New Moon

Yesterday was the first time we watched a movie since coming back. The movie was New Moon, adopted from the second book in the Twilight series. It was courtesy of Volvo to celebrate the launching of the new XC60 model. So why New Moon? I am guessing here....Edward Cullen the vampire was driving an XC60 in the movie! Good for Volvo.

Today is the third day of the Eid. Outside it is now full moon being the 15th day in the month of Zulhijjah. With the current korban functions still in full swing in villagers, government offices and private sectors, there are now a lot meat being passed around. Hopefully the needy will get their much needed share.

On completely separate topic, I was reading regarding 'Kiasu' in Singapore and the bad lights associated with it. 'Kiasuism' also seems to become more prevalent nowadays in Bumi Bertuah. Kiasu meaning ‘the fear of losing out’ and is associated with a kind of ‘me-first’ attitude. It is not a behaviour to be proud of especially when people start to take all sort of advantages for the benefit of themselves only.

21 times

I have been looking for my yellow book for sometimes now. In the end after weeks of searching, I decided to go ahead without it. This must be my 21st time donating blood, all the records were in the yellow book. I know the book is somewhere. I am sure that I will manage to find it one of these days - it must be still in one of our boxes.

The blood donation procedure nowadays is slightly different from the past. I was told the changes were made after a recent visit by some American doctors to the hospital!

A form containing a long list of questionnaires had to be filled in beforehand. The form, apparently more suitable for blood donors in the States, contains a lot of questions that touches on one's sexual behaviours and lifestyle! There is also now more restriction on who are eligible to donate. Those who are taking light medicine such as panadol are not even allowed to donate.

The blood unit at RIPAS is quite an efficient one. The whole process took just over half an hour today. At the end I left RIPAS with a punctured arm and 400 ml less blood.

Time to get some refreshment!
Amazingly Bandar was a busy place today. There were traffic jams everywhere. The school holidays should have made people to spend more time in the office, but alas, banks and coffee shops seemed to be the focus instead.

The Last Hill

The long weekend was about doing serious work-out at the Bukit Shahbandar. It has been a steady progress. Last week I covered five hills. On Sunday morning together with our youngest, we challenged ourselves to run over seven hills. We were totally exhausted at the end. At the last stretch we could only managed to walk and lo and behold P. Sarah with her bodyguards overtook us!

This morning, a holiday for those in private sector, I went the whole lengths covering all nine hills. By the last hill I thought I have spent all my energy. The last climb was a real agony, quite excruciating.

The Rites

As always the korban almost started soon after the morning Eid prayer. This year six buffaloes were sacrificed in the compound of our mosque. The best thing about the whole rites is the communion effort of the villagers. About a hundred turned up to carry out all sort of tasks. Basically it was like a well-machined army, everyone knows what to do and carried out their tasks diligently.

It is amazing to see such community work is still very much alive in our country.

It did take quite an effort to prepare the meat distribution out of six buffaloes. Normally the whole thing takes about 6 to 7 hours to finish including the distribution ceremony.

Welcoming Aidil Adha

Time flies very quickly. It was only just a while ago that we celebrated the Aidil Fitri now come the other Eid. This Eid is probably the better of the two as there are no pompous preparation required and spiritually more meaningful.

I was late reaching the mosque today. As I sat, luckily the microphone was handed to me. And there I was given the chance to led the Takbir just before the Iman made the final ones.
The sermon was a standard one that is always delivered every year. First touching on how lucky we are to see another year and another Eid. And then on our duty to do the korban and reminding us on the sacrifice made by our Prophet Ibrahim. It all may sounds so monotonous. But really we humans are very forgetful and weak beings, we always needed to be reminded on simple things like this.

The Friday's sermon delivered yesterday touched on a topic that has been the common theme over the last 3 weeks or so - Zakat. It must have been the after-effect of the confusion and surprises with the zakat distributions last month where some 4000 received the Zakat. The figure was a real shock to everyone. It begs a question - sampai bila 'Bumi Bertuah' akan bertahan.

Jamrah Pillars

'Bumi Bertuah' is probably the only country that is celebrating tomorrow. Today as the world is celebrating the first day of the Eid, it was quite a sobering day to spend almost the whole day attending meetings. By the time I reached home in the dark, I saw the live TV pictures of the millions of pilgrims converging in Mina, a beautiful and moving sight. It reminded us of our own journey to the holy land in 2003 where in Mina that year saw one of the biggest disaster seen in the pilgrimage season.

