Back from Cam

It was shaking around 1 am on Tuesday. Only realized the next morning that the ‘shake’ was a small earthquake that shook the whole of UK. But the scariest part was when flying back to Holland in the middle of battering winds. The plane was already shaking on the tarmac, when on the air it was like in a roller coaster. Luckily the 150 mph wind was behind our back and cut the trip from Stansted to Amsterdam to 35 minutes. But the landing bit was still an awful experience with the plane yo-yoing constantly. And it did not help to be reminded during the Cambridge course to hear a talk by an ex Concorde pilot about plane safety and an internal insight to the recent 777 plane crash in Heathrow.

Back to Cam, spent 5 days at the Judge Business School located at Moller Centre, lectured by all sort of experts such as creative thinkers, psychologist and consultants in their own fields. One of them is Darren Rudkin who apparently is a co-creator of ?What If!, an innovative organisation which was voted the best place to work in the UK in 2004 and 2005.
http://www.darrenrudkin.co.uk/

Not to be missed when in Cam is the punting on the River Cam. A 45 minutes punting costs 12 pounds per person!

Back to School

Today the kids are back to School. I am off this morning so I sent the girls to their senior school in Voorschoten which is about 20 minutes drive away, while mum sent Faris by bus to his school which is nearer to home. Normally it’s a rush to send the kids to both schools. Schools start at 8.30 but they discourage parents from sending their kids earlier than that.

The blog may be a bit quiet in the next few days as I am off to Cambridge till Friday. I am also back to school.

Lazy Sunday

Yesterday on Sunday we went to a fast food outlet in Leiden, a small town about 15 minutes drive from home. This outlet is similar to the Chicken Cottage chain that you find in London, providing good choice of fatty but yummy food.

On Saturday night, the Brunei Embassy in Brussels organised a prayer gathering. We didn’t go. There is no Brunei embassy in Holland. Brussels is about 2 hours drive and Zimah still had not finished her castle project. The problem….she and Fiz have been chatting their way this holiday with their cousins in Brunei. That’s kids nowadays. They can sit down in front of computer all day and does not have the sense of time. Sometimes we wonder when they are chatting at night here, isn’t Brunei already early in the morning?

Glory Glory Spurs

The last time Spurs won anything was in 1999. So it was great to watch Spurs beat Chelsea today and won the Carling Cup. The defence was solid with King back, pairing with Woodgate and flanked by Chimbonda and Hutton. The attack was also superb with a number of great chances if only for the great display by Chelsea keeper. Spurs deserved to win and this is the entry to UEFA cup for Europe next season.

Come on you Spurs…….

Football League Champions 1950-51, 1960-61
F.A.Cup Winners 1900-01, 1920-21, 1960-61, 1961-62, 1966-67, 1980-81, 1981-82, 1990-91
Football League Cup Winners 1970-71, 1972-73, 1998-99
European Cup-Winners Cup Winners 1962-63
UEFA Cup Winners 1971-72, 1983-84
Carling Cup Winner 2007-08

On the Fastlane

Today the boys went go-karting at a place in Delft 15 minutes from home. The place, called Race Planet, has 3 kart tracks spread over 4 floors; hence the karts provided are extra powerful to allow for the many steep ascends. Ish (photo, kart no. 73) did very well and won his race against other kids. The kid’s track is different from the adults but is equally technically challenging. Ish found this place better than the one we usually went to.

I did mine two floors below. The track follows a winding route up and down over three floors. The karts are so powerful that it required a lot of braking along the way. Overtaking is quite difficult without shunting your opponents to the side. My best track record was 27.2 seconds, 6th best, after a round of 23. This place looks more professionally run, with track marshals spotted everywhere as apparently lots of collisions and spinning instances happened as you can’t see what’s in front of you until the last moment and a bit of under-braking over the corners easily results in spinning. It costs 15.50 Euro per heat, running every 15 minutes. Looking at the large number of visitors, this place is doing very well.
http://www.raceplanet.nl/gb/index_karten.php?cat=Delft&id=619

Diamonds are Forever

The ladies (Asian Pacific or ASPAC) have been making themselves busy. One trip they made recently was to a diamond factory in Amsterdam. This one is called Coster Diamonds.

