Day out at MediaMarkt

Today I brought my eldest to buy a laptop at MediaMarkt. Whilst doing that I reminded her that kids nowadays are blessed compare to those in the past. They get all sort of gadgets in what are suppose to make them better prepared for what ever it is. Yes kids nowadays always use the excuse that they need a laptop for their studies. I am not sure really. Most of them end up using it more for chatting and so on apart from using it for studies. Ok this time round it’s more of a necessity as Fiz’s desktop is getting old and most of her home works are online.

Talking about computer, I got a huge scare as my 40GB portable hard disk did not work any more. It’s been 3 months since I could not access my files. Luckily when I brought it to the repair shop, the disk itself was fine and only needed a new housing…what a relief. I did not do a back-up and there’s lots of data and photos in there.

Sunday in Hanover

After dinner in Berlin on Saturday night, we drove and stayed overnight at Hanover, again at a hotel nearby to the motorway. Hanover is only a 2-hour drive from Berlin. A world expo was held here in 2000 (German's first) and since then this place has been the venue of lots of exhibitions.

On Sunday the clock got forwarded by an hour to offset the 1-hour daylight saving during the winter. That means 1 hour less sleep. Also Maghrib is now around 8.15 pm and Isha close to 10 pm.

On Sunday, we drove to the Hanover city centre to have lunch. We found from the internet a very nice Turkish restaurant in town called Urfa. The workers are actually mixed between Iraqis and Turkishs. Outside the restaurant, one could see a large mural drawing showing a scene from the middle East. Normally this sort of things are always a target for some racist, anti-Islamic or graffiti attacks, but apparently not in this case.

Here’s a short video I took showing how a bread filled with meat called Pide is made. The shop owner was also in the middle shooting a commercial for his shop.

Jalan Jalan Cari Makan

We found this restaurant right at the end of Berlin’s main shopping street. The owner, a German, is married to a Malaysian. He apparently was involved in the LRT construction in KL, retired, settled down and opened this restaurant.

We had the usual – mee mamak, keuw teaw, roti canai, nasi goring and tea tarik. The price was reasonable, came up to 50 Euros.

http://www.amys-berlin.com/pages/homepagepag.html

Berlin Tour

We went round for a quick tour of Berlin. We stopped over at Sony Centre, the Parliament building and the Brandenburg Gate. We wanted to enter the Parliament building but the queue was incredibly long and not moving at all. What a shame…..

The renovation of the Parliament building back in the 90’s produced a shining example of a truly eco-friendly building. The Parliament building was renovated by famed British Architect Norman Foster and completed in 1999. That’s when the German parliament eventually moved from Bonn to Berlin to mark the unification of East and West Germany.

The Parliament building got a distinctive glass dome constructed at the top of the building. This dome taps solar power and optimises the use of natural lighting inside the building. The building is also able to retain heat in winter and needs little cooling in the summer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_(building)

Brotherly Communist Love

We saw this portrait at the Checkpoint Charlie’s museum. It was actually a sign of communist solidarity, performed whenever the Soviet bloc's rulers met in public. Really strange!

Apparently this was a standard greeting between members of the Communist elite. This image is one of Leonid Brezhnev, head of the Soviet communist party, and Erich Honecker, the leader of communist East Germany. When this photo was taken in 1979 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of German Democratic Republic (East Germany), it sent a shiver to the Western world that the East German leader will go all the way to toe with Soviet communist aspiration during the cold war.

Berlin Calling

This is the third time we have been to Berlin but during the previous two trips back in the 90’s our kids were still small. This time around, we wanted to show them Berlin and the history and struggle of East Berliners before the unification.

Our first stop was Checkpoint Charlie, the famous crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. It became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of east and west, and for some East Germans a gateway to freedom.

Since the Berlin Wall was built by the East German government in 1961 to the destruction of the wall in 1989, many East Berliners tried to escape to the West. All of these are captured in the museum next to the Checkpoint Charlie to show some of the people’s ingenuity in coming up with all sort of escapes method.

German Autobahn

The motorway leading to Berlin is a typical well built autobahn. The German autobahns are famous for being some of the few public roads in the world without blanket speed limits for cars. The average automobile speed traveled on the autobahn is about 150 km/h. 18 wheelers trucks normally go at 120 km/hr.

Our average speed was 145 to 150 km/hr. At this pace our 2.5 L engine was already screaming at 3000 rpm. You don’t feel the speed at all as most cars also traveled at the same speed. Even at this speed, there are still many cars whizzing past us at incredibly higher speed. But with cruise control, driving through 300 to 400 km of road distance, on this nicely built and straight autobahn seems very relaxing and quick indeed. Imagine if we have similar autobahn from Bandar to Belait which is a distance of 110 km, it would take less than 45 minutes.