Nowadays the place is a lot safer. The Jamaraat has been extended and capable of accommodating the flow of 2 millions pilgrims. The whole hajj experience is safer and more comfortable. The place is still very crowded though.

Broken Table

Amongst the 475 boxes or items that were packed in our container, this one didn't survive the journey. But otherwise the rest were okay.

It's now two weeks since we moved in to the house and still lots of things to do. But hopefully give a month or two most of the boxes will be completely opened. Hopefully.

We are now looking forward to the weekend. It's the Eid as well as an extended weekend. It will be another busy weekend though!

Steep Climb

It has been quite a while since I have been to Bukit Shahbandar. The place is definitely quite popular with the Bandar folks. Today I followed that popular trail, challenging myself by running over five out of the nine known hills. The heavy downpour last night though has made the trail quite slippery making running only possible over the flat and gentle slopes.

The whole place is definitely beautiful, with lots of green everywhere. The morning dew also made the place a really refreshing place to be today.

Having said that there is one thing I don't like about this place and wish it wasn't necessary. There are a huge number of concrete steps built all over the place. It is something that is inevitable as most of the steep climbs would be almost impossible to maintained and climb. Nonetheless there are still some steep climb especially those on the back trail that still have muddy tracks. These are the more challenging part of the whole Bukit Shahbandar trail.

Beautiful Game

Our youngest did a football marathon today joining his team in the inter-schools football tournament. With a group of friends they formed a team calling themselves the "Nerds in Red". They were doing and organising things themselves, apparently were without a coach. So I offered myself to be their manager but then I have to skipped early!

They were against real competitions, amongst the best school teams in the land. They lost all their five matches, even thrashed 5-0 in one game. But then there were no sign of resignation or regret, they were just having fun. Good for them.

A Normal Weekend

It was another normal weekend again, another round of wedding functions to attend. In our closely knitted society, hardly a week passed by without a wedding or two to attend. Indeed it is a huge social commitment but one that is unique in terms of scale and pompousness and helps to bind families and friends together.

The weather has been in general quite wet lately. Luckily not a single rain drop during the main function today even though many dark clouds were lingering all day long.

As in yesteryear during the monsoon season, it is expected that there will be flooding here and there. Hopefully the big flood that took the capital by surprise early this year will not happen again.

Slow Road

It has been a struggle to find time blogging. Being in the first week of our house move didn't help with endless things that needed to be moved around. Then the busy work in the office before facing the slow road going home which normally takes about an hour driving. But the worst time is when road blocks were set up, which exacerbate the time to reach home.

Time to reach a destination is all relative. In the past, time is not important as long as we reached the destination. But nowadays time is a real essence. Took this photo yesterday of the old ferry point in Tutong. Fifty years or so ago, to reach the other end of the country, one had to use a ferry to first cross the Tutong river. In those days most of the roads were built along the beaches or literally the beaches were the roads. Then proper paved roads and bridges were later built. Hopefully in the not too distant future a highway will finally be built. Hopefully someone will still remember this ferry point and restore it. It is an important piece of our history.

A Simple Life

When we passed this small building or structure at the Taman Sungai Basong, our youngest asked what is it. I told him that the small structure is what we call "durong", a place to store harvested paddy. Indeed this unique structure is not commonly seen nowadays anymore.

Next to it is a slightly bigger structure - it is a proper house. It is difficult to imagine that less than a hundred years ago this was a typical dwelling for many of the people in this country. The structure is quite simple, all the materials were obtained from the forest. Obviously the actual roofs for both structures were also from the forest and not as in the photo!

People in those days lived a fairly simple life. How things have changed. Nowadays we really live in a pampered world. So much so that some of us live and spend beyond our means.

Live to Work?

There seems to be no respite to a busy life. After a busy working weekdays in the office, Saturday is the day to look forward to but as always there also seemed to be a thousand things to do on the day. Today was exactly that. We ended up hopping from one shop to another. The current humid weather does not help. Lately the weather has been unusually hot. Today was really hot. The haze seems to be back. It is supposed to be the beginning of the monsoon season. But may be all these repeated typhoons hitting the Philippines has changed the weather pattern in Brunei.

Today's last stop was the Jerudong beach. This is our usual place for fresh fish. The good thing about living here is one could buy fresh fish almost straight from the landing boats and eat on the same day.

Missing The Bigger Picture

There are too many shop houses outside town nowadays. Though many are standing idle without anyone wanting to rent. A few years ago there was a sudden rush by developers to build shop houses in every villages, where ever there are willing landowners. Whenever someone wanted to open a business, it is allowed as long as the land title stipulates that it could be used for business. Not only that some houses were slowly converted into trading places and even workshops. What seems to be a good and sensible way to stimulate SME, the notion of villages or housing area being converted into semi-business areas can not be right. Peace and tranquility of villages is slowly disappearing. Setting up a workshop in the middle of a village can not be right.

