Beautiful Day

It’s an unwritten rule in this place that during Saturday and Sunday you don’t bang around and make loud noises too early in the morning. People are still asleep. So today I have to wait till 10 am before starting to roll out the ever reliable electric mower to do what it’s meant for – mow the lawn - finally after weeks of waiting for the weather window. This mower, bought in 1996, is still working admirably except for a few bits of metal and plastic on the sides that have fallen off.

The outside temperature was just nice at 10 deg. C then. The last time the grass got tendered was in November last year. Looking at the amount of heap collected, the grass has not grown a lot, stunted by the cold weather. It has been bitterly cold this Winter but still hotter than a normal average, as everybody telling us so. Somebody out there still wants to make a point about global warming theory and to make the point claim this and that Summer was the hottest ever, the Winter was the warmest since record began and so on. What ever it is last winter to me was very cold, subzero temperatures on a number of occasion with lakes frozen at times.

Back to the leaves, remember, leaves and organic stuffs have to be put into a big bin which are then collected once a week like normal garbage. No open burning is allowed. This is such a no brainer and an obvious thing to do. The collected organics are transformed to compost on an industrial scale and no open burning means the neighbourhood is not choked with smoke whatsoever.

After all the effort put this morning, it’s nice to see the compound now clean and tidy. The goal post is also back in shape after being wrecked by the strong winds during the last few weeks. Together with Faris, we had a bit of kicking the ball after that. Temperature rose to about 15 Deg. C by noon. Faris and Fiz later decided to do some jogging.

By the way, there was a famous run going on in the City Centre today. It’s called City-Pier-City run which involved running 5 km from the City centre to the beach at Scheveningen and back to the city. Somebody who joined the run today told me that 19,000 people turned up and participated.
http://www.fortiscpcloop.nl/

F1 Season Begins......

The F1 season starts again today. Hopefully it's much better than last year when the McLaren and Ferrari spy case and the fall-out between Alonso and Maclaren dominated the news. I always thought the ruling on the spy case was biased to favour Ferrari. Even though the real culprit was somebody from Ferrari but somehow the council seemed to think otherwise. On the other hand Renault doing similar thing on McLaren didn't get penalise at all. But I guess all these 'scandals' are also part of the plot to make this sport more lively.

Just watched the qualifying...as ever fantastic. However it was very early (4 am) here as the opener is in Melbourne. Here's the resut:

1) Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
2) Robert Kubica (BMW)
3) Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren)
4) Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
5) Nick Heidfeld (BMW)

Hamilton was on pole position. Hamilton who? you might say last year is a superstar now. I wrote a blog exactly last year but not predicting anything on this guy.

http://paulaland-paulaland.blogspot.com/2007/03/formula-one-starts.html

But everybody knows now how he became a 'McLaren boy' for 10 years being geared up to be a future star. On today's pole it's also good to see BMW back up there. The driver's line up this year is as ever formidable. Ferrari has the same drivers. Hamilton is partnered by Kovalainen. Alonso jumped boat, most likely to obscurity, back to Renault. The former Dutch Spyker team is now owned by an Indian billionaire and renamed it as 'Force India'. Just waiting for a Russian billionaire to get his hands itchy and buy Ferrari and called it Chelski F1 team.

Wet Wet Week

Last Sunday was uneventful. After a long rest during the winter was planning to do some gardening, mow the lawn and clean-up the compound. But alas, the weather was not permitting. It rained from morning till the evening. And it was also windy and temperature was quite cold. Holland is taking its toll as well from the strong winds that's hitting the UK right now. This is the photo of the front of our house on Sunday. Looked gloomy but at least the hedges stays green during the winter whereas most of the big trees outside are still bare without any leaves at all. In the next few weeks these will change, a major transformation, where leaves will start to come out and flowers blossom. Also next week Kukenhof will open, this is the biggest open-air flower park in the world.

http://www.keukenhof.nl/nm/english.html

It’s already in the Plan

I will tone down a bit. The low light of the 'meeting' last week was the recurring excuse of ‘it’s in the plan, it’s already been looked into, and it’s going to be implemented, and so on’. Some of these excuses are for some serious in-actions on the part of the responsible organizations resulting in massive problems and public nuisances. These slip-ups if were to be discussed in the British Parliament the responsible parties would get a massive mauling from the other members of Parliament.

