Whale Watching

Yesterday we went out into the open sea in a boat for whale watching. The whole trip was only 3 hours long, an hour to reach as far out to the whale's feeding ground, an hour to look around for the whales, an hour to get back and still have time for a quick stopover near to a puffin island.

Whale watching is gaining popularity worldwide. Here Iceland provides that unique opportunity to do that. Near to the capital Reykjavik, one could see the smaller whales that feed in the shallower water. To see the much bigger whale like the Humpback, then one need to go out further out in the ocean or deeper water and even in the quieter waters around the Island.

There are two main operators offering the whale watching tour out of Reykjavik. The boats are located in the Old Harbour which is just a short walk away from the centre of Reykjavik where we stayed. It only takes place during the warmer months from April to September when the whales are seen to be feeding around the island here.

During the colder months, the whales migrate down south. Some of the electronic tags put on the whales to track their migratory routes found that they reach as far south as the western coast of Africa.

Trying to spot the whale is actually not easy. The tour guide would announce any sighting through the microphones and uses the clock system...the whale is sighted at 3 o'clock...meaning it is on the right side of the boat, and so on. Everybody would then rush to the right and next moment the whale being wild would surface on the left!

We saw a few whales. Admittedly not easy to take photos as people would crowd around as soon as a whale is seen. They are also quite quick and unpredictable. They would surface every few minutes to breath as whales are mammal. They only surface for a few seconds, sometimes also making big noises and even showing their belly when they are about to make a deep dive.

Overall it was a good experience. It's even more true now as the whale population is dwindling due to the uncontrolled whaling industry in the last century. Sadly a few countries notably Japan are still continuing their whaling industry under the auspices of 'scientific research'. Amazingly this 'scientific research' require them to hunt up to 5000 whales a year!

This is Funny

Great View of the Rift Valley

As part of the tour we went to visit Thingvellir national park which has been declared as a UNESCO world heritage site. Not only it is a beautiful place, this is also the location of the world's first Parliament. This happened when the islanders were fed up with their Viking rulers, they broke away and formed a representative system where new laws were debated and voted. This was done in a place called the Law Rock. The exact place is marked by a big Icelandic flag.

The national park is actually a large and long rift valley. It is a big depression, much of it is in the form a large lake. When looking at the sight, this reminded me of those movie scenes in the Lord of Ring or King Arthur.

Nonetheless, the guide was forever talking about the rift valley as the split between Europe and America. This prompted Faris to have an endless discussion of where we were then as we walked through the rift valley, in North America or Europe? This is where the Europe or Eurasian plate is spilt from North American plate. The rift valley is the split and in a way we were walking between two continents. The rift valley is now a depression because it is not being filled up by magma from beneath the earth. Elsewhere along the same line as the rift valley, mountains are formed as magma are extruded along the split in the form of volcanoes. Ok enough of that.

Back to the scenery, it is an amazing sight especially when looking from an elevated ground.

Smoky Land

When the Viking found Iceland, they named the first settlement as Reykjavik meaning 'bay of smokes'. Reykjavik is located in a large bay but the 'smokes' description is related to the many Geysers and steams that can be seen around the place.

We went to this area where a cluster of active geysers can be found there. The largest one known as Geysir or the Great Geyser is no longer active though. It only becomes active after an earthquake when some openings are formed in the rocks allows]ing hot water to come out again. It used to hurl boiling water up to 60 metres high. One could only see this famously captured in many photos and posters.

The only big geyser left is called Strokkur geyser which erupts much more frequently, erupting to heights of up to 30 metres every four to eight minutes. In fact this is probably one of the few geysers in the world that still erupts at regular time.

Great Waterfall

Yesterday we went on a long 8 hour bus tour around the southwestern part of Iceland. This tour is more famously known as the Grand Golden Circle tour, probably the best package tour regularly organised here by several tour operators. It brings you to the most famous locations and great sights that are located close enough to Reykjavik.

The tour guide was excellent, describing the history, geography and above all the geology of Iceland as we progressed through the day. In fact it was like a geological tour - I had been to many geological field trips but this was the first time I managed to bring the family to one! The tour was a real good value for money costing about 55 Euros each.

