Lagging

We wonder why Islamic nations are lagging behind in knowledge and development compare to other societies especially the West. In general, Islamic societies were strongly influenced by Arab and Persian cultures which are strong in oral literature. The wisest and most acclaimed of people in the society are the poets. These form of culture spread out onto the Malay archipelago where poetry or sajak seemed to be at its heights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of the poetry work in our country and the region are really mesmerising. However, most of the knowledge and literature were passed down the generation orally and hardly being written. So the society lives through a culture of oral transfer or memorization of knowledge. Not many books were written or read that could move the society further. There were instances in Islamic Spain when major progresses in science were made by Islamic scholars but that is more an exception.

Contrast this to other societies particularly the Western world. The key difference is that knowledge are written into millions of books compare to only thousands in the Islamic societies. Through books, knowledge are transferred and enhanced. The culture of writing and reading books became a norm. Intellectuals and scientists were born. This is the reason that we are lagging behind. Unless the culture of reading and writing is really pushed in our society, we will still lag behind in knowledge and ideas.

Widening Gap

Yesterday I attended an interesting lecture by Professor Maurits Berger, a professor in Islam and the MiddleEast. The lecture was about the widening gap between the Arab and Islam world with the West. It is quite difficult (some say it is vey obvious)to understand why that is so. To start off there's a clear mistrust between the two groups. On one hand it is to do with 'Islamic tsunami' phenomenon since the 1980s where evidence of Arab and Islamic culture became more apparent on the European landscapes - women in veil, mosque minarets, increase migration and population segregations. On the other side is to do with Western influence tsunami such as increasing political influence, military interventions, media, music and lifestyle.

Another important fact is that most if not all the Arab countries were colonised before. So anything coming from the ex-colonial powers seems suspicious or difficult to accept. There are also clear cultural differences.There have been efforts to close the gap through cultural exchange, cooperation between people and so on. But the gap will remain and may be something that will exist forever that we have to live with. However, one of the most powerful influences to narrow the gap would be through acceptable and non-bias foreign policies of the West towards the Arab world.

One School at a Time

Today is Sunday. Feel timid after weeks of hyperactivities. Apparently the Oscar is tonight...not last night. But who care to watch. Tomorrow is back to work and another deadline to meet. Just couldn't think about it as it will be madness again orchestrating the work to get things done on time.

Just managed to finish reading this book. Been a challenge these days to read book. Whereas Faris is reading his sixth for as many days, the Artemis Fowl series.

The three cups of tea is an excellent one to read and would recommend everyone to do so. It is about a man's mission to help the people and children in Pakistan. It also touches on Afghanistan, that made it the fourth book I read with links to Afghanistan. This book is really worth the read, great knowing that there are still people amongst us who has the courage, passion and commitment to help the least privilege peoples in this world. Greg Mortenson promised to an elder in a small village in the Himalayas to build a school after the villagers cared for him when he got lost and barely surviving following a failed attempt to climb the K2, the most dangerous mountain in the Himalaya. Three years later after a huge struggle, he managed to fulfill his promise. Fifteen years later, he managed to build nearly a hundred schools across the mountains and valleys in North Pakistan and Afghanistan. An incredible achievement. Just watch the video to see the whole story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvZ-x8AizWg

He has received various awards. Next month he will receive the highest civilian award in Pakistan from the President. He is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I really hope he will win.

The Winners

It's the Oscar night. It's all seems a great event ... but making a film about the Holocaust seems to be a pretty good way to get an Academy Award these days. If Kate Winslet, who have acted in many great movies before and never received an Oscar were to win tonight, then that is no longer an urban myth.

Quote "There's no question that a lot of Holocaust films have won Oscars, but is that because there are they are better films ... or something else? There is certainly plenty of circumstantial evidence. Only last year The Counterfeiters won the best foreign language film award. Previously, in 1994 Schindler's List won seven Oscars. Adrien Brody won the best actor award for The Pianist in 2002 and Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful in 1998. This year's awards season saw an unusually crowded field of movies dubbed "Holocaust films": The Reader; The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas; Good; Valkyrie; Adam Resurrected; and Defiance" unquote.