Talking about what might contribute to the problems is the excessive use of consultants to come up with the solutions. One quick way for improvement: stop hiring so many consultants. There are many instances where a project is poorly defined and a consultant hired to carry it out, but because of poor planning little or nothing of benefit is derived. Where are those officers (who have been trained overseas to attend specific degree and Master programmes) who should be doing the exact job? Rather they become paper pusher and they do not do the work, but hire very expensive consultants.

From my experience, consultants are many times over-rated and they have a tendency to repeat. The consultant will finish a contract and leave. Then if the project faces problems with the product or service, the consultant will only come back if another contract is agreed to. However, when an employee does that same work, the employee is more accountable to the outcome. And, of course, the cost is only a fraction of what most consulting contracts cost. The irony is sometimes by hiring consultant make the heads or directors a rationale to inflate budgets and appear even more important.

Brain Drain

This week I spent some times in the Lab to do some experiments. Don’t want to bore you with the details. And that reminded me of an interesting discussion on the web on ‘brain drain’ in Brunei. What's interesting to know is that we have a ‘lost generation’ of past student achievers who seemed to ‘disappear’ and are not very prominent in the present Government set-up.

Back 20 years ago, Brunei Government embarked on special scholarship programme by sending the best and brightest to study 'A' level abroad and later to selected universities. Literally hundreds were involved in this programme. These students came back and later served as what has been planned for them - as doctors and other specialists. In the meantime, their lesser achieving counterparts have been sent to mainly ‘art-stream’ courses. Whilst the doctors and engineers are fulfilling their jobs, they remained stagnant in their jobs for years and saw their salaries vastly not competitive compare to working outside. Their counterparts returned to the country to become administrative officers and progressed very quickly in the Government organization. And this caused a bit of tension. Some of the doctors started to abandon their skill and move to become administrators to improve their job prospect. Some just quit the country for better pay abroad. Just look around in the government hierarchy right now, do you recognize any of your colleagues who have done very well in their school days being up there. More likely after all the hard works they put in those student’s years, they are likely to be working in a quite corner, tending their attention to sick patients. So that is what an imbalance education and scholarship policy does to the country 20 years later.

Euro is Booming

Today seen Euro reaches its highest value ever compare to other currencies. The trend has been steadily increasing ever since its introduction as real currency back in 2002. It was started on par with American dollar, fluctuated for a short while, before climbing back again. Today it is trading at US$ 1.548, the highest ever in its history.

So it is not cheap to go to Europe this time around. Ironically the dollar is so cheap that many Europeans are traveling to the States in big numbers. Apparently not only just for leisure.... but also for serious shopping.

Not just in Africa

It’s the election fever right now in the States. One continent that suffered the most experimenting with democracy is Africa. This 700-page book took a while to read last year. It is literally a history book, the 50 years of Africa’s experimentation with nationhood and of having own leaders dictating their own destinies.

From Ghana, the first to gain her independent in the late 1950’s, to all the other countries that followed the same downward spiral, the book’s review describes what seems to start as excellent motives; first generation of post-independence leaders set the pattern that continues to the present day. These leaders built regimes that were corrupt and dictatorial. Their single objective always was to retain power at all costs, by, seizing and keeping power by force, building excessive nepotism, enriching supporters and exploiting the rest of the population. These are men who bled their countries dry and whose policies led to poverty and war that continues into the present. They turned their countries into money-making machines for themselves, families and supporters. The over-whelming picture that emerges is of tyranny and violence.

For example; an airport capable of handling supersonic Concordes which Mobutu, the president of Democratic Republic of Congo’s, often chartered for his trips abroad. Or the Ivory Coast’s journalist, who inspected the President Houphouet-Boigny palace of Ivory Coast, exclaimed “My God, anyone could live here – the Queen of England, President Kennedy. It makes me thrilled to be an Ivory Coast citizen.”

But then this was not just happening in Africa.

The Wind of Change

Today Malaysians voted in the general election. It was quite interesting to follow the results, to see who have lost and who have suddenly appeared out of the blue. This supreme form of democratic process is, although can be considered to have reached acceptable maturity and grassroots reach in Malaysia, can still be dogged by all sort of complex and side issues - ethnic, religious, wealth gap, personal, dynastic clan and so on. So not only it is an interesting and just process to choose a government but more often than not the process is coloured with all sort of ‘interesting’ sideshows.

