New Year of Hijrah

The new year of Hijrah 1432 will fall on Tuesday, 7 December.

Achhooo.....

I could see dust gathering on this blog.

Will have to find time to revive this blog!

Me and me sistas!

I like the photo here.....

Family Portrait....

4 years....

... have gone since Babu passed away suddenly.

... have gone since I had the biggest regret in my life; not being home when Babu left us all.

... have gone, but the heart still aches whenever she appears in my thoughts.

... have gone, but I miss her sending me food to my room whenever I skipped dinner.

... have gone, but I miss her strength whenever any one of us fell ill.

... have gone, but I miss her ayam masak korma.

... have gone, but I miss her calling me whenever I was away from home.

... have gone, but I miss her phone calls, making sure I arrived at my destination safely.

... have gone, but I miss her interviewing our guests.

... have gone, but I miss popping into my parents' room and had even the briefest of conversation.

... have gone, but I miss her.....

Semoga rohnya sentiasa dirahmati Allah dan ditempatkan bersama-sama orang-orang soleh dan beriman.

Al-Fatihah......

Rumah Terbuka Aidilfitri

Rumah Terbuka Aidilfitri

Hari Khamis / Thursday

14 Syawal 1431 / 23 September 2010

Mulai 12.30 Tengahari / From 12.30 PM Onwards

Teratak Azlina SSZ

Simpang 372, Jalan Singa Menteri,

Kuala Belait.

Salam Aidilfitri

Salam Aidilfitri

Ramadhan Mubarak

Selamat Berpuasa

Moga amalan diberkati Allah

Birthday Pictures

+ a cake from the Lunchgang.

The Final Day

Tomorrow is the final day of the Brunei LNG and Brunei Refinery Inter-function Badminton Tournament 2010. In the last two matches, I partnered Jester and we won both our games. Our team won both our matches and we are going into the final day as favourite. There is a 15-point gap between us and our nearest rival. Bar anything drastically wrong, we need just a draw to retain the Championship which we won last year and I could not ask for more for my birthday!

Tomorrow matches in full:

EC A Portugal vs Combo A Italy

Refinery A Spain vs TM/OM A Argentina

EC B England vs Refinery B Germany

Combo B Brazil vs TM/OM B Netherlands

All games should start at 5.00 pm at Liang Lumut Recreation Club.

Badminton Tournament 2010

The Brunei LNG & Brunei Refinery Inter-function Badminton Tournament 2010 will start later today at the Liang Lumut Recreation Club. The tournament will be contested by eight teams, representing all the functions in Brunei LNG. It will run today, Wednesday 30 June and Friday 2 July, where the closing ceremony and prize presentation will take place when all matches are completed. The daily matches will start at 5.00pm.

Come and support your favourite team.

FIFA World Cup 2010

It finally started. The 19th edition of the FIFA World Cup, being hosted by South Africa, is the first time it is hosted in the African continent.

So who do you support? England is my choice, though I do not think they will reach the Final on 11 July.

New Nike advert

World Cup is definitely just around the corner....

Too bad Ronaldinho will not be playing in South Africa......

Appreciate Life

Dare to complain about your sh*t day?

In Memory.......

Today is Mother's Day.

Today, too, would have been Babu's 64th birthday. You are always remembered.

Moga rohmu dicucuri rahmat Allah SWT..... Al-Fatihah.......

I came, I saw, I conquered!

A week ago, I finally ticked off one of the things from my Things-to-do-before-I-reach-40 list.

Yes, I reached Low's Peak, the highest point on Mount Kinabalu at 4095.2m above sea level. It was well worth the effort and the training. I reached the top with just a few minutes to spare before the sunrise and yes, it was beautiful.

More pictures will be posted soon (hopefully!).

Taiwanese Su-Bo

Check out this video.

Won't it be ironic if Whitney can't even sing this good nowadays?

Reunite?

Upon completing my primary school education in KB, I joined Maktab Sains in 1990. I spent five and a half years there and left in August 1995. Since leaving Maktab Sains, there have been just a handful of people that I keep in touch with.

Fast forward to 2010 and 14 years passed since my Maktab Sains years. Within the 14 years, the internet world exploded, bringing with it, facebook, friendster and a lot of other social network sites. From Facebook, I've been able to be reconnected to some of old friends; some who would not mind keeping in touch with and some who I would. Just recently, I found out there has been quite a strong urge by certain people to organise a reunion of all 1990 Form 1 intake students. I can quite recall that I was not really that social then and I don't think I knew everyone in the same year. I still have difficulties trying to remember a person, whose friend request on facebook remains unanswered.

There are certain people in my year that I would meet and catch up. But meeting 100+ people from an episode of my life that I probably couldn't remember much, nah it's not my cup of tea.

The reunion is planned to happen in June 2010. Perhaps I would have a change of heart or I would be 'conveniently' away from Brunei!

Connected at last....