According to the website about 340,000 visitors visited the factory every year to see diamonds craftsmen at work. The tours are free, a must if you happened to visit Amsterdam. It’s located between the famous Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in the Eastern Quarter of Amsterdam. All within walking distance.

Prices … depend on the quality but it is said the quality is among if not the best you can find anywhere. You can check the diamonds and the prices in the website. Quite expensive but are very nice indeed.
http://www.costerdiamonds.com/

Cooking Demo by Chef Ismail

The famous Malaysian Chef Ismail was in Holland 2 months ago specially flown in to help with promoting Malaysian food in Europe.

During his busy schedule, he willingly accepted to do a cooking demo for the ladies here in The Hague which my Missus was invited as well. The demo was held in one of the Malaysian ladies’ house. He did a number of traditional cooking and also gladly shared some of his cooking etiquette and tips. One of the photos shows a deliciously made mee rebus. Thanks to Mona for allowing us to use these photos.

Actually we came to know Chef Ismail back in 2005 in his restaurant in KL. The occasion was when one of our Malaysian friends based in PutraJaya invited us for a treat. The place, called Restoran Rebung located in the up-market Bangsar area, specialises in authentic traditional Malay cooking. He did the cooking himself (of course) and to add a bit of nostalgic sentiment he served the food in old plates and cutleries which he inherited from his grandma. We spent till midnight chatting with him….such a nice and joking character. He has a room full of his favourite collection - Cuban cigars!

The restaurant is in partnership with the now famous Malaysian astronaut, Dr Sheik Muszaphar. Below we copied his business card which shows the restaurant address…if any of you interested!

Talking about Malaysian food, there is one small Malaysian toko here in The Hague but is closing down soon. Normally this is our usual gathering place. Indian food is easy to get except of course for roti canai (martabak) and tea tarik….. In Brunei for Indian food the choice is wide. But our regular spots are Rang Mahal, Zaika and Le Taj.

Hari KeBangsaan ke -24

Where is Brunei? I read this subject discussed awhile ago. An amusing own incident took place sometimes in 1986 at Hyde Park; two people became friendly to our group and were genuinely curious of our origin.

“Where are you from?”
“Brunei” we openly replied.
“Err… never heard of that place. Where is it?”
As if with apology I responded “It’s near Singapore...Malaysia...”
“Oh… where are those places?”
We didn’t expect that response and were now a bit disgruntled. It’s fine if someone doesn’t know where Brunei is, but not our more famous neighbours.
So my friend became witty and proceeded to exchange his own curiosity. “Where are you from then?”
“Pakistan”. My friend continued “oh never heard of the place. Where is it?”
One of the gentlemen replied “you don’t know Pakistan!”
My friend said “No. Never heard of that place”
By this time I was starting to walk away (laughing inside out) as this was becoming too absurd. And I still could hear from a distance my friend saying,”Pakistan, is that really a country?”

But nowadays nothing has changed I suppose in most part of the world. To me it doesn’t matter. We don’t need to be known by everybody. Do we?

Turkish Pizza

An obvious impact of immigrants in any country is the mouth-watering variety of food these people brought with them. Like Indian bringing their famous chicken tikka masala to UK, Chinese bringing their cuisine to every where they set foot, the Turks in Europe brought with them Turkish Pizza and kebab. Nowadays one can spot pizza and kebab shops dotted everywhere especially in the city centre. Yet despite the low deference for these immigrants, Turkish pizza and kebab have become part of the Dutch taste for these foods are not only cheap but are delicious.

Turkish pizza is actually known as lahmacun in Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. It is normally paper-thin compare to normal pizza and puffing hot when served, and is usually filled with vegetables like lettuce, red cabbage, onions and others and topped off with kebab meat. A better way to eat is to add cheese and add extra filling of kebab from the grill. Yummy….

Friday Prayer at Aksa Mosque

Today we went for prayer at a Turkish Mosque in The Hague. The Al Aksa was until 1975 a synagogue! The minarets were added in 1985.

