Going South

On Friday, we set off from Blackpool to London on the M6 via Birmingham before joining up with M1. It was quite a smooth ride - we were even on cruise mode without any interruption for more than an hour.

In all it took exactly 4 hours including a stopover for fuel. Luckily England is not suffering the fuel shortage as in Scotland where long queues were forming due to panic buying. This is due to the current strike in some of the major refineries resulting in the shutting down of the North Sea oil export line. The petrol price at the same time climbed up to £1.10 per litre! Imagine if you need to fill up your tank - cost us £56.

On the other side of the M6 motorway heading North, we saw a roadwork where the motorway was reduced to only one lane. We saw the queue forming behind, must have been 20 km long! We also set off early as up to 18 million people are expected to be on the road later on the day for the start of the long Bank Holiday weekend.

Beached in Blackpool

From Lake District, it was one hour drive to Blackpool and passed through the Yorkshire Dale Country. I spent 6 weeks some years ago (1986!) somewhere closeby here to do my summer mapping in a place called Ingleton, this place is famous for its Carboniferous limestone rocks. This is also where the famous White Scar Cave, Britain's longest cave, is located. A tour inside the cave bring you to hidden underground river system. The other spectacular sight is the walks around the many waterfalls (photo) and peaks.

In Blackpool, we stayed over at the Northern end of the Promenade. Being a weekday, the place was a bit quiet. This place will be crowded this weekend as weather predicted to be hot and coinciding with a Bank Holiday on Monday. But nowaday with the advents of cheap flights and holidays abroad, Blackpool has passed its heydays with hotels changing hands quite regularly. The amusement parks are still lively though. The Pleasure Beach park seems to have many more new rides now adays. We had a try with the fish and chips - but its no longer authentic as before when it used to be served and wrapped in old newspaper.

Wonderful Lake District

On Thursday, 1st may, we drove from Liverpool heading North to Cumbria where the famous Lake District is located. We went to the largest lake, Windermere, 1.5 hours drive from Liverpool.

Lake District is famous for its unspoilt nature, beautiful lakes and great places for hiking, mountain walks and adventure. We didn’t have time for that sort of adventure though. Our only adventure was to see the lakes and the scenery, feeding the ducks (at the same time being chased by them).

The lakes and the mountains were formed by glaciers. This resulted in some peculiar look to the landscape. The rivers and lakes tend to be straight; the high grounds such as the hills are smooth and rounded.

City of The Beatles

From Hull, we drove Westwards on M62 towards Liverpool. We passed through Leeds, Bradford, and Manchester before reaching Liverpool 2 hours later.

We checked in into Premier Apartment, a walking distance away from the City. The apartment cost us 129 pounds and has 2 bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. It’s quite a nice apartment with an underground car park. We were only staying here for one night though.
http://www.premierapartmentsliverpool.com/

In Liverpool, we first went to Anfield, the home of the Kop. There was lots of talk during the day as Liverpool was playing against Chelsea in the Evening. During the evening we tried to watch the game, but the few pubs that have Sky sports showing the game live were full. So we just went back to our apartment and just listened and followed the drama unfolded.

It wasn’t to be the third time lucky for Liverpool. Faris was quite disappointed. He blamed the referee. The super rich of Chelsea are going to Moscow.

Admittedly Liverpool were just short of the quality that Chelsea had, only Gerrard and Torres really stood out. I think they should take this Dubai billionaire to fund for new and better players rather than relying on the current American owners.

Later we walked to the famous Albert Dock where the Maritime and the Beatle Story Museums are located. Next to it is a newly completed large convention centre, currently being used as Liverpool is the European City of culture this year. We only went to visit the Beatles Story Museum, a worthwhile place to go.

It displayed the life of the Liverpool fab four – Paul, John, Ringgo and George, from performing in the famous local Cavern Club to the world stage and the start of Beatlemania. It's an eye opener for the kids who hardly been exposed to the 60's music.

From the museum, we walked to Renshaw Street to eat at Master Chef Restaurant, a well known Indian restaurant. The food was good and affordable but the service was quite slow.
http://www.masterchefrestaurant.co.uk/

Landing at Hull

We were only let out an hour after the ferry arrived. In Hull, we picked Dillah, our niece, who is studying at the Hull University. She is currently sitting for a degree in psychology and staying at the self catering accommodation at the University (see photo).

