What's in the Pattern

Zimah took these pictures when we were in Spain. I find the pictures really amazing. Apparently she has a different way of seeing and appreciating things. Rather than looking at the bigger constructions her mind is more into the little things.

In fact little thing like that does matter in life. We tend to look at the bigger picture only and always in a hurry to go forward. In the excitement of trying to reach our goal many little things in life are forgotten.

Today the kids started cycling to school again after a long break during the winter months. It looks quite funny when we left home this morning, all four of us were on two wheels, yours truly to the office and the three kids to their school. I bet you won't see that scene back home in Brunei. Their ride to school take them 30 minutes, by train is 5 minutes but that still need walking from the station to the school.

Tulip Landscape

Here are some photos taken today around the tulip fields in Noordwijk, 20 minutes drive from home. And a nice tulip poem by Abraham Cowley and write up to go with it.


The tulip next appeared, all over gay
But wanton, full of pride, and full of play
The world can't show a dye but here has place
Nay, by new mixtures, she can change her face
Purple and gold are both beneath her care
The richest needlework she loves to wear
Her only study is to please the eye And to outshine the rest in finery.

At first glance, it looks like a giant child armed with a box of crayons has been set loose upon the landscape. Vivid stripes of purple, yellow, red, pink, orange and green make up a glorious technicolour patchwork. Yet far from being a child's sketchbook, this is, in fact, the northern Netherlands in the middle of the tulip season.

With more than 10,000 hectares devoted to the cultivation of these delicate flowers, the Dutch landscape in April to May is a kaleidoscope of giddy colours as the tulips burst into life. The bulbs were planted in late October and early November, and these colourful creations are now ready to be picked and sold as bunches of cut flowers in florists and supermarkets.

More than three billion tulips are grown each year and two-thirds of the vibrant blooms are exported, mostly to the U.S. and Germany. In the first picture, an extraordinary 60 million tulips can be seen coming The fields of northern Holland explode into a colourful springtime display.

Their dazzling colours are thanks to the years in the 17th century when Tulipmania swept the globe and the most eye-catching specimens changed hands for a small fortune.

But like a rainbow, this colourful landscape is a short-lived phenomenon. When the flowers are gone the land will be cultivated for a rather more mundane crop of vegetables.

Middle of Spring

It's back to school today for the kids. No more late nights and watching Bones and cartoons on youtube. Faris said he actually learnt a lot of new things from watching cartoon that they don't teach at school. He said amongst other things, he picked and learnt from Homer in 'The Simpsons' about nuclear energy. Homer Simpson works as a nuclear plant operator in the cartoon! Sounds obvious to adults but try to hammer that point in the classroom -don't think kids would be able to grasp that as easily.

We are now almost in the middle of Spring. The weather has been charming outside with colourful trees and green sceneries. Everything seems to come alive again. Migratory birds are back making the whole place noisy and sounds more tropical. The same with homo sapiens who are now more out and about, in short sleeves and crowding the cycle lanes. Roads are also getting prone to congestion as people are spending more time outside and travelling. We hope the weather will last a little bit longer as this is probably the best time of the year when it is not too hot and flowers are blooming.

Back Streets

It was a short weekend trip to London, our last outing before the kids go back to their school routine and then sit for their exams. On this trip, we went on a wander around the backstreet of Regent and Oxford Street. Surprisingly there are many things to see and also many speciality shops that we have not been aware of. One street we stumbled into is known as Carnaby Street.

It has also been a while since we went to buy books at Borders. It's hard to keep up when the kids are really fast readers whilst yours truly always struggle to find time to finish my current reads.

Apparently there are now a number of Malay restaurants sprouting in London. A lot of people talked about them but we were not sure where they are. So it was just back to normal routine at Bonda Cafe to have the usual nasi lemak.

We came back late Sunday. On the way after driving smoothly for 2 hours on cruise control, we hit a traffic jam in Belgium. That was unexpected as normally there would be hardly any traffic jam that late. But apparently there was some major road work going on and two lanes of the motorway was shut down. We got stuck for almost an hour.