There are now over a million Muslims in Holland, 1 in 20 of the population. Most Muslims live in the four major cities - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. There are about 400 mosques in all of which Amsterdam got about 44 in the city.
http://www.indiawijzer.nl/religion_and_spirituality/islam/mosques_in_netherlands.htm

How did these Muslims turned up here? During the 1960s and 70s, as every where in Europe, large number of labourers were required to work during the economic boom and the source came from non communist countries near to Europe such as Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. They were allowed to remain and became assimilated in the community.

Later these people brought their families and friends and the number swell over the years. Obviously these brought contentions to the natives as the number grows. Opposition to immigration in Europe is intense and has became a core political issue. The anti-immigration standpoint is mainly to do with distortion of the national and cultural identity, rather than economic. The issue is complicated by the fact that so many of these immigrants are Muslims.

Don’t Waste Our Resources

This is from my collection of old photos of the search for oil in the deep jungle of Labi back in 1926. Now in 2008, 82 years later, to be told ‘oil is the lifeblood of Brunei’ may not really something that make you instantly fall off your chair. For the majority of Bruneian this is somebody’s problem, whose task is to keep the oil flowing, and the rest will continue their utopian lifestyle. After all there are only a handful of people who are involved in the oil industry and these people seems to be working in some foreign corners of our country, and largely faceless.

24 years of independence, oil is amazingly still our lifeblood. From the rudimentary techniques back in 1926 to the technological edge we are pushing everyday now, there is a limit that technology can play a role. Like everything else, oil resources have its limit. Only one resource will stay – the people – if stretch and use properly will be our saviour for the next generation.

Abode of Peace

Tomorrow is National day. Automatically, parade comes into mind. And another round of ceremonies set in. After all we are very well known as people with a culture of celebration and endless pageantry and ceremonies. For better or for worst as long as we are not complacent and put the same energy on nation building, that’s fine. But if too many people are locked in for a large part of their time to spend on ceremonies throughout the year, then we have a big problem

Another satellite image, showing Earthquake occurrences around South East Asia over the last few days. These are on the Richter scale of 5 and less, pretty harmless. The main causes of earthquakes are the result of Earth plate movement. Literally speaking the earth is like an egg, the shell is the only rigid material which floats. This shell is broken up into big pieces called plates which move around and collide like "icebergs". These collisions resulted in destructive forces and hence earthquakes. Earthquakes are means of releasing this energy, slowly but at times quite abruptly.

This is what’s happening constantly around Indonesia and Philippines. The Pacific and Indian plates moving in into South East Asia at a rate of 7 to 10cm per year. So literally SE Asia is shrinking. If we look a this image, we can sense the earth is living and moving. For this, our country Brunei is blessed that we are far away from these destructive forces of nature. Brunei is a real abode of peace.

Spy from the Sky

On Google Earth, one can ‘travel’ around the world in a 3D mode by viewing satellite image and aerial photographs. Google Earth has been around for 2 years now and one can download a free version from the website.
http://earth.google.com/

For Brunei the resolution is not great. It probably ranges between 3 to 15 metres per pixel which means it can only resolves objects of 10 to 50 metres in size. With this resolution you can hardly see a car. The stored image is also quite old, at least 3 years old. This is a Google Earth image example of our very own ‘Dubai-like’ construction off the Jerudong beach.

A higher resolution satellite image can be purchase commercially. I purchase a few recently for my work in the Middle East. One can ask for an up-to-date satellite image for the specified area. The resolution of the satellite images varies depending on the instrument used and the altitude of the satellite's orbit. The higher the resolution the more expensive it is. QuickBird collects the highest resolution commercial imagery providing 0.6 metre resolution for black and white and 2.4 meter resolution multispectral images.

A cheaper version which I took is provided by SPOT based in France which use a satellite which orbit over any point on earth within 26 days. They offer a resolution of 2.5 to 5 metres in panchromatic mode and 10 meters in multispectral mode. It costs about US$5,000 for a pan image of about 2,000 square km. For that you could spend about US$25,000 if you want for the whole of Brunei. QuickBird would be 1.5 times more expensive.

