The History of the Borneo Games

I was asked to research on the history of the Borneo Games by Brunei Times. The 3rd Borneo Games is currently on at various venues throughout Brunei at the moment. I found out many things including the fact that one of my uncles was the first Brunei Borneo Games athletes. My article was published yesterday on Brunei Times:-Remember these names? Sinin Metali, Aloysius Sibidol, Zainab Kadir,

Brunei Statistics 2008

What is the GDP of Brunei Darussalam? What is the amount of rainfall in Brunei? What is the maximum and minimum degrees over the last five years? How many teachers are there in Brunei? What is the value of our exports? Or our imports? How many Dewan Bahasa book members are there? How many criminal cases were handled by the police? What is our road casualties? How many dentists are there? Or

Selamat Hari Raya Haji

Two of the most important Islamic holidays of the year are Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha. Brunei as the rest of the world is celebrating Hari Raya Haji or Hari Raya Korban or Eid ul Adha. Do you know the history behind it? We know Hari Raya Eid ul Fitr or Hari Raya Aidil Fitri as we say in Brunei marks the end of the long fasting month of Ramadan, Eid-ul-Adha marks the end of Hajj, the sacred

Expensive Brunei Stamps

Not many things can make me go gaga. But the sight of this stamp on ebay certainly does the trick. This $5 stamp overprinted by the Japanese during the Second World War is worth a fortune. I tell you it's a fortune. At the moment, the opening bid for it is US$1,099.95 and so far no one has bid. But if I know the ebayers, wait till the last minute, someone will snap this up.This is the other one

Bruneians Winning Golf!

Yesterday, our football veterans won. Today, I found another winning Brunei entry, this time at Golf. This is a report from Malaysian Mirror also dated 23rd November 2009:-JOHOR BAHRU: Brunei team, Lapor Po Tiger blazed the course on a very wet week at Tanjong Puteri Golf Resort to emerge as winners in the grand final of the World Amateur Inter Team Golf Championship (WAITGC), from November 3-5.

Brunei Football Veteran Wins!

The New Sabah Times yesterday (23rd November 2009) reported this headline "Spectacular Bothwell goal seals Brunei Veterans’ victory" and had this story (good to know we can still win it):KOTA KINABALU: Mohd Brian Iman Abdullah Bothwell scored a spectacular goal in sudden-death extra time to help Brunei Veterans retain the Borneo 7s crown for the second successive year.Brunei Veterans, made up of

Rice Industry Statistics

During the launch of the agrifood by His Majesty, all the guests received several books as gifts. One of the books is a small booklet containing the Agriculture statistics of 2008. I was quite intrigued with the statistics on rice which looks like this:-Throughout the last 10 years from 1999 to 2008, our local production has increased. The Agriculture Department has been slowly making local rice

Brunei's Finest Veterans

My spare time this week has been taken up calling up some of Brunei's athletes in order to complete my article on Borneo Games. I asked a number of people for names and my Minister gave me this name - Cikgu Haji Abdul Razak bin Bongsu. Finding his contact number was one of the easiest. Two of his children are engineers with the Public Works Department.When we finally talked to each other, I

Borneo Games

The Managing Editor of Brunei Times asked me to write an article about the upcoming Borneo Games. This is not an easy subject to write. You see, for most of the articles I have written, I have practically all the reference books and other reference articles somewhere in my library. So I generally am able to write most things about Brunei but give me a topic on sports, my mind will be unable to

Old Chinese Temple in Muara

Muara Chinese would remember this. This was the old chinese Temple in Muara. This was eventually demolised in the mid 1980s to make way for the expansion of the Muara Port.

Brunei Otters

A couple of months back, one of my junior colleagues took this photograph from his office. He has a nice office on the sixth floor of the MOD Building. That office overlooked the Highway and the airport as well as the huge canal flowing next to the highway. We have actually taken a boatride along that canal all the way from Kampong Ayer. When he first showed me this photograph, I was not sure

Labuhan Kapal and Sungai Tekuyung

Yesterday during the 100 Years of Modern Land Administration Symposium, also held on the sidelines was a small exhibition of previous land related items. These are the cadastral equipment used to measure the size of land etc and also related old documents.[The forerunner to today's electronic calculator][Really old land document][Minister looking at old land documents]What we found interesting is

100 Years of Modern Land Administration

Today will be held a special symposium to mark 100 years of modern land administration in Brunei. It will be held at the Kiulap Plaza Hotel.Land Department itself is not 100 years old. It was formed in the early 1960s. Prior to that, it was the District Offices with special District Land Officers working in the district offices that determined whether or not you could have your land application

BEDB's 2000 Housing Project

Yesterday morning, I accompanied my minister to visit the housing project conducted by BEDB at Pandan 10 in Kuala Belait. It was a working visit to see if there is anything new that our own Housing Development Department (HDD) can learn from it as well as keeping an eye on the project as the houses will form part of our housing stock soon.[Getting ready for the group photograph]I remembered and

Brunei $100 1988

How many people remember this $100 note? Not many I am sure.All these while, all my other notes collection was growing, I only had two pieces of this $100 note. On the internet too, especially on ebay, this is rarely available. On the current ebay, there is one currently available note with a price of about US$260. I was quite surprised the other day when my nephew said someone deposited a few

A Growing Industry in Brunei

The Oxford Business Group on 3rd November 2009 published the following article:+++++Brunei Darussalam: A Growing Industry3 November 2009Ensuring domestic food security and developing a viable export sector are at the heart of Brunei's efforts to establish a strong commercial food processing industry, though the country has to balance its staunch commitment to environmental protection with the

High Pay with Minimal Schooling

I was intrigued by one article on finance.yahoo.com entitled "10 Jobs With High Pay and Minimal Schooling Required!" The article was written by Michael Kling and published on yahoo finance on Tuesday, November 3, 2009. It read as follows:+++++You don't have to go to college earn a decent living. Some professions pay good salaries without requiring post-secondary schooling.Your New CareerHere's a

Rebellion in Brunei

Tun Teja commented in the Comment Box a few days ago about how he just came across this book. In fact this is not a new book, this book has been around since the third quarter of 2007. I bought it in Singapore last year for a would you believe it price of S$193.81. I checked on the internet this morning, the price is much lower now. Barnes and Nobel is selling it for US$56.21 (S$78.86), Amazon