She brought us along to see the city – surprisingly quite a modern city. There are not many Bruneian studying here though. We only spent a couple of hours in Hull and probably have seen most of it.

On the Big Boat

We left home on Tuesday late afternoon for ‘Europoort’ at Rotterdam to catch a ferry to UK. The ‘Pride of Rotterdam’, once the largest ferry in the world, left at 9 pm to start the overnight trip across the English Channel. It took about 11 hours to reach the other side, at Hull, enough time to have a good sleep in the cabins. It costs us 367 Euros for the one way trip which included charges for our car and two cabins.

The ferry itself has 12 levels, level 3 to 4 for trailers and trucks, level 5 for cars, level 6 to 9 for cabins and 9 to 12 for shops, restaurants and entertainments. Inside you don’t feel that you are actually in a ship. The bar was crowded though as Man U vs. Barcelona game was on. To kill off the time went to watch the movie ’Jumper’ in one of the cinemas, Zim and Fiz watched ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ in the other one. This is a bit of a change from our normal trip via the tunnel as we wanted to explore a bit of the Northeastern part of England – the quickest route is via Hull on this ferry.

Our Street

This week will be a short working/school week. Wednesday is Koninginnedag or Queen’s day. This is followed by Ascension Day on Thursday which is for Christian the Ascension of Jesus to heaven, forty days after Easter. And Friday is a bridge day or a day force to take leave.

Koninginnedag used to be celebrated on the birthday of the queen. But nowadays, April 30 is selected because at this time of the year good weather is expected. The Dutch holds a big celebration on the city streets on this day. Everyone wears orange - the colour of the royal house. Streets are brightened up by orange balloons and orange banners. The highlights are the flea market on the street where anyone can sell whatever they want. The streets are filled with music and stages are set up through the city playing all sorts of music and concerts.

Our street as I was told was named after one of the Queens or Princesses in the Dutch royal household. Our street Paulaland I presumed must be named after Princess Pauline, the daughter of William I who was the first King of the Netherlands. My daughter said this is not the case. She said the street name was named after a cow!

Deadly Sunset

This is a nice snapshot of the sunset over the Dead Sea taken yesterday. Just across the water where one can just barely see some landmass is Israel. Amidst the chaos over the other side, one could not feel any apprehension of whatsoever on this side over the longstanding Middle East issue, at least not that I could see openly. Indeed Jordan has managed to position herself to be the mediator and playing almost neutral role on the issues, at the same time getting precious aid and supports from US and the Arab world. The country itself is small in terms of population – 6 millions – but even without oil or other real resource apart from agriculture, phosphate and potash industry, the economy seems to be doing well.

The influence from the King on the development of the country is quite obvious. One example is the number of policemen on the road controlling and checking the speed limit. On the Desert motorway and the Dead Sea route, one could find a police patrol every 5 km. We were told that the King was so incensed with the high accident rates in Jordan, some 7000 were killed in the past 10 years, that he imposed strict policing of the roads round the clock. If caught the fines are heavy. If one exceed even by 1 km of the official speed limit, the fine is 25 Jordan Dollars which is about BD60. If the speed was exceeding by 40 km, the fine is JD250 which is about BD600! It seems to work.

Sleeping at the Bottom of the World

We were picked up from the hotel today for the airport transfer, a 45 minutes ride. The driver was asking how was sleeping like at the bottom of the world. Indeed we were at the lowest land point on Earth. The sea itself is 420 metres below normal sea level. The oxygen is richer than normal and makes you burn energy quickly and also make you sleep well.

There are many resorts sprouting at the North end part of the Dead Sea, which is closer to Amman and the airport. This location seems to be a good base for visiting places around here. Jericho, one of the oldest inhibited cities in the world - some 8000 years old now, is just in the neighbourhood. Mount Nebo, Karak, Jerash, Madaba and more.

Feeling Home in the Mountains

The rocks in Petra and the surroundings are quite old but very interesting. I took some interest on it due to my line of work and the project I was on. It’s called the Disi Formation of Early Cambrian age, which is more than 500 million years old.

The rocks and the mountains in Jordan offer some the most impressive sights. To a geologist this is a place for respite and yearning. Even for our prophets, the desert and rocky mountains had its special place in religion, in providing needed solace.

Floating in the Dead Sea

In the afternoon it was a 4-hour drive crossing the mountain into the Jordan Valley where the Dead Sea lies. The route passed through one of the largest potash and salt mining industrial sites. Potash is one of key export of Jordan, mined by drying out water from the sea.

