Starbucks....missing

Wish there was a Starbuck coffee house here in lil' oil town...

Blackout...?

Came back to Miri. It was good to be back.

(Photo from Miri Council)

Well first things first...went to unload all my foods and clothings to humble bungalow. Once got all the foods in the fridge, next on the 'to do' list needed to pay for my internet bill. Driving in town... noticed that most of the shops were all dark, and people were waiting outside the shops. I didn't take note of this. Anyway, went to TMnet building to pay off the bill. That was done and over with. Next on the list was to get credit for my phone... Parkson came to mind (Imperial was closer then Parkson but I had a personal preference for Parkson)...also I could buy some drinks, and check out what was showing in the only cineplex in the whole of Miri for home, kill two birds with a stone.

(Photofrom hornbill.bizland.com)

Got to Parkson and there was a lot of parking spots free, that unusual especially at lunch time,got a great parking spot right in from of the main entrance. I was wondering why was there a lot of people standing out side and how come the inside was all dark? Opening the glass door a waft of warm moist with sweat air brushed pass me... *OMG!* The whole of Parkson was with out electricity...only a few lights were on (generator powered I assume), lots of shop sales girls and attendance were waiting by the front of their shop fanning them self with anything that was light, flat and fan-able.... A BLACK OUT....

(Not actual paper...just for illustration purposes)

wow... I found out later that Parkson or Bintang Plaza was not the only shopping complex that suffered...the black out streached as far from the town itself till Boulevard shopping complex...that some distance.

(Eeks forgot where i got this photo, sorry)

Isn't Miri a City now... and black outs do not happen in cities? Well apparently I found out later that there was a power transformer for the Miri City grid that was faulty... and the council decided to fix it then rather then in the evening...for security reasons, which i believe was a sound and logical action to take. None the less, not knowing that they were replacing the faulty transformer does raise question for those that was out of the country for a long while or that was visiting Miri for the first time... well on the way home I was thinking, is the whole of Miri effected? O SHIT! what about my home...my pc was still on and downloading ... stuffs...damn! Got back in a rush...thank goodness that there was still power at senadi area... he he he.

Later on the evening...I went out for dinner with a close friend at Siamese Secrets in town. A really nice place to bring a date, anyway...we were there having dinner a chatting about all sorts of topics when a flash of lightning lighted the sky and a few second later thunder followed ,thunder that rumbled through the ground even shaking our drinks on the table. Wow this was cool... natures own show with audio...

Well after the dinner, we headed back to Senadin, only to find the 1 phase of that area in complete darkness. Was this just like this morning (not knowing that the electric transformer was being replaced)? I hope that my house is not affected... As we made our way towards the second phase of Senadin we saw lights...a glimmer of hope...and to our delight our area was not effected.

Apparently what caused the blackout at Senadin was the lightning earlier that had struck one of the electric hub for phase one in Senadin.

As my friend said so eloquently as we saw our area had lights...

"We are too dependent on electricity!"

Back to the oil town of Malaysia

Its almost a week away from Orientation in Curtin University of Technology Sarawak Campus and already I am anxious to get back to Senadin. Some may say i am crazy to go back to that sleepy town with one cinema that can't play any decent film with out a glitch (audio, visual or other wise), other may say that I am crazy because of my line of course deals with insane amounts of assignments and time consuming reading and writing and practicals...but I say nay! I am going back to my friends. My other family. My freedom.

(Sunset on Campus)

Good bye 2006...Hello 2007

Took long enough to get this blog out...enjoy the read.

2006 has gone like the typical tropical weather what I have come to almost love. Sun shine, overcast, dark clouds looming in the distant – pitter patter of soft rain in May, hard-heavy droplets in December and almost constant rain through out the never ending summer on the equator. This year … Last year held an assortment of feelings and emotions.

Highlights of 2006

Beginning of the year; back to campus and the life of staying on your own.

Mid-year; Media trip to Kuala Lumpur, the discovery of Maple S.E.A

End of year; the coming home after a long period in Miri, cousin Zan back for good, Christmas dinner at Carols & New years get together.

Through out the year; event managing between Curtin Volunteers and Student Council

Annual New Year Eve family get together

Like all the other years we hold a party for close friends whom has become a second family for most of us. Like the previous years I would supply the venue which this time is the Beribi house in Gadong.

It has a large compound out front, a pool and gazebo in the back. The theme was thought up by Zan and Carol, which was to be a chill-out atmosphere, running parallel to this idea was the colour scheme: green and red.

Guest list: Shaq, Riadah, Riadah's frined, Carol, Joe, Dina, Bob, Zan, Rozman, Rozman’s spouse, Ulma, Ariphin.

It was a blast!

I wonder what 2007 will hold for this average over weight person that lives life for the moment and does occasionally plan for the future…

[Shout out to Brokenpixel who attended and produced excellent pictures from NYE 06/07 Annual party]

Conspiracy theory...just a thought

My thoughts maybe in complete...was writing this a rush as not to forget what the idea that i had was about... enjoy....

I was just switching through channels on Astro while checking my email, Astro over the past 5 months has added more channels to their arsenal of media information and services.

Well there I am, flipping through channels like a text book that I an bored with but have to read through for an economic test…and found this particular channel Discovery History channel when they were showing about space and life aside from planet earth (forgot the programs name)…*shrug* think to self ‘this would be a interesting channel to listen over while checking my mail…’ There I am clicking away at my emails that has accumulated over the past four weeks, when the commentator started to discuss moon dust and stones that could contain some sort of bacterial life form in a fossil form and that astronauts that walked the moon could carry or be effected by these alien bacterial life or even both. The commentator goes on to tell how Neal Arm Strong and his fellow astronauts after safely landing on earth was seen as heroes by the public, on the other hand they were seen as biological threat by NASA and other agencies and was in quarantine from when they first came out of their pod to a holding tank and paraded through the streets to an airstrip where they were flown to NASA to under go a series of test for a duration of 3 weeks to see if they were affected in anyway… concurrently the samples that the astronauts took back from the moon was also tested on plants and animals…just to see if anything would grow ABNORMALLY. In the end there was no threat. Guess its better to be safer then sorry.

Now this is where it gets interesting…the commentator mention, after that whole history lesson, about a mars fragment that crashed to earth. After a closer inspection there on the mars fragment was numerous of fossilised bacteria…There could possibly be life on Mars once upon a time. Being that Mars did have water at some period of time in the far past. My ears picked up another sentence that intrigued me…”2004 they sent a rover to Mars to collect samples”… Now this is where my brained kicked in, could some of these epidemics that came recently be a by product of Mars’sian origin or even be a result of tests conducted with these fossils that has mutated the bacteria to something like the brid flu (Afluenza) or even AIDS…

Don’t quote me, this is just a though…holidays are in and lots of free time to think about rubbish things.