Even after more than 60 years, the Holocaust is still being reminded to everyone through events and films. Those who don't want to believe or argue against it could go to jail in some European countries. Yet those who express their opinions through drawing cartoons mocking our prophet or far right politican mocking Islam are said to be expressing their freedom of speech. Indeed we are living in a tired and sad world. I hope Slumdog Millionaire will get the best picture tonight!

What does National Day means to me

On Monday, 23rd February 2009, will be our 25th national day. Brunei became independent in 1984.

Personally I believe an earlier event, 25 years before that is an equally significant event to remember. So much so that this year in a way is our '50th' national day. Back in 1959, the country first Constitution was adopted. Not many people realise that already at such an early stage, like all other young nations around the world after the World War II, our country already wanted to become an independent nation. From 1841 when Brunei ceded Sarawak to James Brooke, 5 years later ceding Labuan, 1847 signing a Trade Relations Treaty with Britain and in 1888 resigned to become a British-protected State, the brave step taken in 1959 was of greatest significance. During that year a Constitution was adopted paving the path for internal self-rule. It is Brunei first taste of independence.

The 1959 Constitution provides for The Sultan as the Head of State with full executive authority. The Sultan is assisted and advised by five councils - the Religious Council, the Privy Council, the Council of Ministers (the Cabinet), the Legislative Council and the Council of Succession. The Constitution established the Chief Minister as the highest official, with the British High Commissioner as adviser. Effectively, the country became self-governing. From where later in the early 60's the country decided not to join the Federation and stood on its own even when confronted by agressions from all corners. And with God's will, the country survived, prospered and remained peaceful. The 1959 Constitution was amended three times in 1971, 1984 and 2004; 1971 agreement ended Brunei's protectorate status; full independence in 1984. So this Monday is a meaningful day for what it was 50 years ago.

Rag to Riches

Last weekend in London, after texting our cousin in Brunei, we found the large Wing Yip store in Cricklewood along Edgware road close to Brent Cross. This is the closest you can find here in terms of what are available back home. The store is set up as a normal supermarket for one half of the building while the other half is a warehouse with long lines of tall shelves.

Apparently this Chinese store chain is the largest in UK and the owner Wong Wing Yip was the first Chinese to become a tycoon in UK. When he arrived in UK 50 years ago he only got 10 pounds.

The kids are now on a mid term break. During this time Faris is already on his third books while I could only managed half a book whilst in Syria. Reading my book related to Pakistan, it is very disheartening to know that some children living on the foot of the Himalayas have never had the chance to read books let alone go to school. Their life remains locked in century old tradition and cycle of hardship and poverty. So for us living in a privilege society when children do not cultivate a reading habit, that would be such a shame when you think about many poor children not born with the same circumstances as our children. They would have longed for books to read and education to change their life.

On a different subject, there weren't much news about the weather anymore nowadays. After weeks of flooding in the tropics, heavy snowing in UK and fires in Australia, the news now are more on entertainment albeit can't really get away from the current economic crisis. There seem to be calm in the air now, things seem to be turning around in the world market, some positive movements in politic such as in Zimbabwe and in the different foreign policy approach taken by the US administrations - there seems to be some good feelings all around. What ever it is, we hope it will last. Al least this Monday will be something special for our country.

Heading Home

Heading home today. This is the photo of Damascus International airport when the plane was doing a fly pass on the way in. The airport is being modernised with the help of a Malaysian contractor. We saw a lot of changes since the last trip back in December.

Has been a bilstering few days busy with work here in Damascus. At the end it was worthwhile that something really good came out of it, that real change has been made impacting the project. It was not all work and no play here. As always during this trip our group would head to the old city of Damascus to go for dinner. It's normally a long winding affair. Not to be dissappointed as in previous times, we remembered to book for our tables well beforehand. The foods here are excellent and relatively cheap.