We check-in at the Marriott Hotel, was lucky to get a room as the World Motor racing rally was actually taking place a few hundred metres from the hotel. In fact every single hotel in the Jordan Valley were full. As soon as we arrived, we headed straight for the floating experience on the Dead Sea itself.

The water here is 10 times more salty or concentrated than normal seawater, meaning its specific gravity is very dense and makes your body float.

At Marriott, they provide a drum full of the black mud in one corner. So one can have a 'mud treatment' for free. You just plastered the mud which is black and supposed to contain over 30 minerals all over your body and wait, sit down while watching the sun goes down. After 15 minutes you just have to wash it down by floating on the Dead Sea. Because the mud is quite salty, it can give you quite a painful feeling especially where you have recent scratch or cut. The mud is supposed to cure a lot of skin disease and so on, that’s what they say.

Petra – Rose-Red City

Left the Marriott Hotel in Amman at 7 am and reached the Petra in the South at around 10.30am. Its my second trip here but it’s always is a worthwhile visit which offers amazing panorama.

Today being mid April, is rather hot. Spent about 3 hours with my colleague, an exceptional geochemist from the City of Bradford, to explore the whole place, climbing up and down like what a geologist likes to do. Today being a public holiday, there are scores of tourists pouring into this little place. Must have been thousands.

The is the city of Nabetean Arabs, the cave dwellers, who inhibited this ancient city over 2000 years ago. All the buildings were carved out of the solid rock, which form the extensive face of the narrow valleys, which the city was built into. It was recently included as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.

We also went to Little Petra – a much smaller but older version of the main Petra. There was hardly any tourist there – not that many people know the existence of Little Petra.

Our driver (cum our guide) was a talkative chap. He managed to describe the landscape of Jordan being divided into 3 areas. The west being the Jordan Valley forming the lowlands around the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galileo. The middle is the mountainous areas, which contain a lot of religious relics, cities (including Amman) and castles. The Eastern part is the dry rocky areas or the desert, which are the least interesting part except for the Wadi Rum to the South. The best time to visit is definitely March. It was scorching today.

Hot Day in Amman

Security in Amman is still quite tight. To enter the hotel, one needs to go through rigorous search and x-ray screening for the luggage. The reason is to avoid what happened a couple of years ago when a series of bombings hit a few renowned hotels here.

Today I attended a series of meetings. The first one was a long session lasting nearly 3.5 hours with 14 others from the counterpart. Was planning to go through my presentation in 1 hour but ended up talking 20 minutes longer! Luckily no body smoked in the room. It was still quite stuffy though; only respite was the endless round of coffee and tea.

Later in the afternoon went to another office for yet another meeting. At the end of the day it was quite tiring but finally I can put a wrap on this project, which took the better of me of the last 9 months.

Amman is hot today at 35 Deg. C. The city itself is fast developing with lots of new buildings going up. The one in the photo is an office comples and when finished will be the tallest building in the city. Tomorrow we are off for a short detour to our business trip. The office here has offered to bring us down south to Petra.

Back to Heshemite Kingdom

Its back on the road again. After opting not to go to Dubai and Cairo, because of workload, this time around had to go to Amman for a meeting. This is my fourth trip to Jordan in the last one year, only once was for holiday with the whole family.
http://paulaland-paulaland.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

Its a 5 hour direct flight from Amsterdam. Royal Jordanian Airline is one of the better airline to serve the route with proper business class seat unlike KLM, Air France or Austria Air. It's really is hot here, about 29 Deg. C, even at 6pm. The forecast is for extremely hot condition in the next few days. It's a big contrast to Holland. Last Sunday, it was quite cool and pleasant weather in The Hague. Lots of people were out in force, mostly were cycling and wearing T-shirt. Although still relatively cold but people seemed to be wanting to enjoy the weather and the sunshine while it's still there. Can't blame them - the last time the temperature was above 15 Deg. C was over half a year ago - that was on 31st October 2007!

Where's My Bike?

This is an incredible sight outside the Central Station in the Hague. Whilst buying the Sunday paper today, I thought I should capture this photo.

Its back to bicycle-friendly weather again with Summer coming up and suddenly the whole place is full of bicycles. Normally what happen is that people from outside the Hague would come here by train and pick their bike (if they can find it) and cycle from the station to their office. In some cases they would also cycle from their home to their local station and leave another bike there. At home they would have a few more which they use for leisure or even going to their local town. It's all good for the environment, the leg muscle and in making the city less congested.