This is the 12th general election since the first one was held in 1959. The election this time involves 222 parliamentary and 505 state assembly seats. This time BN, the ruling party, only won 135 compare to 198 seats four years ago, while the opposition won 82 compare to just 20 seats last time around. The same story with the state assembly where the opposition quadrupled their seats from 51 to 195. Apart from Kelantan, the opposition won 4 more states - Selangor, Perak, Kedah and Penang. It’s been a wind of change.

Today we went to a Malaysian Toko (see photos) to pick up our order. This toko is closing down; the shop owner is asking a ridiculous high amount of money as lump sum for extending the rental. So after two years in the business, Zahari and Kak Noriah are closing their shop and business will finally cease on 15th March.

Dutch Water Dreams

Hazimah went to a birthday party of her classmate today. The place called Dutch Water Dreams is located in Zoetermeer not far from the Hague about 15 minutes by car from our home. It is an amazing place - in this flattest land on Earth the Dutch are very ingenious in coming up with all sort of things for leisure and activities. See the website.

http://www.dutchwaterdreams.com/?language=english&page=1

The complex was completed in late 2006, housing an artificial Olympic wild water rafting and canoeing circuit, the exact copy of the one being built in China for the Olympic Games. For now it is mainly used for training purposes by European rafting teams. The other big thing is an indoor wave boarding centre which contains 3 flow riders. This is what Zim and the other kids tried. They were taught how to surf on the artificial waves which are generated by flow rider machine. For beginners, the water flow speed is moderate to suit their needs. The other two flow riders are much stronger and are for the more skillful players. See the video.

Day out at Sligro

Today the temperature outside was about 11 deg. Celcius, a bit cloudly but no rain. It’s the start of a quiet weekend – except for a birthday party that Zim wants to attend in Zoetermeer, Fiz wanting to watch movie and the lawn that need to be mowed finally.

Late morning today, we went for our grocery shopping at Sligro, a food wholesaler. This is the front of the store about 5 minutes drive from our home. This branch, one out of 43 stores in Holland offers both cash-and-carry and delivery services to restaurants and bars, volume users, company caterers, small and medium-sized enterprises and smaller retailers. It is only open for members, mainly those in the restaurant and food retailers, but they also give special membership for expat living in The Hague. Items are sold on bulk (obviously) and generally are cheaper than outside. Opening hours start very early from 6.30 am. till 5 pm. In this particular store, it even got a small café on the first floor and serves free drinks and snack to customers. We normally do our bulk buy here. Prawn and mussel are also good buys as they look much better than what we found in other shops.

It’s in the DNA

Fiz got her first pair of glasses on Wednesday. Surprise surprise…. all this time her world has been a blurry one…she needs a minus 1.5 degree on the lens.

We went to Pearle Europe to make the pair, a famous chain with more than 1000 branches in Europe. The service was good, the staff being quite knowledgeable and instructive in giving advice on selection and suitability of the frame to choose. The shop also offered a good deal with the second pair free except for extras on multicoated and high reflective plastic.

News at 10

In the LegCo today, questions were raised regarding lack of local news coverage. Sometimes ago (a month ago I think) I watched RTB news online. It was quite long – 45 minutes. I jotted down the time split between each items and I thought is useful to share the statistic since I realised the very subject was discussed in the LegCo today.

What I found out were the followings:

1) Local news: 17 minutes but only covered 4 items. It was on local development strategy, traffic jam, zakat and profile of a village
2) ASEAN and world news: 19 minutes, a lot more compact and covering 12 items although 4 of them were on USA!
3) And the rest were on introduction, FOREX, Titah, sports and so on which have their own jingle and introduction. All in all about 8 minutes.

45 minutes is quite long and that it only carried 4 local news in itself is outrageous. No wonder we know more about other countries than what’s happening in our country. Compare this to BBC, ITV, SKY or Euro news. Most individual news items are less than 30 seconds, concise but still interesting. The news are repeated every 15 minutes. Most of us are busy nowadays and could not afford to sit down for 45 minutes to watch news. Otherwise people will switch to other channels. Well …people already are.