Trying to be Green

We started to notice more and more cycle lanes are being added to the streets in London. And that is good news as that provides another commuting option. More and more Londoners including a few MPs are ditching their cars and use their bikes to go to work. There is however quiet a contrast to the proper cycle lanes found in Holland. The bike lanes in London are quite narrow, at times cyclists are competing with what little space they got with the red buses.

Overall it does look quite dangerous cycling in this city when the bike lanes are actually not a proper lane but something that is carved out from the streets, and squeezing the remaining space to the other heavier road users i.e. the buses and the cars. The other irony is there are hardly any places to park the bikes. So the city is trying to be green but only seems half-heartedly.

Saturday at Khan's

The restaurant that we came to know from RanoAdidas's blog, the Khan's is located in Bayswater, right at the corner to Whiteleys along Westbourne Groove. Apparently the eatery place has been in business for over 31 years and has refrained from serving alcohol for 10 years now - quite a challenge as Brits like to eat their curry with their beer. But business nonetheless is roaring. We booked our table well in advance but due to traffic turned up a few minutes late, that ended seeing our table been taken away. So we have to wait, but luckily not for too long. There are always people waiting to be seated but the place is more than capable of handling the demand. I asked the chap serving us about the place, he said there are up to 300 seats (really hard to believe) with nearly 70 workers and 3 kitchens, so the service is really fast and efficient.

On the place itself, it has definitely its own unique buzz and atmosphere. It's more of a place where you want to meet up in a large group, things around you just too frenzy if you are looking for a quiet meal out. The best food we thought is the chicken tandoori, the rest are nothing extra-ordinary. If one is looking for real special Northern Indian cook, there are better places to go. The prices here though are quite reasonable, definitely cheaper than those in Holland. And if one is driving, the restaurant would pay the parking ticket but it only applies to a NCP car park nearby. That is definitely good value for money as parking in London can really bite your wallet.

Skillful Footballer

Guess what? Ronaldinho was there performing on the street. This famous Brazilian football with a certain distinguished facial feature was the greatest footballer of his time. Actually this one is his lookalike, but is also equally skillful. Real fun watching him.

Badminton Time

Caught them in action. The kids have been wrecking the lawn. Their daily badminton game is causing a huge stress to our beautiful grass. Believe it or not this photo was taken at 8 pm, still glaringly sunny here, and daylights will be getting longer as we are approaching the summer.

Famous Street

These are some of the photos we took along the La Rambla. Rambla apparently came from Arabic word meaning dry stream. I won't dwell into how that word became to be used for this street. La Rambla is no doubt the most famous street in Barcelona. It is actually a wide walking pavement in the middle of the street, normally thronged by tourists and locals alike. It connects Plaza de Catalunya, the central park, with the harbour area. A walk along the street is a nice way of spending the afternoon whilst seeing and being entertained by lots of street entertainers.

There are all sort of them. Mostly are there to ask for a small change for the chance to take photo with them.

On this trip we were quite wary of pick pockets. A friend of mine has his bag stolen whilst arriving on the train here recently. Most of my office colleagues also warned that pick pocketing is rampant in the city. Things like this sometimes make you wonder whether you want to know about it. Now that you know, you tend to be over cautious and that sometimes are really spoiling the spirit of a holiday.

In any case we decided to travel light, I was not even carrying a wallet! Looking around, because most places are crowded, people can easily fall victims to pick pocket.

Back to Amsterdam

We are back from the trip. Like Paris (and even London), there is a bus service to get to the airport. Most of the tourists here are using it. It is actually very convenient and only takes 30 minutes to the airport. The bus pick-up is right at a corner of the Plaza de Catalunya which is next to our hotel. When I checked out how it works, there was a long queue at the bus stand. But then the bus leaves every 6 minutes so there is no risk of being left out.

