By the time you read this, I would be in Kuala Lumpur for business.
I am not too particularly surprised that the Brunei International Airport is not one of the transit airports of choice by many passengers. The main terminal building was built in early 1970’s and it really shows. The layout looks outdated, the amenities are embarrassingly pitiful and the facilities are scarce.
Moving into the main satellite building, where one would wait for his/her flight to depart, I could not feel any more embarrassed. The duty free shops are at its minimal, selling the odd chocolate, perfumes and cigarettes. The newsagent is mediocre; it still stocks some publications published many months ago (I remember that many western magazines would have display by dates). There is an internet café, where the person looking after it was playing songs a bit too loud.
The toilet was something else. The toilets are located one floor down from the main plaza, so it is an inconvenience to go down to the toilets, especially if you travel alone and you have a trolley bag as a hand-carry baggage. Some of the lights in the toilet were not working; especially those on top of the cubicles, so one would have to do his business in the dark. There was no proper paper towel to dry hands with; instead the cleaner left a few rolls of toilet paper on top of the paper towel dispenser. There was even no soap to clean hands with.
Why can’t the airport authority look to the other airports around the region for inspiration? We do not have to do the whole lot, but at least try to provide recreation areas, eye-catching and always updated displays, properly working facilities and duty-free shops that sell more than just cigarettes, chocolate and perfumes. The airport authority should take the advantage of the profitable Kangaroo (UK-Australia) route. Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore now top the list of transit airports of choice and there should be no reason why our airport cannot be in the list too. Be patient; there is a plan for its expansion is in the pipeline (see here), but don’t hold your breath as apparently it is planned to be completed by 2036!
On a slightly different note, there was a group of Gurkhas going for the same flight. I was caught among them while going through the security checks. Most of the Gurkhas had at least a hand-carry bag with them for some reason some of them have pliers and knives in their bag. When it was my turn to go through the security checks, the police on duty mistook me for one of the Gurkhas as I put my laptop bag on the conveyor belt. She told her colleagues in Malay that I should better not have anything prohibited in the bag or else she would not let me take the flight at all. So I greeted her in Malay and she turned red in embarrassment! Do I really look like a Gurkha?
Just realised that with this post and almost a year on from the first post, I reach a century of posts! (I was not really counting and watching the post counter, but hey, it’s something to celebrate, right?) When I first started the blog, I was not too sure if the blog would actually continue to see its 100th post. The blog started off to a slow start, and somehow since the new year (well, my new year resolution was to post more regularly), the pace has picked up and a flurry of posts came almost daily.
The blog was started to record all the silly things that the Lunch Gang talked about or did. It was also meant to record all the ‘apparently’ stories that Bulgemeister managed to uncover and share with the whole gang. Everyone in the Lunch Gang was invited to write a post or two. A few contributed (thanks Jester and Kakarrot, and Jester has now started his own blog) but over time, the interest started to wane off. When I was posted to B-town for a 7-month work stint, I used the blog to update the Lunch Gang on the on-goings and stories from B-town. Slowly, the blog became a personal blog and it continues in the current form since then. I don’t really call myself a serious blogger, but I try to post whenever something catches my eyes.
I hope that you continue to visit the blog and I thank you for your support. If I offended anyone in any of my 100 posts so far, please accept my apologies. Above all things, comments are always welcome (but no spams!).
I got the followings from Men’s Health magazine and thought I might share it with you…..
These are some of Life’s most foolish frights:
Ignorance The best way to appear smart when you feel dumb is to ask intelligent questions. Cluelessness is only a temporary condition.
Mirrors Enjoy the man you are instead of lamenting the one you aren’t.
Positivity Cynicism is easy, because it requires no effort. People who keep trying, who push, who block for others will beat cynicism every time.
Loss A few simple truths: Friends and relatives die. Opponents win. Beloved teams (such as Liverpool and Arsenal, he he!) fail. We profit from these losses by remembering that if your bet is in your pocket, you are not playing the game.
Strong-willed women Opinions and stiletto heels are not mutually exclusive.
Jealousy It’s natural for those you pass on your way to the top to perceive you as shallow, greedy and selfish. It’s either that or confess to themselves that they’re lazy, shiftless and stupid.