In Europe, the resolution is good. This other image is our house in The Hague located just a mile off the Queen’s official residence. The Dutch Government however managed to get Google Earth to blur the image of the Queen’s residence. Not the case for HM palace in Brunei! Somebody should take action on this. You can view the zoom-in image of our house in the very first entry of our blog website.

Steven Gerrard

Its school holiday this week. This is normally the skiing season in Europe where families go to the Alps and so on. We are not going any where this time and waiting to do some short trips this coming Easter. But not sure where to go yet.

This is what the kids got at Waterstones - a new supply of books to keep the them busy this school holiday. Out of the collection, I thought Ish’s choice is quite interesting - ‘Gerrard my autobiography’, the winner of the galaxy British book award for sports in 2007. One interesting fact he found from the book is that Stevie G had a 9 year old cousin who was killed in the Hillsborough tragedy – and that was when Stevie G was 10 years old then. Ok time to log off. Liverpool is playing against Inter Milan now - 8.45 pm European time

Amsterdam at Night

Our 5 hours in Amsterdam cost us 17 euros on parking fee. By the time we finished dinner at 6 pm, it was already dark. Trying to get out of Amsterdam at this time is a very frustrating experience. We got stuck for 40 minutes, that’s how long it took from our parking space to an open road which was only a kilometer away. We did not miss much on Saturday Live Football – it was only Liverpool continuing their downward spiral losing to Barnsley and a certain Manchester team thrashing Arsene’s young guns 4-0.

Bookworms

Of course our main purpose to go to Amsterdam was to buy books. Amsterdam got a big Waterstones bookstore. This famous UK chain was apparently founded by a chap who used to work for W.H. Smith called Tim Waterstone. He got sacked by W.H. Smith and formed a rival company. That’s what I gathered from Wiki – the source of important and equally a lot of irrelevant information.

We left the kids for 2 hours at the bookstore while they work through their shopping list in this four storey building.

Saturday at Amsterdam

On Saturday, we went to Amsterdam.

It took about half an hour from the city outskirt to weave through the small streets of Amsterdam to reach the city centre. The city really tries very hard to discourage people from driving, can’t blame them as this is a busy centre. The public do have alternative, the public transport system here is really top notch.

The other thing that really starts to hit car owners here is the high parking rate, 3.40 euro for an hour. And if their next plan is approved (of course will be) they want to increase that to 5 euros an hour.

This is the view of Kalverstraat, the main shopping lane in Amsterdam. It is a long but narrow shopping street and can be quite an intimidating experience making your way through huge crowd of people.

Foggy Day at the Market

It’s been a very busy week and we didn’t have time to update our blog. In fact yours truly, the breadwinner, has been working about 30 hours in the evening and the whole Sunday to finish a report. And still not finish yet! Errr…

Anyway, work is work, life is life. This week saw a dramatic change in the weather. It suddenly dropped to subzero and to as low as minus 6 degrees in the early morning. It’s also been foggy in most places and hardly any wind. So the conditions remain static and cold.

This is the Central Market in The Hague; we called it the Hobema Market. It only opens on Wednesday and Saturday. It’s a market where you can find all kinds of cheap things, from clothes to fruits and vegetables, from electronics to flowers. The market has more than 500 stalls and is a great one-stop location to go for the week’s fresh supplies. It is quite surprising to see what you can find in this market. But of course not everything. You can’t find rabung, binjai etc, etc.

American Book Center

Today is Sunday. We went for a very quick trip to town. Its really is quite glorious today. The sun is really shining. Though still a bit cold, mid-day temperature was about 12 Deg. Celsius. The shops are opened in the Centre of The Hague every Sunday from 12 till 5 pm. There is only one big book store that we know of here that got a large stock of English books. Every now and then the kids need replenishing their book shelves, so off we went to buy some books. Fiz and Ish are quick readers - takes 1 to 2 days to finish a book. So in between library books, they also want something new out there.

Apart from this shop, there is a Waterstones store in Amsterdam. Otherwise it is down to our odd trips to London to grab a good supply of books for the kids. While waiting for the kids to choose their books, I saw this book - Ghost Wars by Steve Coll - about the secret history of CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden. It was the winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize according to the front cover. This should be a good read to kill the time while commuting on the tram to work.

