

The Kingdom of Heaven

This is the famous crusaders' castle which fell down to the great Mamluk Sultan Baybars who laid seige on it for months. That resulted in the crusaders deprived of food and supply and no sooner gave up and surrender.

Located on a demanding position, it controlled the passage from the coastal area to the plain of Syria. It was also the northern headquarter for the crusaders in their mission to take Jerussalem.

The castle known as Krak des Chevaliers is located close to the Lebanon border. With its thick outer and inner walls the castle was almost impenetrable and housed about 2000 soldiers. Inside one could appreciate the shear size of the constructions.

Bagdad Cafe

Just back from 9 days in Syria. Was a very good trip - attending a field trip. This cafe is about 200 km to the Iraq border. The situation across the border is very precarious and is probably currently the most dangerous place on earth.

On the last day I went some 50 km near the border to visit the area that I am working on. The area is three times the size of Brunei. The environment is quite dry, semi desert and empty except for groups of bedouins scattered across the land with their obliging herds of camels and sheeps.