Labour Day

Today is May Day or Labour Day for a number of other countries. However like Brunei, there are a few other countries who do not observe Labour Day today. The Americans celebrate their Labour Day on the first Monday of September.But the oberservation of the first ever Labour Day was on the first Monday in September is usually attributed to the Knights of Labor who held their first parade on

The Monkey and the Apple

There once was a happy monkey wandering the jungle, eating delicious fruit when hungry, and resting when tired. One day he came upon a house, where he saw a bowl of the most beautiful apples. He took one in each hand and ran back into the forest. He sniffed the apples and smelled nothing. He tried to eat them, but hurt his teeth. They were made of wood, but they were beautiful, and when the other

Election 2009: Lessons Learned

Now that we've had some time to digest the numbers - 'quantitative analysis,' they call it in the investment world - we can draw some conclusions from the recent Indonesian elections. And perhaps the biggest surprise of all was that there was no real surprise.

President SBY's party came out on top, an event predicted by most polls in the runup. What wasn't quite as foreseen was the significant slump borne by the main opposition parties, like Golkar and Megawati's PDI-P. Late in election seasons most populations shift back to the status quo instead of the great unknown, and this time was no different. But the sub-20% showings were particularly crippling.

No wonder it looks like Megawati is reaching out to former Gen. Prabowo Subianto as a running mate, desperate to glean any possible support. But unless a political earthquake arrives in short order, SBY looks to cruise to victory.

Today's Top Stories

Watch out for swine

Indonesia on alert for flu pandemic

Someone's got gas

Indo is region's worst greenhouse-gas emitter, says ADB

Islamic parties stumble in elections

Global caliphate will have to wait

SBY-Kalla relations frosty

Presidential challenge leads to rift

You Called Her Mama

Tun Teja wrote in the comment box about the origin of the word 'Babu' which are used by some of our Bruneians for 'mother'. The perception is that the word 'babu' is used by family of Pengirans but of course that are also non-Pengiran families who used the word as well. In Brunei, our usage for the word mother ranged from the English Mummy or Mum to the Arabic Umi to the Brunei Mama or Babu.

Anthropophagous Thoughts

I was at Borders last night and managed to get a couple of books. One very interesting one which I read through last night was this book about hard words. Words have always interested me and the other day when my minister asked whether he should buy the full blown Oxford English dictionary, I said he should. The full blown Oxford English dictionary comes in 20 volumes and each volume is about

Struggling Your Way Through

Last week, our ministry's ladies netball team lost the final to MOE. Congratulations to both teams for making the final. I was happy that our ministry's team had reached the final and I know they practised hard. But I was not expecting our team to win, not because they are not capable or I was not supportive. I realised earlier on that they had a psychological problem. From the outset, they were

The Giant Quran

How many people remember this scene?I was trawling through my hard disk and found this photograph. This was taken about three years ago when His Majesty received the Giant Quran as a birthday gift. I wrote about the whole event and also the history behind it. I am hoping that it will be on display one of these days, if it has not already been done so.It is not the world's largest Quran, even

On Friday

This is one of the hardest entry to type. Its not a sad entry or anything like that. I am doing this from the comfortable by the sea yacht club, my cousin's son is having his birthday here. But I am using my tiny handphone. I am a trained typist and being forced to use two thumbs really slows me down. A tweeter would be better. Where is the return key? Cant even do a new paragraph!Found the

Fifth Day of Fifth Month Festival

My secretary came in and said that anakbrunei was outside. She could not or did not know Reeda's name but anakbunei she remembered. So anakbrunei trademark is well and truly established. Anyway anakbrunei's Reeda dropped in my office the other day with a nice surprise - homemade Bakchang. My better half and I tried it for our dinner on the same day. I took a few photos of the bakchang with my

A Cup of Coffee

One of my friends posted this on facebook about a couple of weeks back. I know quite a number of readers out there have seen this but I am sharing this with those who have not. For you to ponder:-+++++A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.Offering his

Pay for Services?