Black Gold

The fuel price here fluctuates daily and differs between stations even between the same brands. At time it can go up to €1.5 and more per litre. Today’s price for RON95 is €1.429 per litre. That’s equivalent to about B$3.15. Compare that to B$0.53 per litre back home – that’s 6 times more costly here. Today for instance it cost us €74 for a full tank which is 52 litres. That’s a staggering B$156 spent on fuel today! Imagine if you have to pay that amount in Brunei. Fuel taxes are very high in Europe. For the Netherlands the tax account for nearly 80% of the price. It’s a huge contribution to the Government coffers.

On the bigger picture, a barrel of crude oil nowadays is about US$90 per barrel. It did hit US$100 for one day last year. A barrel got 159 litres -that about $B0.94 for cost of a litre of raw oil which has yet to be transported, refined and re-exported again. Yet we are paying only $B0.53 for a litre of finished product. You can easily appreciate that the cheap cost of petrol we are paying in Brunei is actually heavily subsidised by our Government.

The Big Ark

Saw this 747 about to land at Schipol today. Singapore Airlines A380, the big monster, apparently is still not operating in Europe, until March at least. In fact the first customers of A380 are all coming from Asia - SQ, Emirates, MAS and Qantas will snatch the first 30 or so before any of the European airlines got theirs. Singapore Airlines got the first one in October last year and the second last month. The third will be delivered in March and will be used for the Singapore-London route. Altogether there will be 13 A380 delivered this year mainly to SQ and Emirates.

Just looking at the cost of ticket to go back home in the summer, the cheapest is about 1400 euros. RBA seems to be quite expensive, either via Frankfurt or Heathrow. There was some strong hints last year that RBA was going to use Garuda landing right and fly a regular service from BSB to Amsterdam via Jakarta. But that did not happen. So there goes another rumour. By the way the first private buyer of an A380 for personal use is for a Saudi Prince. You may ask, for what? Not sure when he is getting his plane. Some people are just too rich.

The Souk

The Beverwijk Bazaar is like an Arab Souk. One can find lots of stuff here, basically anything. Located in different large buildings or rather warehouses, it spread over a big area. Most of the retailers are Muslim immigrants. One can find Iraqi, Afghans and Somalis as recent additions amongst the more dominant Moroccan, Egyptian and Turks.

http://www.debazaar.nl/index.html

In the website it is said the bazaar attract up to 60,000 people every weekend. There are plenty of Halal restaurants, if one is new here it is very difficult to choose which one to go.

Cruising on the Motorway

Today we went off to eat at Beverwijk, a market place where one can find lots of Muslim restaurants which only open during weekend. The motorway wasn’t busy so speed cruise control came in handy. The temperature today was hovering around 12 Deg Celsius. So it was relatively warm, so much so that Fiz decided to go off for jogging with a friend early in the morning.

There’s definitely more sunshine now. The winter has definitely gone although late February at times can still be freezing. Spring is coming. Sunrise is now at 8 am and Maghrib at around 5.45pm. So day hours start getting longer and going out to office and back is no longer in total darkness. Back on the driving, it was quite a pleasant driving and we reached the place in 40 minutes.

The Meaning of Life

The first translation of the Qur’an into English was done in 1649, that’s over a thousand years after our Prophet passed away! But it was only in 1930 when a translation was done by a Muslim thus greatly reducing misconceptions and wrong representations in the earlier translations. The latest one, definitely one to be read, is written by Professor Haleem, who is the professor of Islamic studies at University of London. Written in a clear and flowing language, it is most helpful as most of us nowadays being educated in English tend to think in English. Hence reading a Malay translation, which yours truly got one since the age of 12, is at times quite difficult to grasp. This English translation does help. When it was launched, the Archbishop of Canterbury was amongst those who conveyed his delight at its publication, making the Qur’an more widely and more reliably available to those who do not know Arabic. The Archbishop, who is the principal leader of the Church of England, however is facing a different limelight right now. He is facing demands to quit as the row over sharia law intensified, where he calls for some of the Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system, making the British public angry and the highly provocative British media machine springing into action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._A._S._Abdel_Haleem

National Treasure

This is the Mauritshuis, located next door to the House of Parliament in The Hague. The building, formerly a 17th-century palace, is now a museum. After 200 years it now has a vast collection of some 800 of the best Dutch paintings, estimated to value between 1 to 2 billion Euros.