Finding halal restaurants here is quite easy. There are mostly located along the streets called Carrer de l'Hospital, Carrer de I'Arc de Sant Agusti and Carrer de Sant Pau, all are next to the La Rambla. There are at least a couple of Pakistan/Indian restaurants and a few Moroccans. Of course one could try the Spanish national dish, the pealla, which is a rice dish, but we only opted for Pakistan's curry!

The kids will still have a week or so to go on their school break. While yours truly is back to the donkey work in the office tomorrow.

Plaza de Catalunya

This is the centre of the city, a large central park where people tend to hang around or just wanting to feed the pigeons. Today was a nice and sunny day for a change, the last two days have been mixed with light shower now and then in late afternoon and the evenings. Today being Easter Monday most shops are closed. But there were large crowds out in force to enjoy the sunshine.

Our hotel, called Hotel Regina, is just a minute walk from this park. After searching around the Internet, it seems to be quite a convenient hotel in terms of location. Overall hotels in Barcelona are quite expensive but can be a bit reasonable if one does not mind to go a bit further away from the centre. Everything else are quite cheap. For instance food are almost half the cost compare to Holland. A ride on the metro only cost 1.20 Euros.

Red and White

Saw these red and white bicycles all over the city. The bicycle scheme started with only a few bikes. But it became so popular that the city council now provided 3000 bikes to the users.

The scheme is quite simple. Basically you pay an annual subscription of 24 Euros. This gives you a key to use any of the bikes that are park all around the city for you to cycle to another location. The first 30 minutes are free and if you need the bike longer you pay 30 cents for each half an hour. The maximum time you can keep a bike is 2 hours. The are now 3000 bicycles located at over 200 stations, connecting other public transport stations such as metro, train, buses and major car parks. Is this something for back home?

A Crash Course of History

This is probably the most famous landmark in the city, a massive church that has never finished. The construction has still not finished even after it started 120 years ago by Gaudi. In fact the cathedral, known as 'Sagrada Familia' or 'Temple of the Holy Family' is only expected to be completed in the year 2026. The reason is because the money raised to help the construction comes from public donation. Secondly, when the idea was conceived by Gaudi, the means and tools to realise the dream was not even there, such as the construction machinery like high cranes and required sturdy building materials. Gaudi worked on the project for over 40 years before he died. Over 2 million people visited the church every year. Why 2026? It's the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death!

Our guide, Armando, is quite an attentive guy. However he always ended up his discussion with me rather than the kids.

The kids preferred this arrangement! Although they claimed he is not the best guide we ever had, at least he is not like all the previous guides when we were in on our holiday such as Egypt or Jordan where they tended to specifically focus the briefing to the kids. It's probably because the Spanish history is a bit heavy and complicated especially as it is not something that is taught widely in school.

With Armando, we talked about the long history of Catalonia, the land of the Catalans from the 80 years rule by Muslims, to the rule by King Aragon, the civil wars, and later in general the modernisation of the city of Barcelona which resulted in the amazing transformation of the city to what it is now - a truly livable city.

Historically the Iberian Peninsular was under Muslim rule during the early days of the Arabs and Berbers invasion. Then it was back to Christians during the reconquest which later saw the fall of Granada and Cordoba. Catalonia emerged from the conflicts as a regional power. The marriage of Crown prince of Aragon (Ferdinand) and Queen Isabella of Castille which merge two kingdoms tied Catalonia to the new Spanish kingdom.

Then much later was the invasion by the French forces of Napolean. Then a republic was formed before General Franco the famous Spanish nationalist reunited the whole of Spain through civil war. Though this was with a little help from his friend from German i.e. Hilter, who sent squadrons of bombers before WW2 to flatten out a number of towns in Catalonia and Basque. That was the short brief on the history that I could remember from the tour guide.

Back to the present day, amongst those things that really changed the city was the 1888 World Expo and the more recent 1996 Olympics. In fact there are so many beautiful buildings and parks all around the city that would probably require weeks to really explore and visit.

