All I ask for is honesty

There was an interesting little news that I saw on Brudirect quite a while back under 'other reports' about British policemen moonlighting among others as models and masseurs. More than 1,000 of them reported that they held part time jobs in addition to being a cop, which surprisingly also include them working as florists, hypnotherapists, entertainers, plumbers and caterers. And it's not just

Malay Days

A few days ago, I blogged about how everytime we say the name of the day in English, we inadvertently pay homage to either a Roman or Germanic god of old. A reader commented I should also blog one about how the Islamic/Malay days came into being and several other commentators have come up with their own versions. Like they say in the cooking show, let's take a finished blog out of the oven as I

06/06/06

Today is 6th June 2006 which you can abbreviate to 6/6/6. Ordinarily this is just a date but very attractive numerically because of the triple 6s. But for christians, the number warrants attention is said to be connected to the Mark of the Beast. I remember this as more than 20 years back, one of my then favourite group when I was studying in England was the Iron Maiden, a heavy metal band. One

Unsung Heroes

One of the relatively unknown heroes and heroines in the civil service are the folks at the Community Development Department or Jabatan Pembangunan Masyarakat. This is the department that served the welfare needs of everyone in the nation. It used to be part of the old Department of Sports and Welfare when it split to become the Social Services Section and later the Social Affairs Unit at the

Sunday and the rest of the week

Did you know that 'Sunday' was originally a Latin word and that for everyday from Monday to Friday, you are actually honouring the Romans' and the Germanic's gods?It was speculated that the dividing of the week into 7 days goes back to the Babylonian time, even way before the Romans. Most probably this is due to the 7 planets known at that time. But it was the Romans that first adopted the

Welfare, History and National Day

When I blogged about the Brunei Annual Report 1961-1962, I was highlighting the changes in attitude of Bruneians with regard to welfare. The welfare programs were already in place then but the number of people who actually applied for welfare was very minimal, the word used in the report was 'rare'.Our lifestyle has changed, the easy availability of credit previously was one factor, some have

The Da Vinci Code

What did I do in my last night in Jakarta? I went to watch the most famous of all current movie 'The Da Vinci Code'. Yup, the movie that you all can't watch in Brunei. I wasn't going to bother watching it but L* who accompanied me to Jakarta said we should try to watch it as watching it on a pirated VCD will not beat watching it on the big screen. Besides we needed to unwind after a whole day of