The other “must visit” museum is the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. You must know who van Gogh is – the guy who drew the famous sunflowers painting that sold for nearly US$50 million in 80's, a record at that time. You can see that painting amongst many of his other works in that museum. For the rest, there is something like over 40 museums in the whole of Holland!

Towards a Greener Way of Life

Brunei is gearing up to be “greener”. Quote “The current recycling system in Brunei is at its infancy and very much limited to recovery of metals for overseas recycling,” Unquote.

Here in Holland, almost everything is recycled. There are special large collection bins, usually located near to supermarkets, for bottles, glass, paper and textile. Others like metal, hazardous material such as batteries, old computer or electrical equipments can be sent to the main collection depot. Every household is provided with three bins. The big bin is for garden waste, second (dark green) is for non-organic and a small bin (not in photo) is for food waste. So not much space but forces the household to be non-wasteful. All are collected once a week. Paper is also collected once a month from home. Open burning is not allowed. Not even a small fire to burn away dead leaves or grass– a common sight in Brunei towards dusk. Here you get a hefty fine for that. Trees which reached a certain diameter cannot be cut down without permission from the Town Hall. They actually have a record and make regular check even if the trees are in your backyard. So Brunei lets start now and cultivate the green mindset.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

This Thursday February 7th will be the Chinese New Year. It’s the year 4705 according to the Chinese calendar.

As the year of the rat begins, it's time to greet everyone with a warm Gong Xi Fa Cai and wish all our Chinese friends and family good luck in all that they do.

Enjoy your celebrations with family and friends.

From Us here.

Speed Camera

In Borneo Bull today, it is sad to read the high rate of road fatalities back home, some 54 were recorded last year, that’s 14 per 100,000 population. Compare this to 32 fatalities the year before.

In comparison, Holland is a country with one of the lowest traffic accident mortality. In 2004 it has the lowest number of death rate per capita population in the world, 5 per 100,000 population. I consider this amazing as it got the most confusing road rules – it is a country with millions of bicycles so bicycles rule, on a crossing in urban area the traffic coming from the right has the right of way and situation on roundabouts is quite often unclear. On the motorway everybody literally drives to the limit. So if its 120km/hr, every make of cars you can imagine be it a Mercs or a 30-year old Lada will go equally at 120.

But I suppose all these things make the drivers alert. On top of that there are some 1600 speed cameras to ensure that you abide by the speed limit. Germany which is 10 times bigger only got twice as many traffic cameras. There are also 45 highways, I mean proper highways, scattered across the breadth of the country to ensure smoother flow of traffics.
http://www.bruneiroadsafety.org.bn/index.htm

A Suffering Kopite

This is Faris Blog. http://www.nfgust.blogspot.com/

He is a Liverpool fan, a kopite wannabe, but suffering right now as Rafa the manager keep changing players and tactics after each game. Making the players forever confused and needing the first halfs to settle down and get used to each other's attics. By which time more often it was already too late and could only chase shadow of their great yesteryears. Making Hicks and the Gillett owners of the club wondering what is this genius from Valencia doing. And in the middle, the long suffering kopites could only bicker amongst themselves and dare not look up the table as Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea are doing business as usual.

SPA anyone?

An old photo from Brunei. This is a mud-flat, literally means somewhere alongside of a river mouth where finer sediments are deposited normally in sheltered or embayment area mainly affected by tidal infulence. If I remember it right we were in front of the Trusan River in Sarawak, which actually is not in Brunei. So if someone wants to catch us for illegally entering Malaysia, this photo is the proof.

This friend of mine who I reckon will become a professor in the future, studied this area for his PHD and brought us here for a bit of fun and learning. You don’t get medal for doing this. But it does help these geologists to help them in finding oil. Walking in the mud is not fun. You can see everyone look dejected and wondering what the heck were we doing.