There was someone who wrote either in Brudirect or somewhere that I read over the last few days about the need to clean up the housing estates and to charge people for the clean up. At the moment, the Housing Development Department is responsible for the common areas of the housing estates. There is also no charges for the work. Getting people to pay is always one of the biggest issues in

Bangar Jetty and the 1962 Memorial

Exactly one year ago, I wrote about the above 1962 monument. Yesterday, I read in the papers about the Minister of Communications laying the foundation stone for the new Bangar Jetty and Terminal Building in Temburong. What is the connection?At present, if you arrive or depart from Bangar, you would arrive in an open air small roofed structure. There is no other facility there. This $1.4 million

A City of Many Waters

[This article was published two weeks ago in my Golden Legacy column in Brunei Times]About fifteen years ago, there was an article about a book which the UBD Library had just purchased. It was described as the only book that was written about Brunei around the end of the nineteenth century. The article was written by C.H. Gallop, who was an expatriate teacher in Brunei writing under the pseudonym

Brunei 1989 Paper Money

Yesterday I was talking about the Begawan money. Today I am talking about more money but more recent ones. My sister-in-law's husband (my biras) called me up the other day and said that he had discovered an old piggy box where he has been stashing his coins and dollar notes and he found about 15 pieces of the above and 1 piece of a $5 note. He asked me whether I wanted them. Of course, I told him

The Begawan Money $50

Yesterday, I managed to get two of the above notes. The Begawan Series or the 1967 Brunei First Modern Series is still a favourite among collectors. Issued in 1967, it marked the first time that Brunei issued its own currency by its own Currency Board. Prior to that, Brunei currency notes were issued by the Straits Settlements Government and the Malaya-Borneo Board of Currencies.The $50 Begawan

Our Modern Conveniences

Do you know what this guy does for a living?He does not know do it anymore. His trade died out in the 1960s. But when he was doing his trade, he did not have much competition or any competition. Nobody else wanted his job. But if he did not do his job, the whole Brunei Town would suffer. That's how important his job was.I was quite surprised to see this photograph sometime last year during an

Why can't we have a specialist phlebotomist?

By the time you read this, both my left and my right arms would be like bruised pincushion. I have to undergo the 'ambil darah' procedure.No disrespect to the nurses or the medical staff doing the procedures but apparently I am born with a delicate very deep vein which no one can find in one go. This bruised pincushion is something I undergo everytime I go to either our general hospital or the

Who is a Pebalat?

I guess many have read that the Eskimo had many words for snow. The idea is that the language we speak both affected and reflected our own views of the world and since the Eskimos lived in a snowy world, they should have more words for snow. Though there is some argument how many words the Eskimos actually have for snow. In a popular 1940 article on the subject, the writer referred to Eskimo

Ambassador to Brunei

Last week Dilbert had a short series about the 'temp'. In today's corporate America where there are lots of unemployment, many people find jobs by 'temping' which is to work for companies temporarily while hoping to find full time employment.Scott Adams, the founder of Dilbert, last week had a short series of these 'temps'. Dilbert's boss' secretary went away for a short holiday and the temps

The World According to Stercus Accidit

One of my friends keeps a blog entitled 'the world according to stercus accidit'. I won't put up the link just yet until he says okay. It took me quite a while but the other night I was wondering to myself what 'stercus accidit' was. You see, I took up Latin as a supplementary subsidiary subject when I did my Law and Economics degree. When you study law, knowing Latin is quite useful as many

CLEX 2009

Her Royal Highness Princess Majeedah officially launched CLEX 2009, the Expo on Construction and Life Expo and Conference, last Thursday at the Plenary Hall of the ICC. If you are like going "uhhhh?", CLEX 2009 is Brunei's largest showcase for the construction and lifestyle related industries under one roof. The Expo featured both local and international exhibitors. There are many things for you

I'm Yours

Over the last few months, I have heard this song with this opening lyrics:-Well you done done me and you bet I felt itI tried to be chill but you're so hot that I meltedI fell right through the cracks, now I'm trying to get backBefore the cool done run out I'll be giving it my bestestAnd nothing's going to stop me but divine interventionI reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn someBut I