One of the stop was this waterfall called the Gullfoss waterfall. Gullfoss means Great Waterfall. The water comes from melting glazier which is actually quite close by. The glazier's front is in fact only about 30 km away. A large part of Iceland is permanently covered with ice and Glaziers. This particular one is the largest in Europe.

Because Iceland is located quite close to Greenland, an hour flight away, is actually more located further north latitude-wise than Anchorage in Alaska. The weather here is normally extremely cold except for the southern coastline where it receives warm air from the Gulf Stream. The temperature like today was just nice and cool at 20 deg. C. But going north, the temperature becomes extreme. In fact there is a drop of 2 Deg. C for every 100 m elevation. And that is why just 30 km away from here one could see the front of moving ice or glazier.

One could see a lot of great falls resulting from the melting ice all around the island but would need a week tour. Gullfoss is probably the best known because it is the easier and closest one to reach. But there are more spectacularly and higher ones elsewhere.

Living on the Mid-Oceanic Ridge

When friends asked me where I am going for holiday, I said somewhere far far away from Geology – Iceland. Very funny!

Iceland is where one could actually see one of the evidence of the theory of Plate Tectonics – the mid-oceanic ridge. The theory of the Plate Tectonics incredibly only developed in the 60’s where it brings together older concept of ‘Continental Drift’ and a newer concept of ‘Sea Floor Spreading’ to describe the large scale motions of Earth’s lithosphere in the form of large plates. This was something I learnt when I reached university in the 80’s. But nowadays this subject is already thought when kids are in primary schools. Our daughter was already able to write an essay on plate tectonic when she was 7 years old when studying at JIS. So there goes how knowledge evolved very quickly in recent times.

Iceland is located in a Mid-Oceanic Ridge. The Mid-Oceanic Ridges are where two plates are pulling apart from each other as hot magma (liquid rock) emerges from the mantle as lava to fill the crack continuously created by the plate separation. The lava cools and in this case forms a land mass known as Iceland.
The Mid-Oceanic Ridge in Iceland resulted in Europe and America to be going apart from each other. The ‘spreading’ rate is actually very slow averaging 2.5 cm per year, or 25 km in a million years. But if the process continues for millions of years, this would result in plate movement of thousands of kilometres. Over the past 100 to 200 million years the Atlantic Ocean has grown from a tiny inlet of water between the continents of Europe, Africa, and the Americas into the vast ocean that exists today.

Middle of a Lava Field

Yesterday we spent a good part of the day relaxing at a hot pool about 40 km away from Reykjavik. This is said to be one of the coolest pool in the world. Known as the Blue Lagoon. It is a must visit place whilst in Iceland. Located in a large lava field, the jagged surrounding rocks make it as if we were on the surface of the moon! The whole place is always steamy as the water temperature always hovers around 40 Deg. C. But that is nothing if you realised that the water is coming from deep in the ground where the temperature is well over 200 Deg. C, enough to kill any bacteria. The place is more picturerisque when visited during the winter. The water look like fizzy blue in colur.

Today there were endless busload of people coming to the place but the whole complex is large enough to accomodate a lot more. The only way to get around in Iceland and visit places are by using bus. There are a handful of bus/tour companies doing that which provide pick up from the hotel before shuttling people to their destinations or tours. Even on arrival from airport, the only way to get to Reykjavik is by bus or coach. There are only a handful of taxis here and they look pretty basic. To visit far out places, the best way is to use four-wheel drives or even snow mobile. Certain part of Iceland got permanent ice on the surface.

Back to the lagoon, it took an hour to reach there after changing bus and so on. Return bus tiket and entrance to the Blue Lagoon cost about 35 Euros. The lagoon was actually created by accident. Read the article below................

"The lagoon was created entirely by accident. In the 1970s, the Svartsengi geothermal plant began to discharge water rich in salt, algae and silica, which turned into a kind of caulk. A pool formed in the featureless lava fields in western Iceland, and when locals jumped in, they found that it cleared up symptoms of skin ailments like psoriasis. Today, the Blue Lagoon sports a 15-room clinic and a spa that attracts 407,000 tourists annually. With revenue of $21 million and 200 workers, the Blue Lagoon is an Icelandic blue chip. "We are one of the 300 largest enterprises in Iceland," says Anna Sverrisdottir, managing director of the Blue Lagoon.