Friend or Foe

There are four main river basins in Brunei: Temburong, Belait, Tutong and Brunei. The Temburong, the smallest of the rivers, drains a catchment area of about 430 km2 (nearly the whole of the Temburong district), directly into the Brunei Bay.

The critical point along this river is somewhere at Bangar town itself where the hilly terrain suddenly open up into a flood plain. This is the point where if the water level in the river is high enough it would start to spill over the river bank and flood the surrounding area hence this is called a flood plain. In agricultural term, this is a great way for the flood plain, which is normally converted to agricultural area, to receive much needed nutrients. This is what normally occurs in the flood plains all over the world. The problem only starts when this area became populated and the flooding becomes more of an inconvenience. This is exactly what happened to Bangar last month. A natural phenomena, but because of human presence, is treated as an unwelcome disaster.

The amount of water that poured that night could be estimated. It was reported that an average of 267mm of rain was recorded, meaning a total water volume of some 115 million cubic metres of water passed through Temburong river the following days. This water can actually be used for other purpose if contained. Sometimes ago a feasibility study indicate Temburong river, because of its valley character, as an ideal location for a hydroelectric dam to generate electricity. It awaits for some brave decision makers to say go. Not an easy decision as it will affect a large track of the Temburong pristine forest. But then Brunei can not just rely on oil and gas for its future energy need. Sooner or later a decision has to be made.

Toy Train

Brunei used to have a small 10km rail which was operated by the oil company. It was mainly to provide direct access through the thick jungles between Seria and Badas to the water pumping station located upstream of the Belait River.

Reading this National Geographic article, it is quite interesting to know that the oil from the Seria field is so light that it can used to burn by ship without refining. No wonder Seria was one of the big trophies that Japan was after during World War II. Some of our elders and the more politically correct of us would still claim that Brunei has never been occupied by other nations. What ever it is, history told is only one side of a story that people want to tell and hear. The best we could do is learn from it and hopefully it will teach us a lesson and guide us when making a decision for the future.

Source of Ascorbic Acid

It’s a good practice (is also a sunnah or Prophet’s tradition) to eat some fruits before eating.
Here, for fruits one could find not just the normal suspects such as orange, pear and apple but also all sort of exotic fruits from the tropic all year round. Just wander around to a weekend market and you will see all sort of fruits laid out.

Prices might be a bit on the high side compare to back home but then these fruits have to be packaged and transported. As well, most fruit farmers and producing nations nowadays are increasingly protected under fair trade, an initiative to alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainability. The movement promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, cotton, fresh fruit, and so on. So next time you buy fruits, think of the hard working farmers.

Dewan Bahasa

The library in Dutch is called bibliotheek. There are altogether 19 libraries in the city of The Hague, a city of nearly half a million people. We went to check out the biggest one which is right at the end of the main shopping street (the Spui) in the City Centre. This striking white building in the photo is the Hague Central Library. The building is part of the City Hall/Library complex, designed by an American architect.

The library is very functional in attracting both young and old – it is quite a lively place. There are about 600 individual study places spread over the entire 6 floors served by escalators and elevators. Membership is free up to 18 years old. Above 18 years it ranges from € 19,50 to € 27,35 per annum.

We saw about 10 aisles in the English novel books section alone. There are rows of other foreign language books such as Arabic and so on. What is interesting is that the library also lend out PS2 play stations games, DVDs, videos and music. The library is also well served with its own food and drink section. I wish we also have similar library back home!

Is Cheese Halal?

Basically this is what I could gathered. Cheese is made by heating milk and adding a coagulating agent referred to as rennet or enzymes, producing the cheese product. The majority of cheese manufacturers now are using vegetable rennet and synthetic rennet manufactured in laboratories from various fungi microbial rennet.

From an Islamic perspective, animal rennet can be divided into three categories:

1) The rennet derived from animals that have been slaughtered in accordance with the Sharīaah. There is no difference of opinion that such rennet is completely pure.

2) The rennet derived from permissible animals (e.g., cows, sheep and goats) that have not been slaughtered according to the Sharīaah. There is a difference of opinion amongst the four madhabs. The position in the Shafī’ī and Mālikī schools, is that such rennet is impure, and the cheese derived from it also impure
In the some Hanafi Schools, rennet obtained from an animal slaughtered by a non-Muslim or Muslim in accordance with Islamic law or contrary to it, in all cases is permissible, as long as the animal in question is not a pig.