A Weekend in Germany

We just came back from a weekend trip to Germany. On Friday after work, we set off from home at around 5.40pm and headed eastward to Berlin. Rather than going straight to Berlin which would be quite a drive, we went for a city called Magdeburg first which is still another 1.5 hours drive to Berlin. The journey from home to Magdeburg according to our navigation system should take 5 hours to cover a distance of 553 km and would cost about 50 Euro on petrol. However we got delayed by the Friday’s evening traffic jam. Plus we had to take a stop on the way to fill up petrol and to have some drinks and stretch a bit. In the end we only reached our hotel just before midnight.

This is where we stayed for the night, Hotel Sachen Anhalt. German’s hotels along the motorway are good value for money and are quite reasonable. This one only cost 47 Euros per room. Normally we used the hotelbooking.com to book online. Nearby to where we stayed is the famous Magdeburg water bridge. This water bridge connects a canal and plies across a river below, cost half a billion Euros to the German. It shows the Germans are top of the league when it comes to incredible engineering. We could not find our way to the bridge though. We could see it from a distance but no sign board whatsoever to show the way. This trip is probably our most ill prepared trip we ever did; we didn’t even carry a map. We only booked our hotels the night before. This is the photo of the water bridge taken from the internet but probably most people have seen it circulating around through emails.

Cold Day

Today it’s back to work. I have a big review going on so I am taking the car. The kids still have 2 weeks of holiday to go. There was snow raining down last night. So today in the morning it was still snowy on the road and quite a lot of people were late for work. It’s very strange indeed to have snow so late in what is already officially Spring. Temperature was -6 Deg. C during the weekend in Holland. Today was about 3 Deg. C so the snow quickly melted down.

Book Attacks

These are some of the books we got from our trip to London. Faris had a fair share this time. He wanted to read everything about Liverpool – Tommy Smith, Kevin Keegan and Alan Hansen autobiographies.

Yours truly got a couple of books written by Khaled Hosseini, the Kite Runner, which we have seen the movie but my friend told me its better to read the book as well, and A Thousand Splendid Suns which was also recommended to be read. Also I am going to read about Barrack Obama and Lewis Hamilton.

Snowy Drive

The drive back was quite smooth. It took 3 hours to drive from Calais in France to Holland via Belgium. As I said there was no traffic jam along the way except for some slow traffic in Belgium and Holland because of snow and falling hails. Road speed limit in France Motorways is 130 km/h and 120 km/h in both Belgium and Holland. Roads can be quite slippery and one need to be quite alert as car pile up could easily occur in this condition.

Roads here are well built, the tarmacs are quite porous which allow water to move to the side quickly. This is to prevent stranded water on the Motorway that can cause what is term ‘hydroplaning’ which is a common cause of accidents in Brunei when it rains. Hydroplaning or aquaplaning by a road vehicle occurs when a layer of water builds between the rubber tires of the vehicle and the road surface, leading to the loss of traction and thus preventing the vehicle from responding to steering, braking or accelerating. Highway engineers often mitigate hydroplaning through measures which allow water to drain readily from the road. Here’s our short video of our drive back, you can see the hails and snow starting to build up on the road quickly.

Back to Old Europe

After breakfast, the kids and my Missus went to Waterstones at Oxford Street. We left London at 11 am and luckily no traffic jam along the way. It’s Easter Monday so the roads were a bit quiet. It took us 1.5 hours from Central London to reach Folkestone but we have to wait 45 minutes for our EuroTunnel train. Actually we could hop onto the train straight away but I guess the tunnel operator also wanted people to wait and stop over at the duty free shops and spend some money; otherwise these shops would have run out of business in no time. There’s an MPH store in there, so yet another load of books to buy.

Here’s a photo showing cars lining up to enter the train and the view inside the train. While inside, you would just stay in your car while the train run its course. The whole trip normally takes 20 minutes to cross the English Channel. Once on the other side, it was another 3 hours to reach home. All in all it took us 6 hours from Central London to reach Holland – not bad.

Breakfast at Lagenda

We thought we should have proper Malay breakfast before heading back to Holland yesterday. Bonda Café was still closed and so we tried out the Lagenda Restaurant at Holiday Villa Hotel, a Malaysian run hotel at Leinster Garden, located between Bayswater and Paddington. I found out that the going rate at this hotel is about £90 per night for a standard room and £180 pounds for a family room.

The breakfast was quite expensive; it is after all a restaurant in a hotel. We had 4 nasi lemak, 1 roti canai and 5 drinks (tea tarik). Cost us 54 pounds! You will probably get half the price at Bonda Café and a tenth in Brunei!

http://www.london-eating.co.uk/4800.htm

Smartest Car

This is funny, because of its size this car managed to park in this tightest of space.

Today we are heading back home. Thanks to our host, we have been staying at his house in Edgware Road for the last 4 nights. They are not here right now as they are spending a couple of weeks in Brunei.