Iceland's economy, which until recently relied largely on fishing, has diversified in recent years, with rapid growth in tourism, manufacturing and financial services. And like the Blue Lagoon, much of the growth has been a happy by-product of Iceland's decades-long strategy of tapping sources of renewable energy. Mindful of climate change and the need to limit emissions, many U.S. states have set goals of obtaining 10 or 15 percent of their energy from renewable at some point in the distant future, and the European Union has pledged to reach 20 percent by 2020. But Iceland is already at about 80 percent. All electricity on the island is generated through geothermal or hydroelectric sources—low-emissions sources that don't use fossil fuels. Most homes are heated by water pumped from geothermal hot spots. "We are blessed with a lot of clean and renewable energy," Prime Minster Geir H. Haarde told NEWSWEEK. "The only uses of fossil fuels in Iceland are people using cars and the fishing fleet." And increasingly, Iceland, whose most prominent exports have been haddock and Björk, is devising ways to export what has been a stranded resource.

Iceland is a small island with a tiny, ethnically homogenous population: only 300,000, with more than half living in the capital, Reykjavik. It lacks coal reserves, and is endowed with massive glaciers, which produce huge volumes of water that can be harnessed to generate electricity. It also happens to sit atop a rift in the earth's crust that keeps significant reservoirs of heat bubbling near the surface. To a large degree, it is the polar opposite of the United States. Yet we—and other developed nations—can learn some valuable lessons from Iceland about what happens when a society commits to the systematic development of renewable energy."

Northernmost Capital City of the World

It’s the last day of school. Seemed to be a frantic day today. There are all sorts of things to do. But in the evening we were off to catch a flight to Iceland. It’s a 3.5 hours flight going north. We can’t claim to be the first Bruneians going here, surely there must have been a few especially those from the civil servants for some government meeting or some sorts. But there can’t be that many of our countrymen who have been here.

We landed at the international airport which is quite a long way from the capital Reykjavik (not easy to spell). The surrounding was still quite bright as if the sun never set here. In fact when we landed at 11.30pm, the sun was just about to set (wow magrib at 11.30 pm!). A few weeks ago the sun was setting past 12 midnight.

Iceland is huge but has the same population as Brunei. Two third of the population lives in the capital Reykjavik. The country is well known to be a 'bankrupt' country due to the financial crisis. A few of their prominent banks, known to provide high interests on savings and attracted a lot of institutions and even city councils in UK and Europe, were closed down during the height of the credit crunch. It’s like a ‘pyramid’ scheme on a grand scale, but not exactly like those eye-catching pyramid schemes we all know too well in SE Asia which gave unbelievable huge returns.

School Concert

Everynow and then there is a 'casual shirt' day at school. This is always something the kids looking forward to, able to wear something other than the school uniform. Today was such that day, also coinciding with an outdoor concert held in the school compund. The acts were all provided by the students. Luckily today was a sunny and lovely day compare to the cold and rainy days during the last few days.

As this is also the kids' last week at school, they are starting to clear up their lockers. Apparently they have piling up lots of things mainly through their school project work. Sometimes we don't know what to do with all those tihings, but the kids definitely wanted to keep them. So there goes another junk that we will be keeping knowing too well that they are actually not going to be looked at in the foreseeable future.

Bowling in Scheveningen

The weekend was all about shuttling the kids to all sort of farewell parties. Faris had his. Zimah went out with most of her classmates watching 'Transformer' and then eating out at McDonald on saturday. On sunday she went to a farewell party of one of her closest friend. The plan was for an outdoor tampoline outing at Scheveningen but we ended sitting in the car for some time staring at the pouring rain which clearly would not stop at any time soon.

So a last minute change of plan. They went for bowling instead. And Zimah didn't mind as she did well in the end.

Now with the ending of school year, apparently a lot of the families here are also moving out of Holland. This seems to be the best time as it coincides with the end of schooling term and summer being generally a quiter period in the office.

The Masks

Back home, the face masks have been selling like hot cakes. Even some shops are selling them at $5 a piece!