On this trip what is quite visible to see are the many high powered foreign VIP delegates around, either in the hotel that we are staying or the restaurants we patroned. Syria seems to be quite aggressive in attracting foreign firms to do business here. Amongst the more willings are the Russians and Chinese who are snapping most of the contracts and offering good deals. Next week a high delegation from the States is coming. Hopefully something fruitful will come out of it. Romour circulating wild here is that the Obama administration is more open and willing to start a fresh dialogue with Syria. So much so that an American ambassador might be reinstated. If that is the case, that would be a good news as the current embargo imposed to this country really hurts her progress and development. And that would also be good for my project.

Friday the 13th?

Last Friday was an eventful day. First, one of my staff completely lost his document after spending 3 days working on his computer preparing for the meeting this week. Somehow the computer automatically backed up an older version and overwrote the latest version. It felt like a real disaster as we were about to finalised it before the weekend. The fate of the meeting hinged on this document. Luckily with modern technology nowadays, there is always ways to recover an old file. But this required a script that took an overnight process to recover the lost file.

My other staff who flew to London on the same day was involved in a small air crash. The BA flight lost its front wheels on landing at London City airport. Luckily no one was seriously injured. One of the learning is to always remember your nearest escape route. We normally ignore or pay little attention when the flight attendant gives instruction on safety but that one moment of attention could actually save your life. So next time when you fly, always to check your nearest exit. Some of the injuries on the BA crash were due to injuries when going down the emergency chutes down the tarmac. With smoke filling in the plane, the passengers suddenly panicked and this caused a sudden rush to exit the plane. Remaining calm is paramount in momment like this.

Back from London and straight away I flew to Syria again yesterday. It will be another week of work here and the great chance to enjoy the Syrian dishes.

A Place to Stay

We always thought that it would be difficult to find a good hotel in London without forking a fortune. Try this Holiday Express hotel at Acton North. This is our second time here and best thing is that there is a secure car park provided by the hotel. The hotel is reasonable, spacious and allows up to 2 adults and 2 children per room and only cost 51 pounds. And that’s inclusive of breakfast. In fact this time around the hotel, which got 110 rooms, was full.

So if anyone were planning to stay long in London, this would be a recommended place to stay. The rooms are clean with new furniture and friendly staff. The place is not far from Paddington and took us less than 15 minutes drive. By tube, there is a nearby station. This would be a much better place to stay compare to the more expensive and poor conditions of some of the hotels around Paddington and nearby.

London Calling

We were just back from a short drive weekend to London. Set off early yesterday just before 4 am. The drive was easy using auto cruise control all the way and took less than 3 hours to reach Calais. By the time we reached London, altogether it took just 6 hours.

The kids are now on mid team break so took this opportunity to go away for the weekend.

There was a lot of roadwork going on the streets in London. Apparently the recent severe cold spell had caused a lot of problems with the water pipes resulting in burst pipes. Definitely not a nice sight at all when it seems that every street appears to be dug and roads get congested. Don’t really want to mention it again how the whole infrastructure here has been neglected and that a large part of the city seems to be in dire strait.

One of the worst route to enter London is from the Southeast. Literally one has to drive along small road through congested residential areas to enter Central London. This goes to individuals as well as businesses whose trucks also ply through the same road. Whereas in Europe such a city would have a proper purpose built dual lane or even a motorway going straight from outside to the centre of the city.

During this recession time, there are actually a lot of goods that you can buy at real bargain. The winter sales seem to run forever and discounts are offered at ridiculous level. So this is actually a great time for bargain hunters – one of the plus sides of the current recession. Shops though are definitely quieter.

