Bloom Bloom Spring

Our Sunday drive brought us to the tulip fields about 15 minute drive from our home. This is where the Kuekenhof, the famous flower garden, is located.
http://www.keukenhof.nl/nm/english.html

But one could just drive around the countryside to enjoy the beautiful sceneries of growing tulips, laid down like very large colourful carpets. The weather has been poor this early spring so the tulips have not bloom properly. This place will change dramatically in the next few weeks. The scenery will be breathtaking and unbelievably beautiful.

Even today, many people were already on their bikes, carrying small rations with them, to cycle around the countryside and enjoy the sunshine and the weather. Every now and then one could see cyclists taking a break on the roadsides and having coffee and biscuits or sandwich, olds and young alike. One thing quite familiar is the number of German cars and buses around this area. This place does attract quite alot of them - literally millions during the growing season.

Today was full of sunshine but quite deceiving if you were in-door. The temperature actually hovered around 6 to 8 degrees C, still quite cold indeed. Right now at night the temperature has dropped to 2 degrees C. Looking at the forecast, the next few days will start to warm up and T-shirt weather hopefully will just be round the corner.

Lateral Thinking

When Heathrow Terminal 5 was opened 10 days ago, it quickly descended into chaos when the automated baggage system failed. It quickly resulted in a missing baggage mountain of 28,000 and cancellation to date of nearly 500 flights. To add salt to the wound, in what some people consider a brilliant piece of ‘lateral thinking’, the bags were sent all the way to Milan in Italy to be sorted! That’s because the struggling baggage handlers of Heathrow's Terminal 5 couldn't handle them. It took 24 hours to get them to Italy in a fleet of lorries and apparently it’s faster to do that than sending them by air. This is surely another great export success story for Britain…like the failing NHS, rundown rail system, the falling standard of British education and so on.

Just last Friday, when we talked over dinner at Olgaland on our recent driving trip to London, the roads are so similar to Brunei. As soon as we hit the black top, the standard of the roads are nothing compare to those Europe. When we think about it, most of us are trained and moulded the British ways; it seems we are reproducing all of this in our own place. May be this is the time to do real ‘lateral thinking’. Rather than too reliant on the British ways, lobbied by all sort of parties to pick and do business with British consultants and companies, lets us look elsewhere.

By the way, while stopping over at Schipol airport to buy Sunday newspaper, Faris got mesmerized by the size and power of this jet engine, two of this can thrust a large Boeing 767 which can carry up to 300 passengers.

Starblocked in Holland

Every where else in the world one can find Starbucks at many street corners but not in Holland. Actually, the one and only Starbucks Coffee shop in Holland can only be found at the Amsterdam Schipol airport. It’s a small take away bar with some tall tables to have your coffee standing. There are actually three Starbucks shops at the airport, this one at terminal two, another in terminal one and one after the custom. The two before the custom were only opened a few months ago. So in the past if one were to buy a drink at the airport you need to go on holiday.

Outside the airport there is also another one but in the Nike European HQ in Hilversum 30 km SE of Amsterdam. It is only opened for the Nike employees, apparently the American employers can’t live without Starbucks.

Why is there no Starbucks in places like Amsterdam? Their European headquarters are located in Holland but for some reason Starbucks never opened any stores in Holland. Some say that they didn’t have the agreement from the government. Holland is a coffee drinking nation. The people here love their drink and the coffee here is really great – real coffee. One has to try it out at the coffee shops. Once you developed the coffee taste bud, the Starbucks coffee is really bland in comparison. It’s hard to imagine a Starbucks shop to be swamped by the Dutch. The one at the airport was hardly doing any business.

Bumi Samarinda

Looking at my recently ‘recovered’ hard disk, I saw a collection of photos of my trip to Balikpapan and Samarinda. Balikpapan is back in the news in Brunei as possibly AirAsia want to operate more intra Borneo flights.

Back in the late 90’s, RBA had regular and frequent flights to Balikpapan and were well used but apparently for the wrong reasons. I won’t dwell too much on it. It was abruptly stopped.

Back in 2003, we went on a fieldtrip to Samarinda with Dr Rock. The trip had to go through Jakarta before catching another flight back to Borneo to Balikpapan. With all the recent troubles with Indonesian airlines, I would not dare to do it again. Balikpapan is the birthplace of oil industry in South East Asia. This is where billions have been pumped out and in fact the amount of oil and gas is similar if not more than what Brunei have. But it also suffers from what is called ‘the curse of the black gold’. The place remains relatively undeveloped and all the money goes somewhere else. Nonetheless Balikpapan is undoubtedly the cleanest city in Indonesia, won the award several times.