The current swine flu is probably in much the same way that regular seasonal influenza viruses spread and apparently has been around since 1918. However the current outbreak was widely reported as a Mexican pandemic until probably someone complained that it should be called its proper virus name. It has been a trend by the media to name (may be shame) a place for the outbreak. Remember ‘Spanish” flu, the “Asian” flu and the “Hong Kong” flu.

In Europe, the regular flu season normally occurs during the winter. This is the period when there is prevalence of outbreaks of influenza during the cold months. It is quite common to take a flu jab before the period to minimise illness. We do take that every year during October or November. Some people refused to take that and allow their natural immunity to fight against any flu. However every year influenza viruses mutate and our body need to be well prepared for that. Hence the flu jabs. Nonetheless during the period it’s quite common to see many people off work for many days because of flu. In fact the flu season can be quite expensive to the business as too many people take sick notes hence some companies provide free flu jabs. Also in terms of human lives lost, that comes into thousands as it affects the olds and the vulnerable.

Cycling in the Pyrenees

Until now I am still waiting for my Bianchi bike. The bike shop said it could be end of this week but at the back of mind I thought more likely it would take a week or so at the earliest. So I'll just have to wait.

The Tour de France is into the end of its first week. It has been an exciting event so far this year with many surprising moments unfolded. The front runners are still very close with Contador, Armstrong and Wiggins amongst the contenders.

The mountain stages have been the ones to watch as always. These are the gruelling and physical stages. The one that top them all so far was the 7th stage from Barcelona to Andorra going up the Pyrenees. I spent a week in these part of the Pyrenees mountain many years ago. I remember the bus ride from Barcelona up to the mountains got some amazing views of the mountains and valleys. So watching the race yesterday, with the back drop that I am familiar with, I could felt the punishing and difficulty these guys felt. Yesterday's race length was over 200km long and they completed that in 6 hours. The last 80 or so kilometers was going uphill all the way and reaching elevation of over 2000 metres. These guys are real super humans.

Laser Game

It's Faris's turn to have his own farewell do today. He brought ten of his closest friends to a laser game party in Zoetermeer. They had real fun. Amongst those ten, apparently two of his friends were born in Brunei! How ironic.

The kids will have another 3 days of schooling before the school year ends. Then it is also a long summer break for them.

Switching the Light off

Yesterday was the final working day in the office before my seven weeks of leave and preparing for the move. When I finally switched off the light in the office, there goes another chapter in my work life.

Yesterday was also the last time I cycled to work. It has been great doing that continuously over the last 14 months since picking up the habit. Over the period I have covered over 5000 km, through the summer, winter, rain, sunshine, hot, cold, wind and snow. Cycling to work is definitely something that I will miss dearly. It completely changed my attitude, that life can be made simple and humbling. It is also a great way of seeing and understanding the locals here.

Now that the long leave is starting, few things are in the pipeline. Hopefully the current pandemic will die down and things are back to normal.

Another Goodbye

It was a two-in-one farewell amongst the ladies today. It was for missus and a Malaysian lady, organised by the Asean ladies.

Now with the school ending next wednesday and everyone disappearing soon, time seems to be a great essence as all sort of things are happening during this week. The children are all having their leaving parties, many other children who are leaving are also organising their own parties as well and inviting same, and we the parents ended up spending our entire weekends shuttling the children back and forth to places. So that leaves only the weekdays free to do any thing sensible.

Been watching the MJ 'goodbye' live on tele tonight. It was running from 6pm and lasted for 4 hours. A few of his songs were belted out by many prominent singers. He was an incredible and gifted person who gave many beautiful music and songs to the world. He is trully a great entertainer. A big loss indeed.

The Inevitable

The pandemic is really gripping the nation. Reading the news back home, it seems that all the pandemonium was about the flu.

But looking at the bigger scale, our part of the world is much quieter compare to the Americas. On the H1N1 endemic map (albeit two weeks old already), the flu was already quite rampant in the Americas. And yet we hardly hear anything mentioned in the main newstream or for that matter in the CNN. We have not heard of any big events being cancelled.