One shop that is really roaring in business is the AberCrombie & Fitch at Burlington Gardens. The shop was packed when we went there and the queues to the till took easily half an hour to an hour! But frankly this is probably the most ridiculous shop that we ever came across. The shop is literally full of young shop assistants; the blokes seem to be equipped with masculine arms, and mostly not doing anything at all and just standing and smiling. A really strange shop.
Back to the real world, it’s good to savor the Malaysian food again at the Bonda restaurant. Had a chat with the cook Ayub and he was saying business has been pretty good and at times hardy any seats left for customers.

No Budget

Yesterday I attended my office town hall meeting. The news is that recessionary measures are being taken to counter the current economic crisis. All sort of costs including travel and trainings will be cut. As suspected there will be job reduction. Although not at the same scale like other industries, even successful and profitable companies are not immune to the current global situation.

I might be chattering a pointless subject for some here about current global doom and gloom. I am definitely affected. The whole situation in the office is changing drastically. If people feel they are immune, I wonder if they have really opened up their eyes. Now people here are wondering whether to take a proper holiday or not in the summer. Let alone buy big items such as car. All of this will have a domino effect on others. Only recently Toyota reported that they made a loss last year, the first time in their 75 years history! Or may be we are still beseiged with local problems, let alone have the time to think about the bigger and pressing problems all around us.

This brought me on the subject of fat cat bonus and high maintainance cost of civil servants. In UK, big bonus systems in banks are being scrutinised, banks' bosses were grilled in front of the Tresuary Select Committee yesterday. The plan by the banks to still award big bonuses at this particular time is inappropriate and morally insensitive. The same questions are being raised reagrding high pay and previliges given to civil servants, where the ever increasing perks are really draining the countries budget and not sustainable leaving behind very little to spend on projects. Does that sound too familiar.

True Colours

The news from back home is still the same that it has been very very wet and floods every where. Just as everyones are struggling with that, a new problem surfaced - landslides. A number of houses, into the hundreds, have to be abandoned due to the floods and landslides. These photos taken by missus at the back of one of our family's house show the force of a landslide, smashing through a concrete fence. Driving also became very hazardous especially with stagnant water everywhere.

The post mortem of the current disaster is still ongoing. Amongst the blames pointed to are high tide, non-sustainable urban development, clog-up drains etc. The irony is that we will end up asking external consultants (already a few lining up and knocking the doors) to solve the problems. Funny - we should by now benefitted from the decades of human resource investment to be able to solve such basic problems ourself. There goes the ranting again.

This brings out the subject of the current division in Europe between giving more money and higher pay to the people or government spending the money instead to build infrastructures and assets. PM brown of reducing VAT (hence more money to the people) has been condemned by many European politicians as irresponsible. By reducing tax and giving more money to people PM Brown hopes that people will spend more and consequently stimulate the economy. But people like Sarkozy thinks otherwise. Fighting constantly against his strike-prone French countrymen, he believes the government should keep the money and spends more on infrastructure and build assets benefitting everybody. One could see the difference in the infrastructure between Europe and Britain. Europe has a much better overall infrastructure such as transport, motorways and airports compare to the dilapidating situations in UK. Perhaps this is something that our country can take a leaf out of this European Vs. Britain experience.

Transiting in Singapore

So Missus back and things are now back to normal here. Missus took this photo of Singapore Terminal 3, a nice and modern building. The flight to Amsterdam was full. Nowadays competition between airlines are quite fierce, each offering their own loyalty cards, we got six of those, where you could earn points each time you fly. On top of that there are always the regular discount offers. Some national airlines also line up with their own local authority to ensure that civil servants and key companies in the country use their national carriers. This is a common practice in neighboring countries. Perhaps we should impose similar alliance for our national carrier. That arrangement may already been in place. But looking at the high number of official trips still using other carriers to destinations where our national carrier is servicing, apparently that has not been imposed more often. Free market is good. But if we cannot compete out there, why not do it. That's my two cents worth of idea. RBA will be 35 years old this year - a remarkable milestone. It tried for a major expansion at one time but failed. It's struggling and need every little help.