At last, a project has been launched to build a bridge from Temburong to Bandar Seri Begawan. The project is estimated to be worth BND500 million and will be financed through public-private partnership scheme. The Government will be financing BND300 million and the rest will be by a consortium, who will be given the rights to collect tolls to cover the cost of the project and the maintenance of the bridge. The bridge will provide a direct link between Bandar Seri Begawan, by-passing the Malaysian town of Limbang. The bridge is expected to be completed as early as 2013.

Read about it here.

Spot the Difference......

Now you see and you don't.....

The one on the left is from today's Borneo Bulletin and the one on the right is from the Brunei Times.

Can you see the difference? Brunei Time removed the sponsor's logo from the picture.

No update?

Someone asked about updates to the blog. Materials and ideas are hard to come by nowadays. I have been quite busy at work to think of anything worthy to blog about. Also, most evening, I'd only be home past 8pm, due to badminton commitments and all.

Anyway, here's for another (insert number here) weeks of absence!

Have a good day....

Nation's Birthday

To all Bruneians wherever you are, here's wishing you all the best and many congratulations on the occasion of the 26th National Day.

Negaraku Brunei Darussalam!

Check out the official website here.

Net Deception

Keep your eyes on the Malaysian players in black. See how talented Koo Kien Kiat is as he produced one of the best net tricks that I have ever seen.

Greetings

Wishing all friends, colleagues and acquantainces a very Happy Lunar New Year.

Hope the new year brings happiness, wealth and good health.

Let the Tiger (not the Woods type!) in you out.

The Missing Video

Remember when I told you that my family was once featured on Nona and I managed to upload the video onto Youtube?

Well, the video is now gone. Why? Because Grand Brilliance Sdn. Bhd. sent a complaint to Youtube that I have infringed the copyright law, just because I uploaded the video that featured my own family!

I am now tempted to either:

1. send an email to Grand Brilliance asking if I could get the permission to post it, or

2. start a Facebook group and get a petition going to get the video uploaded again.

Funny that the complaint comes from a company which is from a country where piracy is rampant. Go to any night market, 99% of the time, you would find some pirated copies of the latest blockbuster movie.

What do I get from posting my family video on Youtube? Nothing financial. But I got lots of comments from friends, who were amazed with the way my family lived together under one roof. Good comments were also directed towards TV3 for doing that. But after this removal, nah.

Grand Brilliance is not that brilliant after all.

Lost in Translation

Oh, don't you just hate it when they tried to translate it from English to Malay and vice-versa?

Overheard from the news......

SCB's Priority Banking becomes Perbankan Keutamaan. Priority Banking is a proper noun and it does not need to be translated.

Taman Persiaran Sungai Kuala Belait becomes Persiaran Park Sungai Kuala Belait. So the news editor could not find any English word for persiaran?

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) becomes something that I could not understand.

Enough already!

It's Dad's 69th birthday today.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Moga panjang umur dan murah rezeki.

Thanks for everything and enjoy your day.

Congrats!

Congratulations to Ainul and Aliff on the occasion of their wedding today.

See you in a week's time then.

First Birthday of the Year

It was Baby Daania's first birthday yesterday.

Happy Birthday Ia! O O!

P.s. her birthday bash will be this weekend and it's going to be a PJ-themed party!

Another bother with eczema....

My eczema does not seem to show any sign to be abated. What seemed like a simple skin discomfort has developed into full-fledged eczema in a space of less than a year.

During my trip to Shanghai, I had another outbreak of eczema. It was not helped either with Shanghai being cold, most days the temperature never break the 10degC barrier. I have always had problems with the day being cold; my skin would get very dry. This time, it was worse; I developed eczema spots on my legs and arms.

So this morning, I went to Panaga Health Centre for help. I had been going to the Skin Clinic at RIPAS Hospital, but after repeated similar prescriptions, I got fed up. One of the doctors at the Skin Clinic also said that one of the doctors at the Panaga Health Centre had an interest in skin diseases, so I thought I might give it a try. I heard almost the same things too; my skin was too dry, it could flare up anytime, bla, bla, bla. But I also learnt a few other things. The doctor believed that I might not be allergic to any food and the eczema was probably contact eczema. I also told to ditch my current Johnsons and Johnsons' pH 5.5 shower cream, which I had been using since I swtiched from Dettol a few months back. I was advised to use soapless shower cream, one of which was from QV, which costs something like BD35 per litre!

As a reward to my effort to see the doctor, I was given a big tub of moisturiser (I was also told to stop using Vaseline or Nivea moisturiser!), a big tub of soapless shower thingy (to see if they would actually work), a nice package of oatmeal-based ointment (which is to be added to my bath water and I would have to soak for 10-15 minutes), some steroid cream and some anti-histamine tablets. I left the Health Centre, looking as if I had just shopped at Guardians!

Another wait for a fortnight would tell if this regime of medicine would actually work. I hope it does.

New Year 2010

Finally got back into Brunei after spending the past week in Singapore and Shanghai. I hope it is not too late to wish all a very Happy New Year 2010. May the new year brings happiness, wealth and peace.

Here's for a productive 2010.