Our place of adventure was further down in Samarinda, a 4 hour bus ride from Balikpapan. Most of the locations could only be accessed by boats. So we ended up spending about 2 or 3 days floating and whizzing through the mangroves of the Mahakam Delta. It felt like the sceneries in the Vietnam war film 'Apocalypse Now' where most of the film scenes were around assult boats patrolling the Mekong river and its tributaries. Mixed in with the visit are some side trips to the local villages, a humbling experience. Samarindan seem to have similar dialect as Brunei. This is not surprising as Brunei once spread its wing, or rather its influence over the whole of Borneo. The highlight of the trip was also the food – the lobsters and ketam goring belada which Samarinda is famous for. The lobster and crabs were really fresh coming from the day’s catch.

Dimana Bumi dipijak disitu Langit dijunjung

Last week the Dutch was on the wrong end of the news because of the controversy with the release of the film ‘Fitna” by Geert Wilders, one of the MP. He is the leader of the Party for Freedom which he himself founded. For his unorthodox view on Islam, he is under constant security protection because of frequent threats to his life. Interestingly he has visited Iran once and Israel about forty times.

It was an excellent sermon during the Friday prayer. The sermon touched on the film but without an outburst of condemnation and actions. Rather the Imam reminded Muslims to be patient and that the Muslims will always face challenges, this is not the first time. The last thing to do us to end up being radicalized and stirring more news like in KL, Indonesia and Jordan where youths burnt flags and protested in front of the Dutch consulates. The Imam reminded the congregation that Holland has a long history as a safe haven for the oppressed especially from Muslim countries. The Dutch society is one of peaceful co-existence, with respect for the law, which guarantees safety and freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He said that Holland has a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility, and that offending others is not part of that tradition. There are several MP with Muslim backgrounds. The government always come up with developing initiatives to involve an active Muslim participation and paid a great deal in supporting projects that contribute to the development of the Muslim community. These include helping in setting up Muslim schools, mosques, facilities for Islamic religious practice, housings and burial and cemetery needs for Muslims. So much so there are a million Muslims here and 400 mosques. The Imam mentioned a proverb which originated from West Sumatra - " Dimana bumi dipijak, disitu langit dijunjung" – wherever we set our foot it is our duty to support, follow the norm, tradition and the authority as long as it does not contradict with our faith.

The imam also mentioned that this is an interesting time in the Dutch parliament which hopefully produced something unexpectedly good at the end. After the film was released, there was a strong debate in the parliment, Wilders came under strong attack from other MPs and all other parties. Some of the words used are blistering to the ears - 'Your film is vicious and unnecessarily offensive' and 'You are a trouble-maker, a political pyromaniac'.

A Family Tree

A couple of years ago, me and my brother embarked on a project to publish a family tree book of our ancestor. The back bone of the contents was already there done by our father who made a remarkable research of our family roots stretching over 8 generations. Nonetheless to make it up-to-date and inclusive, we had to retraced it back with those who were still living. In the end it captured about 600 names and biographies of the key figures, the ten persons who are the siblings of our great grand father.

In it we also narrated the history, the economic and social progress of the village where generation after generation of the families lived. Amongst the many photos encapsulated in the book is this one of the first mosque built in the village back in 1929. The publication luckily got finished just a few days before a grand family reunion at ICC. Hopefully it will remain a great reference book and a medium of binding our families together.

Chance Meet with Abdullah Badawi

From my hard disk, we found these old photos of our last holiday in Malaysia back in 2006 before we set off to Holland then. It was a 2 week fun filled adventure. Started in KL, rented a car and drove to Cameron Highland and stayed there, before heading off to Penang. From Penang we took an Air Asia flight, apparently it was the inaugural flight to the Low-Cost Terminal in KL. As we were with children, we got on the plane first and took the front seats.

It was only during the flight that the pilot announced the Malaysian PM would greet us as the first arrivals at the new terminal. There were loads of journalists and photographers waiting. So there we were…the first ones to get out of the plane and to be greeted...not Malaysian...but Bruneian… Our photos were splattered on every paper the next day. So there goes our brush with fame.

But now with the election over in Malaysia, things seem not really settling down yet. Ahmad Badawi was under pressured to step down and the few other states had their moments when it came to announcing their head of states. Whatever it will be, as long as the country remains stable, KL and the whole peninsular are great place to have holiday. However it is difficult to combine a stopover n Malaysia with our home leave… normally it almost doubles the ticket price. So for now we will stick to our holidays in Europe.

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/