Last night we had a meal at a restaurant nearby with one of our uncle who is here from Paris. He is visiting his son who is a resident at Brunei hall. The Al Arez restaurant was a bit crowded and we had to wait a while before getting our table. We had been here twice before but always in the quieter period for lunch.

The restaurant specialises in Labenese food, one of the many along Edgware Road. This road is basically full of similar Arab restaurants, it seems the Arab population is swelling in London and demands for this food from Arabs and others alike are quiet strong seeing most of these restaurants are well patroned.
http://alarez.co.uk/

Snowy Easter

We thought we left cold Holland for warmer weather in UK. But today was as cold as it could be. Temperature was hovering at 2 Deg. C and snow fell for a couple of hours. And this is supposed to be the traditional warm Easter weekend, the official start of Spring. We took a video of the snow falling down behind the Hartland Road house.

In the Dutch news today, it's now claimed to be the coldest Easter in 40 years with heavy snow and wintry wind. Luckily we were not there.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2008/03/easter_set_to_be_coldest_in_40.php
Today was supposed to be a trip to Waterstones, but alas, we were quite ignorant. Today is Easter Sunday and all main shops were closed.

Early Sunday

It's 6 o'clock in London. An early rise today - Sepang F1 is starting in an hour. After last week start of the F1 which was full on incidents with only 7 cars left to finish the race, today's race will be equally exciting as rains and thunderstorms are expected. Ferraris will be desperate to score points, will need what ever help there can get, usually from the corner of F1 authorities. And not surprisingly to me when I read that the Maclaren duo Hamilton and Kovalainen, who are leading the championship, have been hit by a 5 position penalty for the starting grid, accused of being too slow on the outlap. So we will see if this will help Ferrari to score points today.

We will be driving back to Holland tomorrow. Today we plan to go to Waterstones in Oxford Street to buy some books. Even though the temperature has been unusually cold for early Spring, that hasn't dampened people from flocking to Oxford Street. But then there were just far too many people on the street(see photo).

Last night I brought the kids to Whitelies in Baywater to watch movie. Fiz and Zim watched Meet the Spartans. I saw the trailer - very funny. But me and Faris prefer to watch action movie and went for Vantage Point. Good movie but was quite irritating. The same scenes were repeated again and again to show various people's vantage points - well - that's the title of the movie.

A Day in the Life of a Spurs Fan

It's Saturday. After breakfast at Bonda Cafe (Nahar), me and Faris headed for White Hart Lane to watch the game between Spurs and Portsmouth. The girls in the meantime headed to Oxford Street to do their own bits. We have ordered the football tickets back in Holland and paid a fortune for that. Spurs tickets are very hard to get as all their home matches are always sold out weeks before the actual game. Even today's game which was telecast live, it was still a sold out. We got one of the more expensive tickets, £48, which is at the Lower tier of the West Stand. However, because the tickets could only be sourced from those who are willing to sell back, and of course the handling agent also need to make a cut, we paid 200 Euros each for these tickets.

Nevertheless, the experience was amazing especially for Faris who has never been to a Premier League game before (it's his birthday present!). We were already there quite early just in case, but the place and the souvenier shops were already crowded. Inside the stadium, it was all singing and chanting, Spurs fans were very loud. The same can be said of Portsmouth's fans. It was quite cold though, people here were well prepared for that. I can't say we were that prepared for the hailstones that came everynow and then during the match (see the video). Quite weird conditions.

In the end it was a very enjoyable game to watch - obviously Spurs winning 2-0 did help. Darren Bent and Jamie O'hara scored in succession. Players like Jonathan Woodgate, Tom Huddlestone, Robbie Keane and Dimitar Bebatov who are the key players are hugely impressive and bigger than what we used to see on TV. After the match we had quite a bit of time to spend in the Spurs shop. So that was today. Started at 10 am, we reached back at where we stayed at 6pm. Here are some short videos we took showing the game, the freakish weather and the celebration after the first goal.

London is Red

Today we spent the whole afternoon in Regent and Oxford Streets.

The picturesque of London is always about red, from the famous red bus, the red postbox to the red phone box.

It was quite crowded in Oxford Street today since it’s a public holiday. Looking at the huge number of shoppers around, us inclusive, we are clearly living in a very materialistic world. It seems that when in London, everyone becomes obsessive shoppers and that we must spend, spend and spend. From the many adults pushing their kids to buy toys that the kids don’t really want, to grown up teenagers who just want to catch up with the latest trend, but then that is part of living in this modern world.

Three things I learnt today.

1) Hamleys claims to be the finest toy shop in the world – do not necessarily agree. Although the shop got 6 floors of latest gizmos and toys, the place is too cramped and too crowded.

2) You can put stamped or franked mails in London – the evidence is there inthe photo. I fully agree.