Back to the Past

Looking at some old CD-rom, we found some photos of us here from 10 years ago. That was when the email and internet was only starting. Sending a photo to Brunei took ages. A 640KB jpeg took 5 minutes. I guess nothing much change now! Ok may be slightly faster now.

We were living in Holland for 3.5 years back then in 1996 to 1999. So this time around is our second time. Back then we were located in Assen, a small northern town (Dutch consider it as a village though), about 2 hours drive from Amsterdam. We remember the weather was a lot colder then, usually thick and prolonged snowing in the Winter- I guess thats a sign of global warming, whatever. The kids were small (of course) but we did manage to do quite a bit of traveling around.

Ardennes Trip

Last year Faris went on a 4-days school outing to the Ardennes in Belgium. Zim also went on a similar trip but in 2006. The main purpose is to teach the children to be more independent and perform team work activities.

Enjoy the song - A Dutch song which reached no. 1 in 2006 by Guus Meeuwis.
The name of the song is "Geef Mij Je Angst" which means "give me your fear".

Days at the Museum

Some photos taken during out trips to visit the many great museums in London and Paris. One can see many of the world's greatest historical collections, well laid out and arranged for all of us to learn and see.

Father and Son Bonding

Today while walking to catch a bus to watch a movie in town, Ish said he likes to think this outing as a 2-hour father-son bonding moment! Actually it is true and is something that we greatly cherish while living in Holland, that we do spend quality time together with our kids. May not be the case in Brunei when parents are forever busy with all sort of commitments whereas children don’t really know what common things to do worth going together with parents apart from going to family functions.

We watched Kite Runner – an excellent and brilliantly made movie. It has quite a moving storyline, will guarantee to shed a few tears along the way, giving a unique depiction of living in Afghanistan before and after the Russian war. The ending was quite poigant with the main actor starting to rediscover his faith. What were also amazing are a few verses of Koran beautifully read at some of the scenes. Most of the actors and actresses seemed to be Afghanis themselves.

Summer of 2007 - Part 2

Here's the second part. This is the return leg from Venice via Austria and Germany. In all we went through 7 countries.

Summer of 2007 - Part 1

Here's the first of two videos of our 10-days driving in the Summer of 2007 heading South to Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy before turning back to Holland via Austria and Germany.

Thin Air in Mount Aconcagua

One of my staff is off for 3 weeks climbing Mount Aconcagua in Argentina. It is the highest mountain outside Asia, standing at 6,962m or 22,841 ft. He set off last week from Amsterdam via Madrid to Santiago in Chile before taking another flight to Mendoza in Argentina. From Mendoza its about 100km to the foot of the mountain.

The biggest problem with such an extremely high climb is attitude sickness for lack of oxygen. The air gets thinner and apparently the key thing for climbers is to get acclimatised quickly. The climber's motto is "climb high, sleep low", referring to climbing higher to acclimatise but returning to lower elevation to sleep. Climbers normally climb 300 metres in a day but come back down at 200 metres and sleep. Thus it can take up to 10 days to reach the summit from base camp.

Is GCSE A-Level Getting Easier?

Now is the time for A-level results to come out. Every year top grades have improved again on average. No doubt the standards in schools are rising and we are getting better at getting the best from our young people. It’s not uncommon to hear someone you are familiar with getting 3 or 4 straight A’s. There is a big but….. that the teaching is getting more "exam passing" focused more than anything, which is bettering the grades achieved by students. They are being trained, molded in extra tuition classes, specifically for the exams and the types of question normally set rather than gaining a general pool of knowledge that used to be tested years back.

Most top universities now require additional University entrance test as they cannot rely wholy on A-level results. Its their ways of better differentiating between candidates. Next year in UK an A* grade will be introduce at A level. See how that will turn out to be.

To Dare Is To Do!

That’s the motto of Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club, yours truly have been a loyal supporter for 29 years.

Last night we watch an exciting Carling Cup Semi-final on Sky - Spurs thrashed arch rival Arsenal "aka" The Gunners 5-1. It was a very remarkable win as it has been 9 years since Spurs beat them. And beat them well this time. The fans at the stadium were absolutely delirious and the atmosphere was buzzing and now we can look forward to a final. Wembley here we come…………..

