Saturday, February 28, 2009

Mesra Farm - One Year Anniversary!!!!!!

Above & below: ramu kena ngaga langkau kebun ladang sawit blogger ngambika bisi endol indon diau.
Below: Tapak menantu aku - harvesting palm oil; 4 years old palm trees - very bountiful harvest indeed

Below: Blogger's own palm trees at one year old almost quite ready to bear fruits
Its very heartening to say the least when palm trees planted about a year ago look like the one above and below. Hopefully by the end of this year there will be quite ready to show some yield.

While Sarawak recently experienced the worst flood in 50 years - my folks in Dijih were busy harvesting their sago palm in Ng Luau; each lumpong of 3 feet each fetching RM6.50. One family got RM17,000+ another RM10,000.00. When the landas season was over they went home to Meruan and resume harvesting their oil palm which were not harvested for about 2 months because of the poor road conditions. One 10-acre plot yields as much as 18 tonnes which translate into RM7,350.00.

Karan For Rh Bansa - came 50 Years after Independence!

Rural electricity supply (RES) - wiring installation.
After almost 50 years of independence, baru datai karan ba rumah panjai. When is piped water coming, I wonder? Another 10, 20 years? The water mains is just 4.5 km away from the longhouse along the Bintulu-Sibu road. And our rivers and streams are being polluted more and more from the plantation and logging activities. The longhouse folks including the school nearby are dependent on rain water. So when dry season comes, kasih bala di menua merinsa nadai ai, literally have to nyauk ke Selangau ngambi ai. Yes, we were given water tanks but that does not solve our problem. It's just a stop gap measure. Our gravel road is in the most terrible shape now, what took less than 5 minutes before to travel from the longhouse to the main road now takes about 12 minutes bcos of the terrible road condition. It's worse now because the logging trucks transport the logs during the night along the road. Kemaya kami ngasaika utai ke nyamai?

Tiang lampu about to be installed near the longhouse flag posts

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Bintulu Flood 2009 Part 2





The Infamous 2009 Sarawk Flood - Bintulu P 1

Tea time in the longhouse. Above - small river with a lot of debris
Rice rice every where
Bintulu Port Staff with the military personnel sending relief mission
Below: Bintulu Port Security Boat - doing corporate social responsibility

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Erica's Dream Car - More Pictures

This is the showroom where we bought the car
The car in the show room....a four seater sedan
Go ahead and buy the number you never know there may be luck in it!!!!!!

Erica's Dream Car

I went to Yogyakarta from 19th to 22 Feb 2009 and bought my daughter a car. It a red honda jazz costing a cool IDR 117,000,000.00 - a 2004 model with automatic gear. I taught her how to drive around Jogja city and spent quite some times demonstrating how to do reverse parking at her rented house. As the parking space was very narrow we had initially a tough time conducting the routine. At times she almost lost her cool while I remained calm and showed understanding and patience.


Below: left showroom employee, Supir Armando (centre) - my escort and driver while in Jogja



I was really forced by circumstances to know how to drive around the crazy and chaotic Jogja streets with a millions bikes they called spader motor in there. A car is called a mobil and a driver - supir. Thanks goodness I have become a competent supir mobil di Jogja in order to then showed her the courage to drive around and coached her along the way. Petrol there cost RM1.42 per litre. Though we paid for the car the car cannot be transfered to her name instead under "local patronage or resident" Don"t ask me what this is all about because I don't understand either.
While I was there she managed to drive to the famous Malioboro Street from her rented house and back, went around the UGM campus and also from Novotel Hotel to her house. I showed her the petrol station and the workshop where to sent the car in the event of servicing needs, etc