In China however it's the other way round. Everybody wants to own a car. Its a status symbol. So much so Beijing is so differnt nowadays. Once a city of millions of bicyles is now a city of millions of cars with heavy pollution that comes with it.

West meet East

Another video-photo. This one captures our recent trip to Berlin and Hanover.

Jalan Jalan

Collection of photo video during our short trips to UK. The red car has been our chariot in those trips.

One small mistake in the video - Cambridge University tour title is supposed to be Oxford University tour. It is a small matter - they are the same, places for nerds - the smart ones amongst our mankind.

The down-loading in the blog has been playing weird this week, took sometimes to load the video.

Some photos have already been captured in previous post.
http://paulaland-paulaland.blogspot.com/2008/01/days-at-museum.html

What an unlucky Country

Took me more than a month to read this fascinating book. Only time I could read was during the daily 45 minutes ride on the bus and tram back and forth to the office. It’s all about the tragic history of Afghanistan since the late 1970's when the country suffered continuous and brutal civil war, which included foreign interventions from Soviet invasion in 1979 to US-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the Taliban government and drove their radical Arab cohorts into hiding. The country was a play ground for foreign pawns from Russian to Pakistan, rich Arab gulf countries, Americans and many more.

Amidst the suffering and the deaths of millions, Afghanis never gave up and gave their energy and lives for their country for peace and return of normality. Hamid Karzai, the current President of Afghanistan, was a member of the Mujahideen and took active part in warring the Soviets out of Afghanistan during the 1980s. The Mujahideen then were secretly supplied and funded by CIA.

But all that time one man stood out - Ahmad Shah Massoud almost single handed played a leading role and led a formidable army in driving the Soviet out and later in standing up against the Taliban, through arms and political means. But everybody failed to give full support to him. He could have slaughtered the whole Russian army as their retreating convoys passed his Panjshir area. But he abided with the treaty. That infuriated the other Mujahideen groups and Western allies. After two decades of fighting and two days before 9/11, a suicide bomber killed him. Things could have been different. He would have been the rightful President instead.

Sekolah Lama

This is an old photo of my primary school. Nowadays most people back home don’t send their kids to government-run primary school anymore and opted for private-run ones instead. Even in the new RKN no upgrading primary school standard was mentioned, it was only for secondary schools. Yet there are still many government primary schools dotted around the countries and are hardly bulging with students. So where has it all gone wrong? Whereas most of the private schools are overcrowding.

Most of us are graduates of the government schooling from primary to upper six; and yet somehow we managed to get through our qualification and lead successful career. Nowadays given wider choices, we send our kids to what we think are best for them. But elsewhere be it in Singapore or Europe, there are not many private schools – if any these are only for the expatriate communities or the upper classes. It is expected that a primary school in your neighbourhood is as good as any in the rest of the country.

Windmills Country

One always associates a windmill picture with Holland. Actually there are many other countries which equally possess similar windmills but it’s the Dutch who are able to publicise, keep and maintained a lot of the traditional windmills working. In fact there are still over a thousand working windmills in the whole of Holland. The Dutch should be grateful to all these windmills and the many thousands more that have now been replaced by electric pumps, for the windmill actually over many centuries built the country!

Holland is protected from the sea by coastal dunes and dykes, without these sea defences around a third of the country would be under water. By the 14th century Dutch windmills were in use to drain areas of the Rhine River delta. Although many of the windmill were built primarily for industrial purposes such as corm milling and saw milling, but they were also used for land drainage thus increasing amount of arable land. This was easy to do as Holland is quite flat and expansion of drained area could be done very rapidly. The number of windmill later steadily declined with the advent of electric water pumps and proper engineering of the drainage system.

But in the past 10 years, the number of windmills in the Netherlands was actually rising as there has been extensive rebuilds. One can find at least a windmill in every town. The top photo is the windmill right at the centre of Leiden. The other is the one we took while at Keukenhof.

Kitchen Garden

This is what a tulip bulb looks like. They only grow in cool weather like the spring in Europe right now. Some people did try to grow it back home, but the bulb quickly wilted away unless you put in an air-conditioned glass house!