The Olympic hills next to the city is already on its own a large complex to visit. Mix with the old forts, the buildings from the World Expo and the various Olympic sites, one could see the full view of the city and the harbour from above these hilly locations.

Bizarre Buildings

The city was made famous by Gaudi, the eccentric architect. So the theme of our city tour was mostly around the constructions made around the city by Gaudi.

Known at Gothic architecture, one could see some of the world's most interesting and bizarre buildings here. First stops were Casa Mila and Casa Batllo along the street of Passeig de Gracia. These buildings are famous for their outlandish exterior design which reflects animal shapes, artistry, fantasies and own interpretations.

There are always long queues of people wanting to enter the buildings which we were told the insides are also quite interesting to see. Antonio Gaudi lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a Catalan, with ideas far beyond his time. His works are either loved or loathed by people. Definitely for architecture students, Barcelona is worth a visit to see something different.

Later we went to Parc Guell, another of Gaudi's design. This is a large garden park which is now declared as human heritage site by UNESCO.

At Nou Camp

Just came back with Faris to watch Barcelona playing at the club's stadium, famously known as the Nou Camp. It is the largest stadium in Europe with a capacity of 96,000. Anybody who happened to be in the city would not miss the chance to watch a Barca game. On the way we met many people (many are fathers and sons!) who obviously have never been there. Together we all managed to work out how to use the metro, find the direction and so on.

Today, unlike last Wednesday when a full house watched Barcelona played against Bayern Munich, there were only 56,000 people watching. Still a high number but because of the stadium's large capacity, there were lots of empty seats visible.

We managed to get our tickets from the Internet, a bit more expensive than their 40 Euro face value. Our seats are right at top of the stadium, quite an awesome sight to see the whole stadium.

The stadium is a lot steeper compare to the traditional football stadium, initially was quite a frightening experience, especially as we have to climb all the way up. In most cases, standard football stadia could probably have a capacity limit of between 60 to 80 thousands. But with the steeper slope, Nou Camp managed to squeeze in up to 96,000 seats. Novertheless the view of the pitch is still good and in a way better compared to when watching in other stadiums.

We arrived an hour before kick-off. The stadium was still empty then. Dutring the game, saw a couple of goals, the first one was in the first minute! Later there were a couple of goals disallowed, lots of good plays and chances and a Messi's penalty saved. Overall an exciting game and experience. The big names were playing - Messi, Henry and so on.

We left 10 minutes before the game finished to make a head start before the crowd start descending to the metro line. The scoreline by then was 2-0.

Visitamos Barcelona

We are spending the weekend in Barcelona. It was an early rise this morning. By 4.40 am we were already on our way to leave the car at the airport's long-parking area. The flight was just before 7 am. Finding an empty slot at the parking area was quite difficult. Literally there were tens of thousand of cars, left by people who are on holiday.

On GPS, it says it would take 14 hours to drive to Barcelona which is about 1200 km away. A friend of us is current doing just that, driving all the way to Portugal which is even further down. Many of the natives here would do that during the summer, taking the journey easy with a few night stopover in France and so on. We opted the simple way, by flight. The plane was full. Daily there are about 10 flights to Barcelona. With the school holiday it was not surprising that it was full.

Barcelona, located in the Iberian Peninsular facing the Mediterranean sea, is a popular tourist destination for many northern European. In fact the Iberia coasts containing Benidorm, Alicante and so on are the favourite destinations for beach seekers seeking cheap holidays mainly from UK and Germany. My first trip here was back in 1985 for a field course. Later came here several times to go to the Pyrenees mountains just west of the Iberian coast.

Barcelona is quite a big city, with over 5 millions people. Barcelona itself is known as the main centre for the province, the people are known as Catalans. The vast majority of the Catalans reside in Spain, where they number over 7 million, the rest lives in southern France.

We decided to take the train from the airport to the city. Our hotel is right at the centre, next to Plaza de Catalunya, officially the city's centre. Next to it are the famous La Ramblas and Palaeis de Gracia which are the most famous shopping streets here. In fact both places were quite busy today, resembling more like Oxford Street.