3) There is no significant difference of opinion on the rennet derived from impermissible animals, such as pigs, as the source of it is impure. The enzyme derived from pigs is commonly referred to as pepsin. Just like the meat, milk and bones of such animals are impure; similarly the rennet derived from their stomachs is also impure.

However, it is better to avoid whenever reasonably possible when its source is unknown. Allah alone knows all. For us we prefer to buy halal cheese from Islamic shops here.

Shoarma, Salad and Rice

After the Amsterdam tour on Saturday, we brought our visiting relatives to Beverwijk for the usual Shoarma meal experience. First we had lentil soup, which also originates from the Middle East The soup usually contain vegetables but can also be made with meat stock. Then the meal itself served with all sort of sauce and dressings.

Wonder if this kind of food can be an attractive proposition for a food outlet in Brunei?

No god but God

While in Cambridge, I also finished reading this book written by Reza Aslan. The book got raving reviews such as…. thoroughly an engaging personal exploration…an opening up of knowledge too long buried…and so on http://www.rezaaslan.com/nogodbutgod.html

A great book to read giving a different perspective of how Muslim society evolved though a number of experimentations. It talks about what fractured the Muslim community into competing sects - Sunni, Shia, and Sufi to the current Wahhabi movement which attempt to cleanse and go back to the original ideology. The book touches on the relationship between Religion and politics in early Islam where violent internal conflict was a regular feature of all Muslim dynasties, where most are forced to legitimize their rule by asserting some kind of divine endorsement. And in doing so richly rewarding their Ulama who go along their line. This is sadly still going on till now.

The Muslim history is mired with bloodshed, from the 3 out of 4 early Caliphs killed by Muslims themselves, to the many recent wars between Islamic nations, to the current trend of suicide bombings against Muslim brothers, reading this work helps to understand some the brewing reasons behind all this violent evolution. It also makes you to think a bit on the evolution of Islam in Brunei. The best way is to expand your knowledge more on this subject and not just literally accept everything being told.

2035 Vision

Just finished reading the publication. A friend graciously gave his own copy to me as apparently the books were already sold out in the book shops. This to me is a good sign that many people are interested to know what is in this 30 year plan. The book is quite transparent in sharing a number of vital statistics. I am sure there has been a lot of effort put into this, including also the never ending use of consultants and so on. So here’s my short view on the book (everyone should have a say, right?)

So what is vision? We need vision to know where we are going, to organise our journey so it points in the right direction. So the journey should analyses our weaknesses and strengths, how to execute and deliver, monitor, measure, has back up plan and has to be reasonably achievable. This is even more important as the last 5 year plan (RKN8) saw many development projects were implemented behind schedule.

The vision or Wawasan in the book talks about becoming among the top 10 nations in the world in terms of quality of life and income per capita. This is to be brought about by 8 strategies underlined through 650 policy directions, and 826 projects are to be implemented the current RKN (2007-2012) alone. Is this really a realistic vision when contrasted to the track record so far? Look at 2001-2005 GDP growth which saw only 2.1 % per annum growth, lower than global (3.8%) and Asean (5%) and even lower than fast developing economies like China which have double digit figures. On top of that the 2.1% growth was mainly fuelled by increase in hydrocarbon production, doubling of oil price and no major World economic crises. Pretty scary isn’t it.

Don’t want to sound negative. What I wish also to see more are real in-depth but realistic vision of future shape in Education, renewable energy vision, carbon emission vision, transportation, city vision and rural community vision that really reflect what we think will be in 2035. This is amongst the current issues facing the developed and global communities. In any case the book is a good start. Well done!

Visitors from Paris

We have our relatives from the Embassy in Paris spending the weekend in our house and just left this morning to drive back to Paris. It takes about 5 hours from The Hague to reach Paris. On Saturday we brought them to Amsterdam and a few interesting places around it. Spring is definitely here now. The strong wind on Friday and Saturday is normally a sign of the last push of wintry wind before the warmer spring weather starts to come in. In the next few days and weeks, plants and any thing green will start to come to life. It will be gorgeous time then.

Back to our visitors, we also brought them to the famous Volendam fishing village where one can take photos wearing the Dutch costume. This place is about 30 minutes by car from Amsterdam. There is also a regular bus service from Amsterdam central station to this place.

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.