Family

I have always watched Yasmin Ahmad's short clips for Petronas especially during Hari Raya and Chinese New Year. She has a unique talent in turning 3 minutes into something really meaningful. Yesterday I read about her doing a clip for Singapore's Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports about the family. I had to see it for myself. In fact I found two videos. The first one is about a

Our Future Port

I was searching for something in my office when I came across this. This picture of Muara Port came from a BEDB presentation about the Pulau Muara Besar project (PMB is that island opposite the Port). For some reason when I saw the photo of the port, it really reminded me of my time when I was a Ports Officer. Many many years ago, my then Permanent Secretary had a policy that whenever a Division

The 'lost' camera

They found my camera! I got an SMS yesterday and hopefully when someone comes up from Ulu-Ulu sometime today, the camera will come along as well. The strange thing was that the camera was found at a place where I never did go on Sunday. So either someone found it and brought it there or it 'moved' by itself or 'assisted' by someone or something, that's what some of my officers were telling me

Election 2009: It's he-ere!

It seems like the buildup has been forever- although not quite as long as the interminable American version - but the elections are finally imminent. Glory glory hallelujah.

Consensus is that the party of the generally inoffensive SBY will prevail, although polls have been fairly close in recent weeks. The 'Intelligence Unit' of the venerable Economist magazine predicts as much here, although noting that he'll be under rising pressure in coming months thanks to a global economy that's been brought to its knees.

The electoral process will likely be a messy event, given the huge population and the thousands of far-flung islands we're talking about. But let's have a glass-half-full moment, and appreciate the fact that Indonesia has evolved from a longtime dictatorship to a thriving democracy within a few short years. Not many countries in the world can pull off such a jarring transition - witness Russia, which has backslid to the times of yore - but Indonesia has. In that spirit, hats off to the victors, whoever that turns out to be.

Today's Top Stories

Military plane crash in West Java

24 perish in fireball

Campaigning wraps up

SBY crosses his fingers

Interest rates cut to 7.5%

Indonesia trying to stay ahead of global slowdown

Police shoot Papuan protesters

Tensions simmering in eastern province

Ulu-Ulu Resort

The last three days have been interesting for our Strategic Planning, Public Speaking and Team Building session at the Ulu-Ulu Resort in Temburong. I was going to write about it with lots and lots of photographs but unfortunately my camera did not make the trip back. I have no idea where it is. So if there is anyone out there who saw my Olympus, please let me know. In the meantime, if you want to

Through Other People's Eyes

I am away to Ulu Temburong for the next 3 days and there will not be any telephone or internet connections for the next 3 days. I leave last Sunday's article in the Brunei Times on the history of Brunei through other people's eyes:-+++++BRUNEI’S recent history from the 18th century onwards is well documented. We can go to the British records and use those records. But as we go further into the

And the winner is ... Megawati's party?!

Heed well the old children's fable of the tortoise and the hare. Because with just a week to go before the general elections, a new poll bombshell has Megawati's party pulling ahead.

For months President SBY and his Democratic party have been mopping the floor with rivals in most polls. But this survey by the Strategic Centre for Development and Policy Review has the party of Sukarno's daughter - noted for her particular fondness for cooking and gardening, not so much for her policy brilliance - ahead by a half-point, with SBY's cohorts second and Golkar a close third.

All of them, crucially, fall short of the 20% barrier to nominate a presidential candidate on their own. So may the horse-trading begin in the nation's political backrooms, because it looks like we're in for some delicious chaos. That's democracy, in all its beautiful messiness.

Today's Top Stories

12th-century stone Ganesh recovered in Indonesia

Don't mess with the God of Good Luck

Dangdut concert, anyone?

Elections more about music than smart policy

The rupiah continues its slide

Suitable for lining birdcages

Sumatran elephants shot dead

Poachers win; only 3,000 left in wild

What is the Sustainability Fund?

During the opening of the recent Legislative Council, His Majesty announced the formation of the Sustainability Fund. I have been asked a number of times what it is. I was still in MOF when the project started and the concept took quite a while to gel and after that the legal part took quite sometime as well because it affects the Constitution. Since there is still some interest, I thought I will