Poffertjes Lekker

This is yet another long weekend. The Dutch celebrates two days (on Sunday and the subsequent Monday) of what they called Pinksteren day, a Christian feast, which falls 49 days or 7 weeks after Easter Sunday or the tenth day after Ascension. In UK it is called Whit Sunday. In any case for most people it’s an excellent excuse to have an early break when the weather is always great in mid spring. The next public holiday is a long way to go – Christmas.

Yesterday we went to town. What we like about the city centre, for a city with half a million people, is there are not that many cars on the road and to reach the city centre is like a breeze. The reason is most people come on their bike. It only takes a maximum of 30 minutes from any part of The Hague to cycle to the city. And there in the city centre you can see the evidence – thousands of bikes parked everywhere and at any available poles that people could secure their bikes.

We took the time to rest at a coffee shop and eat poffertjes. It’s a traditional Dutch treat that looks like tiny pancakes. They are served with powdered sugar and butter to make them tasty. Lekker! which is a Dutch word for nyaman. This plate costs 8 Euros.

On a different subject, it’s the wedding season back home. While here we have missed out on a number our relatives’ and cousins’ weddings. Looking at the photos (there so many wedding blogs nowadays), their weddings looked quite grand. Gone are the weddings that used to have invitations of up to 2000 people. Nowadays weddings are more for close relatives and friends. Attentions to details, comfort, entertainments, significant of the day are more the order of the day. Gone are the weddings where people just come to eat, shake hand, give the white envelope and gone without even seeing the bersanding ceremony (or to know who is actually marrying). So places like JP and Rizqun seems to be popular and fits the occasion, otherwise specialized large tents are being used if the wedding is held at home. We wish all the newly weds everlasting happiness – Adey+hubby, Saiful+Abby, Khairul+Liza.

Middle of Spring

A month could make a big difference. The first photo is at the end of March near the bus stop to our house. A month later the gloomy and deadly surrounding now turns green and lively. This is something that we love here – the 4 seasons. The day hours are much longer now. Sunrise is at 6 am but sunset is at 9 pm.

Its T-shirt friendly temperature now. Gone are those thick winter coats and jumpers. People are going to the office in short sleeve although it could still be about 12 Degrees. C in the morning.

The buses and trams seem to be emptier (if that’s the right word). More people are cycling. Today my office mate cycle from Wassenaar to the office. It’s a distance of 16 km and took him 55 minutes. And he is not any fitter than me. And he has to cycle back after work. Wassenaar is kind of the ‘Beverly Hill’ area. It’s a nice and wooded residential area. So even people from Beverly Hill cycle to work!

Heading for $200?

This week oil reached US$120 per barrels. It leaves big smiling faces to the money men of the oil producing nations. Who would imagine even during last year that oil would break the $100 dollar barrier? Who would imagine during the oil crisis 10 years ago when lots of people were laid off and oil was selling at just over $10. Indeed the world has changed. There are more demands for raw materials and energy now specially as the 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians suddenly woken up and are now chasing the American dream.

Yet in this current increasing cost of living, people need to adjust their living style. The big movement now in Western world is to go green. It calls for a whole different way of conducting your life and how you can make a difference. For example there are few simple things that you can do that leads to less wastage. Like switching off lights when leaving a toilet or a room. Like using less air-conditioning. Like having less cars – Bruneian has to really kick the habit of having 3 to 10 cars in the garage!

For the Love of a Child

It’s a busy time for our kids now. They are having exams and studying hard. Our eldest also had her Malay oral exam for the GCSE….the conversation was taped and supposed to be sent to an external examiner. She should be ok. For the rest she is doing well so far. We received her first term result yesterday; all were ok except for Dutch which she got a B. Who cares about Dutch anyway!

Our second is quite an artistic and creative person. She is also doing ok in study but seems to be quite lively when it comes to drama and art. Our youngest seems to have the best time of his life. He hardly has any homework! His world seems to revolve around football. He reads only about football, play football, watch football, even dream about football. Although his team didn’t get to the EUFA final!

One way to cherish a child is to give them a great present like PS3, Wii etc. In a way it’s also to ensure your child is busy and don’t bother you! We had that conversation when we were in London. For us we made a conscious decision that this is something that our children will not be privileged to have. Our house has never had any PS2, PS3, Wii, and Xbox. The only thing our boy has is a small PSP. Looking at kids especially boys nowadays, they seem to be struggling in their studies because they are spending too much time playing games. Lately there is a sad trend in the rich world of Bruneian families. Kids are sent to study ‘A’ level in foreign countries be it under government scholarship or own money. Some of these kids struggle in their study and moral standing, let alone to appreciate what all the parental sacrifices meant for them.

A Book to Read

Nowadays I don’t have much time to read. Every time I go on my daily tram ride, I always bump onto my office colleagues and there goes my reading time. On the recent trip to Jordan I did made some mileage on my reading though. From Amman to Amsterdam flight, I spent the entire 5 hours reading this book! The story is so gripping that it was worth it. This is Khaled’s second book and he has already reached a fame status.
http://khaledhosseini.com/

Who else can tell a story about Afghanistan than Khaled who is himself an Afghan. Although he only lived in Afghanistan for only 8 years of his entire life, he is 43 now, people like him seems to thrive when living outside their own country. His first book which almost everybody have seen the film ‘The Kite Runner’ was published 5 years ago. This second one was finished last year. So he is not a prolific writer. But when he does produce one it is a master piece.

Night out at Kilburn

On Friday night, we went with the cousins living in Willesden to eat at Nandos in Kilburn. This one serves halal, to cater for the location's multi-racial populace. The place was lively and well patroned.

On the same night, results of the local council election was announced. London now got a new Mayor by the name of Boris Johnson who had beaten the incumbent mayor of the last 8 years -Ken Livingstone. The new mayor sound like somebody who originated from Russia. Looking at Wiki, it was quite surpring to learn that Boris Johnson is only 43 years old and is a great-grandson of Ali Kemal Bey, the Turkish interior minister in the Ottoman Empire around the First World War.

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.