May be it's time to put things into proper perspective. Yes. There is currently a worldwide pandemic. It is inevitable that sooner or later all the countries in the world will be affected as we live in a world where millions of people travel across countries and continents everyday. In the midst of current recession, the last thing we want is another barrier being put to limit our normal activities. There must be better ways and means to handle the situation.

Cycling Season

Today I dropped by at a bike shop to place an order for a race bike. This has been something that I have considering for some time and the current Tour de France excitement and our homecoming necessitated the urgent case of action.

The guy at the bike shop was quite knowledgable, somebody who is really passionate about cycling and clearly knows what he is talking about. He spent an hour with me just talking about what make a good race bike. He showed me what Conatador one of the Tour de France contender is using. It's a Trek Madone model and cost about 3000 euros. Next to it is another Trek model that Lance Amstrong is currently using, costing nearly 5000 euros. Trek, an American brand, seems to be a favourite brand amongst the leading teams in the current tour.

I opted for Bianchi, an established Italian make. It's a C2C Vianirone 7 Alu. Bianchi is claimed to be more comfortable to ride due to its carbon frame. The frame itself only weight 1.5 kg! It is big in America compare to Trek simply because it is a European brand. It takes a couple of days for the order to arrive and another couple of days for the shop to assemble. Then it will be a momment of truth to see if my choice has been the right one!

Thanks a Million

Since some of the guys couldn't make it to the farewell last Friday, and as suggested by some to post it on the blog, here is the nice souvenir that we got from the Bruneian families living in Holland.

It's a Royal Delft tray, a truly dutch thing to give as a parting present. Thanks guys.

Just to say briefly about the small community of Bruneian here, almost all the families are residing in The Hague apart from two families. That two families live two hours further to the North in a place called Assen. Assen is a place that we used to live for some 3 years back in late 1990s.

One might find it strange that there is no Brunei embassy here even though there is a long economic link between Holland and Brunei through the presence of a well known Anglo-Dutch oil company in Brunei. Nonetheless, all is not lost, we have all been well served out of the embassy office in Brussels.

Now with the ending of school term and start of holiday season, most of the Bruneian here will be heading home for a good break in time for HM birthday celebration. Alas, it might be a quieter affair this time around as the celebration events are being postponed due to the Swine Flu pandemic. Hopefully the whole flu thing will die down quickly so everyone can enjoy the unique celebratory atmosphere.

Arhweiler Trip

Our second was back late yesterday from a week school trip to Germany. She was completely exhausted by the time she reached home and was already dozing off early in the evening.

She said the trip was quite fun, seeing lots of things, measuring distances as one of the exercises, learning about history as well as the environment. The trip brought then to the cities of Bonn and Cologne, cruising on the river Rhine as well as going uphill to see nice scenery's and learn about war histories. The highlight for the student was a visit to the Lindt chocolate factory!

Hot Day

Today was quite hot. Temperature was reaching 30 degrees C so we ended up eating ice cream and drinking soft drink endlessly during the day. We made a lunch trip to Beverwijk and also to look around for anything worth a bargain.

The place was quite crowded although noticeably quite a number of stores were closed because the owners were away on vacation. So surprisingly, even during one of the busiest time of year for business at Beverwijk, some people could not be too bothered about reaping extra profit and prefer to enjoy themselves for a good break somewhere.

In general things are much cheaper here compare to those found in big chain stores. But there are also things that you would not find at normal stores. We saw this one - a pile of plastic clogs, each selling at one euro! They seem to be popular and comfortable to wear. But like all other cheap things one could already guess where they came from - PRC! Literally it seems the whole world is full of goods coming from China and yet they are still well behind other major economies. I can't imagine what it would look like when they reached the same economic level as the developed countries - we would most likely be completed awashed with China's products.

Let The Tour starts

Here we are again. The greatest cycling race event in the world has started again yesterday. It's time of the year when football pro-players are to be seen fooling around from Vegas to Bahamas, Wimbledon done and only other things to watch are cricket and what turn out to be boring F1 races this season. So running from Saturday July 4^th to Sunday July 26^th 2009 is the 96^th edition of the Tour de France, made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,500 kilometres. It is always shown live here but during working hours, although millions of die-hard fans have already made the pilgrimage down to France to line up the hundreds of kilometres of road to follow the tour.