Failure A failure is a man who gave it his best and was still beaten down and stripped of his material goods. The fight’s not over, though. If he’s smart, he’ll realise he’s left with his most valuable possession – his brain.
Got this via email and could not resist sharing it……. The idea was that the molten plastic bottle would be mixed with the hot oil and when the hawkers were making the banana fritters, the molten plastic would coat the banana fritters, giving them their crispy texture. Not sure if this is true.
A friend apparently read in the paper a while ago that a team of reporters tried doing what the hawkers were alleged to have done. They put a mineral water plastic bottle into a pot of hot oil. Sure enough the plastic bottle melted, but rather than getting completely mixed with the hot oil, the molten plastic actually formed clumps on the surface of the oil. If that did not put you off from trying to fry banana fritters in the clumpy plastic-hot oil combo, the smell from the melting plastic would probably do.
This team of researchers also experimented on using different types of flour and they actually found that the crispiness of the banana fritters was determined by the type of flour used.
So this plastic in hot oil story is probably just another urban legend. It is probably a tale told by a less successful banana fritter hawker, envious of his/her more successful competitor.
Our function had our second HLP (Healthy Lifestyle Program) event of the year; the first one was a visit to Pusat Ehsan. This month’s HLP event was in the form of a Mini Fun Sport & Games day (sport activity: check!)
The participants of the Mini Fun Sport & Games were divided into three teams, consisting of staff from the different departments under the Technical function (teambuilding & networking: check!).
As with any other sports , we started with a warming-up session. The interesting bit was when each of the organising committee members took turn to count from 1 to 8 for each warm-up ‘thingy’. It clearly showed that everyone in organising committee played an equal role in the team.
The HLP event was superbly organised. Everyone had fun and some even went a bit too competitive (yeah, I am talking about Kicks and RunningDiva!). The big boss even commented that this event should be organised more. Kudos to the organising committee for this memorable day. The other HLP event organisers would have a hard time trying to emulate the success of this event!
Here our own tai chi master showed how stretching should be done.
Shot-putt, but with coconuts!
Our tai chi master trying to put the shuttlecock into the box. Use your inner chi, Master!
He was not that excited; it was just a water-filled baloon.
The organising committee members deep in discussion.
The final score.
The winner was… the Blue team!
Second place went to the well-behaving, but slightly competitive Yellow team.
The last place winner (still in Top Three!) was the Red team.
I read this blog entry from Coffee With Muaz and I could not agree more on what he said in his blog. As much as we try to think that we tolerate other races, we actually do not. It is a sad fact, but something that we have to face. Muaz’s lecturer rightly said, i.e. “it’s a very good point, but racism is inevitable, wherever you go, you’re bound to hear something about it”.
I remember reading an blog entry on this well-known Brunei blog on the segregation of toilets in a school here in Bandar. The school put up such signs that basically allowed only certain race to use a particular toilet. This is bordering apartheid, don’t you think so? If this school ‘openly’ practices racism, I cannot imagine the sort of things that the students learn just from the simple act of labelling the toilets for use by certain race only.
How many times can you remember saying a particular race smells just because they use a lot of onions in their cooking? How many times can you remember mocking a particular race’s accent, complete with shaking head? How many times can you remember saying a particular race’s hand writing looks like bean sprouts? How many times can you remember saying degratory remarks about a certain race just because they are in the minority here? How many times can you remember labelling a certain race with a degratory word just because of the colour of their skin? How many times can you remember associating a certain job to a certain race just because they want to do it to feed their families at home, while we choose to remain unemployed?
We now live in a modern world, where we need each other to progress and develop. The United States of America did not make so much progress in the past century by not abolishing the segregation of races. Dr. Martin Luther King did not say he had a dream, only for the dream to remain a dream.
Lets wake up from our own dreams and kick racism out from our country!
This cloud formation was observed this morning above the Municipal Field in Kuala Belait, where thousands of people were gathering to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him).
The clouds formed the arabic letters of ‘alif, lam, lam and ha’; in all formed the arabic spelling of the name of Allah the Almighty.
The organising committee members deep in discussion.
The winner was… the Blue team!
Second place went to the well-behaving, but slightly competitive Yellow team.
Bulgemeister 