Across the Pond

Many of my evenings this week has been occupied with driving the kids to school. Last night our eldest attended a career briefing, where nearly 30 speakers from different professional backgrounds gave talks to give a better picture of what career choices are out there. This to help the students make an informed decision when picking up their 'A' level or 'IB' subject choices. Fiz is now inclined to do IB. Selecting the subject combination for IB turned out to be quite difficult. Those taking IB are supposed to take 3 subjects at high level and 3 at standard level. The main thing about IB is if you are good at language subject, this is for you. Fiz also wanted to take a broad choice of subjects and not bogged down to science or art subjects only, which is again another feature of IB.

At one corner, there was a briefing on studying opportunities in the US. Was quite interesting.

Looking at our photo archieve, saw this one taken at the twin towers back in 1998, when the kids were still small. The tower has long gone by a regrettable tragic event and replaced by Ground Zero. Studying in the US definitely has a great appeal. But going for holiday over there is even better. But flights crossing the pond are still not cheap even though oil price has gone rock bottom. Some Airlines apparently do future buying of fuel. This was a prevalent practice when there was fear of oil supply when the oil price was high last year. So they are now stuck paying higher oil price even though the current price is cheaper. And so they are not able to pass any savings to customers.

Atomic Era

We visited the Atomium in December last year. Built in 1958, for the Brussels World Fair or better known as the Expos '58, that was the same year as the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque was built. It's now more that 50 years old and standing proudly as a clear landmark to visit in Brussels.

The Atomium was built as a monument to depict an atomic structure which would be more symbolic of the era when a lot of progress was made by then in atomic and molecular science. The structure itself is quite massive, with nine steel spheres connected so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times!

Looking For Aspirations

If I was born in early 1984, I would by now have spent almost all my entire life going to schools and colleges. If I have done well I would have gained my undergraduate degree or even completed a masters degree programme. I would have amassed a lot of knowledge, gained a lot of skills, seen/heard/learnt a lot of things. But most important of all I would be a lot wiser, learning from the mistakes made in life and learning from others as well. So as a 25 years old now the world would be my oyster.

Brunei will be celebrating its 25th National day this month. It is a major milestone. I am as much guilty as everyone to always reflect our proud past. Like the pictures shown here, sometimes in the 60's when the old airpot was there and our SOAS mosque was already standing proudly in the capital. It's always nostalgic to reflect our great past. One I would wish more nowadays is to show what would be the future - it is a good reflection of our aspirations and motivations.

Wonder what were the aspirations of the people back then in 1984 when the country reached her independence. What would be the expectation of that baby born during those early formative years. I wonder.

Couch Potatoes

Nowadays I don't get too excited when watching football. My team which I supported since 1981 is not doing well. Those were then the times, when people supported many different teams like Leeds, Ipswich Town, Newcastle, Forest, Sunderland and of course, Spurs. Liverpool and Arsenal got the main followers then.

Today our son asked me about the difference between AM and FM which, eventually led me telling him that I used to listen to football on SW frequency when I was just beyond his age. One could listen to live football on the BBC world radio on a certain short wave frequency starting at 10 pm on Saturday night or 6.45 am early on Sunday morning for the results. Sometimes it took a long time just to tune in to the right frequency. Soon there was the match of the day shown on Sunday. We remembered the names of every players and a few of those magical moments and matches - I suppose that was a rarity to see them on action then.

Nowadays we are just awashed with live football. The current players just don't seem to have the same aura as players of yesteryears. As time moved on and Man U picked up, came along the birth of glory supporters. Nowadays if you asked most people which club they support, it's most likely one of the big four. Nobody supports the other teams anymore. Except those coming from the 70's and 80's. Mine is still glory glory Spurs! Anyway, watched the match today between Liverpool and Chelsea. Our boy was happy that Liverpool won. Coincidentally he shares the same birthday as the double scorer.