Today we walked around the city centre. La Ramblas is quite a colourful street with many street performers doing their own unique tricks here and there. The famous 'Ronaldinho' performer was there. Will try to download the video one of these days to show his trick.

Fizah had her own mind. She wandered around herself for 5 hours before we met her again. She seems to be more at ease exploring the city centre on her own at her own pace. She told us later that she had almost covered most of the cultural areas and seeing many of the prominent locations at the city centre.

A Sermon to Share

It was an opportunity to bring Faris for the Friday prayer. This Mesjid has quite a good mix of jemaah, mostly Indonesian and a fair share of other ethnics and also the native Dutch i.e. tall and lanky white Dutch. Giving a sermon is always tricky to accomodate all. Although the main medium is bahasa, the imam would also translate that into Arab and Dutch. On a few occasions one of the native Dutchman would give a sermon, obviously in Dutch and English.

The sermon today was regarding social integration. There is now so much anti Islamic sentiment in the Western world. If we look carefully, it is due more regarding cultural dislike rather than Islam itself. There is always a misunderstanding between what is Islamic and what is cultural oriented behaviours. The failure of not only migrant muslims but also the ummah as a whole to shake off anti Islamic cultural affinity is quite sad. One example is blood revenge for family honour which in a way attribute to the acceptance of suicide bombing in some cultures. Then there are groups which literally translate the hadiths and Qur'an to the extreme - as an example everyone except muslims are to be avoided socially and to be looked down. Equally for us, many of our own cultural practices also need to be looked at carefully. Lets not keep culture just for the sake of keeping a rich heritage but to review them whether they contradict with our religion. In past there were a few strong fatwas putting religion first before culture but lately we seemed to be turning back and culture is back in the heart of everything. So much so when we are not doing well, someone would say that at least on the bright side we still managed to preserve a strong culture!

Time for a break

The kids are on their 3 weeks term break since last Friday. It will also be a long weekend away from work with tomorrow being Good Friday, followed by Easter Monday. Traditionally it's among the busiest time in Europe when people set off for a short break. In UK alone some 2 million will be flying. In mainland Europe, people normally travel on the road to places to the South for warmer and sunnier weather. For that we are also planning on a trip. It's not a 'jejak rasul' this time but more of a European cultural tour. We will set off early on Saturday. Watch the space...

From then on it will be quite hectic time work-wise.

Back home not much news coming out. Apart from the housing projects which seemed to be much 'talked about', I was actually desperate to hear more drastic economic stimulus to alleviate the current unemployment syndrome. Alas, seems to be still in a state of denial, one expert said the country is immune to the recession because of the large employment in public sector - he might missed the subtle point, that is the very reason why we must move faster as the economy feeding the public sector is almost non-existent except for the black gold. And again some still missed another subtle point, territorial gain (if that is really the outcome), still requires effort to find the black gold. Hope is not enough. Acknowledging that all blessing and richness come from God Almighty, without effort the hope would not translate into a tangible outcome.

Tiger Prowling

It's the weekend that most keen golfers will be looking for. The 2009 Masters at Augusta starts tomorrow.

Though not playing that funny game anymore, we are keen followers of Tiger. This guy always delivers and provides great entertainment. Just last week he managed to crawl from 5 down to win the Bay Hill tournament. So much was the excitement that many major TV broadcasters in the States changed their prime time schedule to beam the drama unfolding live on TV.

Talking about live TV, last week's F1 was quite disappointing. Supposedly to suit viewing time for Europe, the race at Sepang was just too late in the afternoon. After the event apparently everyone knew that there was a high chance of rain after 6 pm in KL. It's like the recession, after the event, everyone seemed to claim that they knew that it was coming. So why was it not rectified? Why nobody stand up?

The reason may be that people are always living in a dream. Things seem to be rosy and people just dare not change it even though there is definitely something wrong somewhere. As a result people becomes indecisive and reluctant to challenge. These are just a couple of examples. There are many things going badly wrong when you look around closely. At the end, we all ended up facing the consequences.