Here’s a photo outside the stadium when we went to visit the ground last year.

The Making of an F1 Star

The kids are now crazy about go-karting. They have been racing almost every weekend now and breaking their own records. Ish always come first and now doing below 52 seconds per lap. That's just 10 seconds behind the fastest set on the track by an adult with a 270cc engine, much more powerful than the 160cc used by kids. And 7 seconds behind his dad!

Ish is now handling the overtaking and cornering better, making a big difference in the timing compare to Zim who seems to be sliding all the time especially on tight corners. The kids now want to try out other tracks. There are nearly 50 karting tracks in whole of Holland. Pick your choice! Here's the video from today's race.

Halal Food Fair in Rotterdam

The estimate of the value of global Halal market range from US$500 billion to US$2 trillion. Staggering! The US$500 billion is based on an estimate per capita Muslim spending on such products of US$300 per year, the world Muslim population is about 1.6 billion people. Muslims are expected to account for 30% of the world's population by 2025. Currently the Halal food market accounts for only 12% of global trade in agro-food products, hence there are still major growth opportunities in this area.

Now many countries, including non-Muslim, such as Canada and Australia, are hot on heels on these. Europe was the first to venture back in the 70s, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, servicing the Middle-East and the Far-East needs. But the growth in the Muslim population, increasing concern on Halalness raised a new spectre of opportunities. Everyone has to be quick to set an early entry. This food fair is one of those small steps made by a distributor from Malaysia. It’s an open playing field. Siapa lambat nda dapat!

Windy Rotterdam

A nice walking area along River Rhine. Today we went to Rotterdam to see a Halal food fair organized by a Malaysian distributor. This is the view next to the food fair.

The port of Rotterdam is the largest in Europe. It’s not easy to appreciate the size of this ‘gate to Europe’ as the port facilities are stretched over a distance of 40 km. The whole port area itself is about 105 km2 or a fifth the size of Singapore. The other important statistic is the number of cranes – over 300 in all servicing the thousands of ships coming in and out every year.

An Exclusive Tour of Amsterdam & The Hague

Here's some photos from last week....Holland is an interesting place to visit. There are lots of small museums each worth spending a short hour or so.

20 years of finding oil…..

It is said – If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years, grow trees. If you want 100 years, grow people. A friend of mine just quit his job from this big company with a pecten sign. When we were both introduced to the oil scene back then, people said there's only 20 years of oil left. So there we were with many people quietly involved in the search. Alhamdulillah, all the rezeki are from God Almighty, the next generation of Bruneian will benefit from it. It is the time to pass on the baton. We have grown the people. Our younger explorers are there to take over.

The explorers’ playing field will get bigger soon. Iraq is opening up this year. Lots of companies will jump in, needing all the already scarce expertise worldwide. According to American Association of Petroleum Geologist – the best paid geologist is when you have 20-24 years experience. The average international salary for that group is now US$141K. But that’s nothing compare to young Lewis Hamilton whose new contract reportedly worth around £10m per year, or £200,000 per week. This guy does not need to find oil. He burns it big time.

This one is for Jordan

Egypt Holiday Photos

Here's some photos from our trip to Egypt last year. A bit late ..but we only found out just recently how to make a video clip!!! so sad......

Hijrah 1429 and Fiz's Birthday.

Two big things happened yesterday. First was the new Hijrah year. Its definitely not forgotten here. Everybody in the office were reminding and greeting each other.

The second was Fiz turning 15 (Yes FIFTEEN). No special celebration. Just a big card - well actully a very big card (see photo).

Our Earth and OJ287

Something for all of us to ponder deep in our mind. That's Earth. That's home. That's us. Looks massive. But the earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. On BBC news today, astronomers have weighed the biggest known black hole or super Sun in the Universe. The object, called OJ287, is 18 billion times more massive than our own Sun. That’s 6000 TRILLION times (6,000,000,000,000,000) more massive than our Earth.

And there are black holes and suns in every galaxies. Astronomers say that there are probably more than one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. So our Earth, on one of it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, is actually just like a dust, suspended in this massive Universe. Masha'Allah!