3) It can rain hails in London in early spring. Agree. That was what happened today and we had to take shelter for sometimes to get away from the painful rain of hailstones. You can see the small white stuff on the pavement - that's hails.

Breakfast at Hartland Road

It’s good to catch up again and meet our cousins in London. Moments like these are rare but useful, for the kids to meet up and get more acquainted with their cousins, and for the grown ups to catch up with what’s happening back home. It may sound weird but sometimes being away from home is a form of needed ‘escapism’.

Here the children are given the best possible opportunity for the future in terms of education and in preparing them to be more socially at ease with people from other backgrounds and cultures.

Back to Hartland Road, we were served with nasi lemak. The kids had the usual favourite lasagne. The Hartland Road kids are schooling at the nearby Islamic-based school run by Yusuf Islam. http://www.islamia-pri.brent.sch.uk/about.html
This is a model school that should be replicated back home. We are still not able to integrate fully both English and Islamic schoolings. Kids grow up confused and as soon as they finished Darjah 6 Sekolah Ugama, all hell breaks loose.

Easter in London

Its the start of a long Easter weekend and 3 weeks school holiday. In Holland there are only 7 public holidays in a year of which two of them fall this weekend. Most of Europe have Friday and Monday off for Good Friday and Easter Monday. This year Easter coincides with Maulid Nabi or Prophet's birthday which is public holiday in Brunei. In some MiddleEast countries, they have up to 2 public holidays for Maulid and they continue with the Easter break. So it is a much longer break for these people.

This time we drove to London - the fourth time we have done it since arriving here. We set off after work yesterday on Thursday, leaving The Hague at 4.30 pm. We were caught up in the normal rush-hour traffic jams as expected. But there were also a couple of other unexpected traffic jams caused by road accidents in Belgium. The strong winds and pouring rains make it quite dangerous condition to drive. It should have taken 3 and a half hours but we only reached the EuroTunnel in Calais 5 hour later. Then we boarded the EuroTunnel train which runs every 20 minutes (see photo). From the other side, in Folkestone, it took us another 1.5 hours to reach Central London. We only reached there at 12.30 midnight. Luckily UK is 1 hour behind. So actually we arrived there at 11.30 midnight which does not sound as bad...

A Tribute to Dr Rock

Today, our Dr Rock left his job after working for 19 years. In those many years his passion for rocks and real geology touches the boundary of madness. Amongst others was to be the first of his countrymen in obtaining a PhD in Geology. At times he could be seen as a lonely figure by the side of the road hammering at rock and in somewhat some ritual feat engaging himself in a fascinating and complex jigsaw puzzle – rocks and geology. His involvement in the local oil industry warrants more than just being a well-known name mooted by all young geologists who have been fascinated by his obsession. No wonder it is a sad day for all his colleagues today. But things have to move on. This probably is one of the many steps that increasing number of Bruneians are doing now, expectation are changing. Priorities do evolve as the situation around you change. The world is not static. Otherwise we are in danger of being too static. The face of Brunei is changing. Whether we like it or not, we have to take things like this as a positive change.

For me, my memory with him will be the fieldtrips to Brunei Bay and Samarinda amongst others. Fun, mixed with geology, ecotourism and great food. But seriously these are the trips that really bring you back to modern analogues to understanding the past – the present the key to the past. I wish all the best to him in his new job. Bila lagi makan?

Waffle or Wafel

Here I write about the famous Belgian waffle, the one in the photo is what we had in a small cafe in The Hague. Waffle is the Dutch (and the Belgian) version of pancake. It is normally sold by vendors along the street during winter and served hot. Eating one does helps to beat the cold temperature briefly. A ‘waffle iron’ made up of two hot plates is used to cook it and give it the distinctive pattern. Normally the outside gets cooked quickly making it crisp while leaving the inside tender and light. The ingredients are simple like any pancake - flour, sugar, salt, milk, eggs and some butter. On the street, it is already prepared and only waiting to be warmed.

Unlike the street vendors, the waffle in most café’s are freshly made. One could request the waffle dusted with confectioner's sugar or topped with whipped cream or chocolate spread. Yummy...

Fernando and Faris

Faris, our youngest, is a Liverpool fan. He only realised a few weeks ago that he shares the same birthday as Fernando Torres, the Liverpool hit man, who is on a remarkable scoring streak right now. Torres is now the second top scorer in the Premier League and is the first Liverpool player since Robbie Fowler back in 1996 to score 20 league goals in a season. And yet there are 8 more games for him to play.

Faris will be 11 this Thursday on the 20th March while Fernando Torres will be 24. Faris is a regular player at school but only play it for fun.

Here's Faris busy filling up his blog. Most of the time he collects his ideas from the Liverpool website and searched for photos from Google before writing his blog. In this way he can keep track of Liverpool progress. Here's his blog. http://liverpoolfc2.blogspot.com/

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.