This year's Tour de France is shaping up to be one of the most exciting races in recent years. Yesterday the opening race was won by Fabian Cancellara. He is just ahead of Alberto Contador, one of the favourites.

Three names stand out as possible tour winner - Alberto Cantador, Carlos Sastre and Cadel Evans. Carlos is the defending tour winner, Alberto is the 2007 winner and Cadel has always been a runner-up. Mix with that is the coming back of 7 times winner after an absence of 4 years - Lance Armstrong. The other guy to watch is the outstanding sprint specialist - Mark Chavendish. He won the second stage today after cycling for 4 hours and 30 minutes.

19 stages left and looking forward to the mountain stages where the winner will be decided.

Brazilian Beans

After much scouting around for weeks, we finally purchased a proper coffee making machine. There are so many brands and makes to choose but we finally decided for the Italian DeLonghi EAM 4500 where it can also brew lattes or cappuccinos with just the touch of one button.

But that is only half the battle. The next thing is to find the best coffee beans. We are currently trying a few, amongst the many hundreds of choices, hopefully we can make a decision on one or two to stick to.

The coffee preparation is quite simple with the machine, coffee beans which are already roasted when purchased are grounded by the machine. Then brewed with hot water separating the liquid coffee and the unwanted grounds from the beans. All is done with push of a button.

A Gathering

We are into our 6th farewell already! Last night was at Theo and Saliha's place. Almost all the Bruneians were there plus a few of the Asean families.....thanks guys.

We started off outside in the back garden where the temperature was quite bearable compare to the past few days when it hit the 30 Deg. C mark, fairly hot considering there's no air-conditioning in most homes and the office.

Everybody now seems to be talking about the weather, mostly complaining. But then this has been one of the best summer for years. The past two years saw mixed weather whereas in 2006 was one of the hottest ever recorded.

Apart from that were talks about re-organisation in the office, a worldwide trend nowadays where most companies are re-structuring to combat the impact of current recession and low market confidence.

Then back inside to end off with the farewell speeches. Indeed time really flies, we came and now we are leaving.

Theo gave the parting speech. He was my mentor when I was a student 25 years ago. We only met again when we landed here three years ago.

Apart from that we have also reconnected with many old faces from the yesteryear, our kids also met their old friends from previous schools here, and we also make many new friends. So there is always a mix of joy and sadness when it comes to a farewell party.

Summer Festival

Last week was the Glastonbury festival in UK, held annually in Somerset in South West. It's one of the largest outdoor music festival, famous for its muddy ground and camping sites. The recent festival attracted nearly 180,000 music lovers, watching hundred of acts played on over 80 stages.

The small equivalent in Holland is the park pop festival in our city here. It is free though, grown over the years to become one of the largest free pop festival of Europe. As dictated by tradition, it is held on the last Sunday of June and this year is its 29th edition.

What is unique for this festival is the non-sale of alcohol and the family atmosphere. It has also become a festival with an international presence with thousands of visitors, And a junior edition is even held the day before: called the Kinder or children Parkpop!

Ladies BBQ

End of June to beginning of July period is when a lot of things seems to be happening at the same time. There are lots of public events, school ending activities but most of all the smell of BBQ smoke everywhere.

Was tracking the development of the Swine flu endemic back home, we were quite surprise on the sudden rise in the reported cases. Here there is hardly any thing reported in the news
at all. Even though being one of the focal points for international tourists and transit, the whole thing about the Swine flu endemic seems to be handled quite differently here. Life goes as normal.

School Summer Fair and Trip

This is it.......that’s what the king of Pop said O2 arena just a few months ago. What was it? The fans were looking forward to the upcoming concerts but looking at his frail condition, I have real doubt that would take place.

My recollection of him was the concert back in Jerudong Park in the mid 90s. Not amongst in the privilege circle, we were watching outside the amphitheatre seeing something unreal. All we could see him were from the video screens and hearing rumbling music. That was it then!

Now the summer school term is finishing, there are lots of school trip being organised by the school. Our second is off on a school field trip to a place called Ahrweiler in Germany for a week. There were lots of preparation for the trip, but Zimah is really looking forward to it. The bus will take about 3 hour to reach their base camp. From there promised to be some exciting activities for the kids.