So who to blame. Rural planners? Everyone would have a good reason somehow. But all seems to be missing the bigger picture.

A Fragile Ecosystem

A beautiful sight of Tutong river I took from the air. This was my birthplace. I wrote an article last year about the place. The meandering river used to be the villagers' bloodline before roads were constructed. Incredibly even with the fast pace of housing and other developments that have been going on, one can still appreciate that the whole land is still a vast green real estate - very pristine.

However on the ground level it is quite different. Flooding seems to be more severe than usual. It must have been due to the urbanisation where large tract of lands are now deprived of trees or even any vegetation. As a result less amount of water is retained and the river tend to be easily full when it rains. A remedial effort to widen the river and clear up the river banks seems logical but resulted in some animals to lose their natural habitat. A good example is the more frequent sighting of crocodiles recently. There was even a couple of crocodiles attacks resulting in two fatalities. So who do we blame for those fatalities?

Musim Durian

This year's durian season has been a special and real long one. Unfortunately this week is probably the last batch of durians one would see before the fruit season officially come to an end. Someone said the extraordinarily long season is due to global warming. Not sure wheather that is a real reason but if it is so then global warming has at least one good effect.

It must have been 6 weeks now since these photos were taken. It was during the second day of Hari Raya - our normal ritual is to go Tanjong Maya to our Grandma's house (Great Grand Ma for the kids!) first thing in the morning. Straight after the visit, in full Hari Raya attire, we went to our family's durian plantation. The timing was right - the durians were just ripening or about to.

Apart from that, one could find durians being sold along every main roads. The best deals are normally in the rural area.

Bukit Ambok Trails

This famous hill located right next to Tutong town is basically on our door step. From the top of the hill, one could get a nice glimpse of the town itself and also the vast greeneries of the Brunei interior. The Labi hills and the higher mountains standing beyond Brunei border in Sarawak could also be seen on clearer days.

The last time yours truly been up here was probably five years ago. The whole place has not changed a bit compare to the well known places like Bukit Shahbandar or Tasek in Bandar. If anything the place looks a bit neglected. There used to be a lot of people running up and down on this hill but now no more.

Today we saw a couple of mountain bikers and probably 5 or 6 groups of runners. The place is not recommended for new comers though as there are no proper labels for direction. Honestly you could easily get lost. And if you are a ‘fragile’ type, the place is also a bit scary – too quiet. Otherwise Bukit Ambok got a few nice trails to run with a number of real steep climbs. Altogether there are three peaks. A full circle passing through these peaks probably takes about 30 minutes to run which by the end you would probably be half dead.

Best thing is to start from the Northern side by the highway, known as the Taman Sungai Basong. There are ample parking spaces, a small restaurant and a few other simple facilities. If there are more eager runners and a corporate event or two being held here may be the place could become as popular as its other better cousins!

A New Chapter

After a two-month break here we are again back with our blogging.

We are now slowly settling in to the familiar environment. It is always good to be back. Of course living outside is equally a great experience. We all know the Malay phrase ‘Hujan emas di negeri orang, hujan batu di negeri sendiri……,tempat jatuh lagi dikenang, inikan pula tempat bermain’. The temptation to work longer outside is always there but we have decided for now to stay put in our homeland.

Reflecting over the many events in the world for the last two months, there was a lot of news of natural disasters, wars, human hunger, economic recession, political instability and so on. Brunei seems to be immuned to that. Our country is located away from areas prone to natural disasters, has the forest, the oil, the natural resources of water, the rich and beautiful culture and a benevolent ruler. For that we in Brunei are indeed blessed. The disasters and calamities outside are just like dreams, something we take note and quickly forgotten about.

But for all those things that we are getting, we should not take them for granted. We should not waste. We should think for the future not just to ask for more to enrich ourselves. Everyone has a duty. Everyone has an important job. We are only living and sheltering in this beautiful country during our lifetime, soon the next generations will take over. We need to leave something for them to look forward to, such as the prosperity that we are enjoying now and to create even more for them. As we endeavour to help the country and cater for the next generations, we like to share our views in a constructive way in this blog. At the same time while we re-explore and get to know the country better, we also want to capture these as well. We thought it’s appropriate to call the blog - Berteduh diBumi Bertuah.

By the way this is our new kitten - always curious of its surrounding.