Yellow Clog

Missus got a call from the internet provider. They are offering to upgrade our connection from 6 Mb/s to 8 Mb/s, and at the same time cutting our phone+internet bill from 65 to 50 Euros per month. It does sound strange. When I checked their website, indeed the company is trying to abandon all the lower connections and want to make 8 Mb/s as the lowest speed. Then I found out that their 20 Mb/s now cost 65 Euros. So the question now is do I want to upgrade to 8 or 20 Mb/s?

But this is nothing compare to the superfast broadband that will be coming in the near future. In Holland, the government has been experimenting that broadband speed in one village for a year now. Just last month the first 50 homes in the UK got commercially connected to the 100Mb/s fibre optic broadband network. And in the news today Australia is planning to spend US$30.6 billion on what's been labelled as "the single biggest infrastructure decision" in the country's history," to create a nationwide high speed broadband network of up to 100 Mb/s.

Long Ride

The weather was promised to be a glorious one this weekend. After a couple of weekdays in the high 16 to 18 degrees C, Saturday morning was quite a disappointment. There were light showers in early morning when we sent our niece and her friends to Schiphol for them to hop back to UK. The temperature by then had already plummeted down to single digit.

Faris however was insistent that we do outside activity. So there we were cycling a distance of 15 km in the afternoon.

Holland is a very bicycle-friendly country. The way that cycling is included in the traffic systems and the flat terrain all contribute greatly in providing the perfect conditions for a stress-free cycle ride. In all there are about 20,000 kilometres of specially designated cycling lanes and paths in the whole country.

Special cycling paths are very much in use to separate bicycle traffic from motorised traffic. As many people are cycling here, evidently there is a need for such appropriate infrastructure. Thus cycling is accepted as an important mode of transportation and not simply as either a kid's game or a professional sport. This makes the cycling community very diverse - children riding to school, people commuting to work, couples on holiday, people on a leisurely weekend ride, racing professionals - they all share the same network.

The other side to this is that it can get a bit crowded on the cycling lanes, where so many people often riding with different attitudes and at significantly different speeds come together. The large use of bicycles does lead to the wide availability of diverse facilities, like proper route signs, dedicated traffic light and so on.

However, bike theft does become a real problem. Annually some 750,000 bikes are reported stolen, which is about 5% of all bikes in Holland! As a result of the risk of bike theft, many city dwellers, especially students go around on very bad bikes . They are in such a bad state that it may astonish you that people are still using them. This is a very common practice, not only to limit the loss of value at theft, but also as a kind of insurance by reducing the appeal to theft. These bikes are used only for 'high-risk' areas in town like the railway stations, or for going to the university. Many people, however, have fairly good bikes, esp. for daily commuting.

Today we went on a nice path from home to the kid's school, about 30 minutes ride from home. Then we went off in the direction of Wassenaar before heading back home. All in all, with breaks in between, we spent one and half hours riding over a distance of 15 km. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon out in the open.

Saturday at the Autoshow

This week, the annual car show is being held at the Amsterdam RAI complex. The RAI is a large exhibition and convention centre on the outskirts of Amsterdam. The car show, known as the AutoRAI 2009, is a biennial event which started in 1899. So this year it celebrates its 110 years!

Not that there were any cars on show then back in 1899 (when were cars invented anyway?) but it was started off as a bike show. It evolved into an auto show and has grown over the years to be one of the largest auto exhibitions in Europe.

The car show is big with literally all the large halls being used, something like 10 halls in all. One could basically spend the whole day. We were there just like most of the crowds, curious to see what's on display. The clear theme is on Eco-friendly cars, most of the exhibitors showing how 'green' their cars, mainly to do with fuel consumptions.

Brunei in Dilbert

What a surprise! This was on Dilbert Daily today. Though I don't understand what the joke was about.

Brunei was also mentioned in the Simpsons twice. Don't know which episodes were that.