It was quite interesting to see some Dutch coming out to the flower park in full traditional costume. One family had the entire family members in the attire, very nice indeed. And obviously they quickly became the centre of attraction. Everybody wanted to take photos with them. And this is not easy as the area is swarmed by lots of visitors from overseas…mainly Japanese and Chinese but also Malaysian plus a handful of Bruneian (it’s us) amongst the crowd.

Our youngest taught us something about the background of Keukenhof. He said Keukenhof means kitchen garden. It came about it being nearby to a castle and the folks from the castle collected herbs and hunted the animal there for cooking in the kitchen, hence it’s called the kitchen garden. There you are…we always learn something new everyday.

A Season to Remember

It’s the flower season, meaning again more posting of flowers. Why not!

Just an observation I made during out car trips to London recently. There seems to be more Bruneians spending their holidays in there. We met a few whom we know, and it was quite incredible to bump into them there of all places. In most cases, they came to visit their kids who are studying in there.

In the past when one went to study in UK, you hardly ever hear parents attending the convocation (unless you are the lucky rich ones). Mine was a quiet affair, a non-event really. But in the past years, parents are more expected to attend the convocation. And now, parents seem to be going to UK much more regularly. I guess most of these parents studied in the UK in the past and would like to relive the experience and to see if anything has changed... well hardly anything has changed in London… the pounds still there (albeit sliding fast in value), the Queen still looking out of her window at Buckingham, and Mind The Gap is still blaring in the crumbling tube system.

If one were to put a bit of variety to your next trip to UK, why not hop across the water to mainland Europe. There is a lot to see in Amsterdam and in particular this time of the year is the growing tulips. This is exactly what a group of officers who are on an official visit to France did last Saturday. They rented a car and drove all the way from Paris to our place, just to see the Tulips in Holland. They left at 4.30 in the morning and reached our house 4.5 hours later. We brought them to Keukenhof – the flower park. Hearing from them, it was to them quite a worthwhile trip especially if you are in the middle of acres upon acres of blooming flowers around you. It’s a very relaxing feeling. Seems like in paradise (?), so peaceful, so lively, and so relieving.

There were some funny moments as well. The grass was not meant to be stepped upon, but one could hardly resist taking photos next to the blooming flowers without stepping on the grass… it was as if like scenes taken from Bollywood script… Bruneian sitting on grass, and taking photos next to anything worth posing!

Rock Climbing

This blog has been quiet for a week - being too busy with work, had a dinner do with some senior guys from Brunei and also we got visitors from Paris during the weekend. Today our youngest went to a birthday party in Zoetermeer at a place called Ayers Rock. Its a 20 minutes drive from home.

http://www.ayersrock.nl/main.php?p1=1&p2=57&p3=58&p4=54

For a change, this time around the birthday party has quite a different theme - rock climbing. Faris had a thought or two whether to go or not - because of the height. In the end he decided to go (well...he had to missed the live Liverpool-Blackburn match as well) and really enjoyed the outing. The place was surprisingly crowded. Everyone were looking at the climbers - giving unnecessary attention to the climbers.

The kids were first strapped to a safety harness and hooked to a rope. They then started to climb up while an adult kept the tension on the rope. If they slip, the rope would save them. Simple as that.

Tulips and Spring

Thoughts of the Netherlands bring to mind windmills, clogs and of course the famous Dutch tulips. One can't travel through Holland in the spring without spotting the flower. But why are tulips and Holland so synonymous?

This is the sceneries from last year when we visited the Keukenhof flower park. A friend of us who went there last week took about 800 photos. His wife also took the same number of shots.

So it is an irresistible place of great landscape for shutter bugs. It features beds of tulips, crocuses, daffodils and other flowers from March 22nd until May 20th. That is Spring; the surrounding comes to life in a stunning display of breathtaking beauty. Various companies have their own patches in the park where they plant and exhibit their type of tulips and flowers. Tulip is a huge industry here. Millions are exported. Yearly export is about half a billion Euros!

Our drive yesterday was around the Tulip fields between the town of Leiden and Harlem, a stretch of about 30 km. This is the Tulip growing district. Tulips grow so well in Holland because of the nice Spring climate. Tulips require cool spring temperatures to bloom at their best. One can buy a small packet of tulip bulbs for less than 5 Euros and plants them before the winter. When Spring comes they will amazingly come to life. You can see it in almost everyone’s garden. We normally buy a packet of two and plant it in various spots around our garden. This year we didn’t do it so our garden is a bit bland.

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'.