Dragon Fruit and Composting Operation
Poor Forest is home with a headache and nausea - I'm currently having a beer at the office with everyone else! Hopefully it's just a passing malady (forest, not the beer break!).
Here is a photo or 2 of the composting facility we visited today in Brunei - they're the only folks doing compost. Apparently topsoil is cheap and other landscaping companies don't bother but KN Nurseries are concerned about providing a top quality soil conditioner to their clients (one of which is the sultan's Palace!). Not related to compost (directly) we had to take a photo of the dragon fruit cacti trees - now we know how dragon fruit grow. I'm realizing I'd better take a photo of dragon fruit for some of you so you know what I'm talking about! This morning we also had our first milestone briefing with the Director of Environment and staff, which went very well - we think! Had big plans to make it to the beach again last night but preparations for the big meeting got in the way!

At the Market Today
Maura and I made a side trip to the downtown market after a meeting this morning (hey, we worked all day Sunday at the dump, give us a break!!). Here are some of Maura's great photos (we're not sure what all the items are either...!).

Here are some colourful "food covers" for use outside, to keep the flies off the food.

Here is a photo of one of the department store's display of Chinese New Year decorations! It's really amazing all the stuff they have - pineapples are a symbol of wealth, and the lion head, top left is for the lion dance, performed at New Year's parties.

Forests' Additions to this Post

Left my laundry out on the line last night. It hasn't rained in a week, so wouldn't you know it rained at 6 am. Heard the rain start, so so quickly ran out w/ a headlamp to salvage what I could. It had only been raining a minuite or two, but it rains hard here. But the rain is nice 'cause it is warm-like taking a shower. Last night, a thing I noticed I miss is the sound of wind blowing aginst the house. It is usually breezy here, but never a hard wind. I like the feeling at home when the weather is harsh outside, but you are all cozy & safe inside for the night. The expressway in to town was a parking lot on the way to work today. Luckly got off quickly. Everyone was off at meetings in the morning, so had office to myself...spent most of the time swaping photos with Jonathan! Here is a pic of the snow at our whitehorse house, notice the snow is up to the mailbox!

Our Brunei Home Away From Home
Not too shabby eh? 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms (or 5 and 4 if you count the maid?s quarters!). Come on down, we?ve got loads of room! Mango trees in the front yard. Our car flips between a Toyota corolla and a Rexton 4x4 (made in Korea, Mercedes engine, apparently?).

Happy Hour on our upstairs balcony ? a nice place to catch the breeze before the sun goes down around 6:30 or 7pm. Also a good place to watch Forest?s pooping lizards ? he?s actually complaining about their poop way more than I am!


Here is our boat ride to see the monkees that we took in the evening after work on Saturday. We had to tear Paul and Andy (not seen here, just Georgi, Paul and Maura in the front of the boat) away from their laptops to get some fresh air. We actually saw the Proboscis Monkees ? but foolishly forgot the binoculars as they were pretty high up. GREAT boat ride ? small wooden outboard with 85HP!! We really flew down the river ? even with 6 adults on board. Also toured the water village ? Kampung Ayer ? lots of colourful houses, a school, a mosque, plants and chickens and toilet drains right into the river?! These folks get the best garbage collection though ? door to door, 6 days per week, but a lot of it still ends up in the river.

First day home on time
got to work at normal time. Jonathan called during breakfast, had mouthful of food, had him call back. In morning, had meeting with Mitsubishi who is trying to sell Brunei an incinerator. Very interesting for me to learn how they work and see what they look like. Andy asked if Mitsubishi would consider finacing the project, and the guy was kind of surprised-he assumed that Brunei, being so wealthy, would just buy it! The fellow from Mitsubishi asked why North America hadn't embraced incineration of waste more. Well, one of their incinerators for Brunei would likely cost on the order of $80 million, where the engineered landfill we visited in Miri only cost $5 million. Also, the energy produced is very little--I calculated that for Brunei, at 3 cents/kWh, they would only make $800,000 / yr in electrical sales....considering an equivalent sized plant in Puket requires a staff of 55 to 60, that is peanuts!

Had a pretty good martabak (roti) from the "goo" restaurant down the street for $2.50.

After lunch went to meet with a large waste hauler/contractor. Very nice and helpful, very keen to improve the system. Their biggest complaint is "cowboy" waste haulers that poach customers in their concession area. Basically, it sounds like the concession areas system has fallen apart (no enforcement) and it is a free for all.

Got home (to our new house) before dark, which was nice 'cause we got to sit outside on our balcony and enjoy a happy hour (at least I did!) Lots of little lizards here, guess that keeps the roaches down, but they poop everywhere. There was a little lizard in the sink, Georgi washed him down the drain though.

Tonight going to have dinner downtown along the river with Mew Yee (from the Canadian high commission) and a couple of other Canadian expats living here, hopefully they can hook us up with some activities like cycling or hashing.

Saturday at Berakas Beach
We took a late afternoon trip to Berakas Forest Reserve and played in the big waves and read our books on the beach. Not many people, once again and nice warm water, fun waves and clean sand. Lots of big drift wood and a bit of garbage but not too bad.

Day Trip to Tutong
Friday was a holiday so we did a tour looking for potential new landfill sites in the central part of the country. Not that we were looking to site a landfill at the beach, but we couldn't help but stop and take a look - I think we'll all be back with our swim suits and grass mats soon - it was beautiful and hardly any people and some great tiny sea shells for collecting.



Waterbuffalo along the side of the road, grazing... see the other guy, sitting in the mud?!

Dinner and Jazz Night at the Empire Hotel
Friday night we all went to the Empire Hotel and Country Club for dinner and jazz - an event hosted by the Brunei Music Society. The performers (Mia Palencia vocals and Roger Wang on guitar) were really good - from Malaysia. Even Forest enjoyed it and he doesn't like Jazz. The venue itself was incredible, the Hotel is apparently the most opulent in the world, built by Prince Jefri, brother to the Sultan. There was a real mix of people (about 120) of expats and locals. We went for a walk around the many pools after the performance too. Appartently there's an excellent grilled Seafood buffet outdoors on Friday nights - so anyone that comes to visit us - that's where we're heading for dinner!




View from the South China Sea side...

Clear Goo for Lunch
Mood:  don't ask
Sorry, no pictures today.

Today, we finally got our own ADSL connection in...it took the technician 1 1/2 days to figure it out, and when he left, our wireless router still didn't work. Luckily, I got it working, not sure what I did, but it works. Then at the end of the day, the computer supplier guy came over, supposedly with our network equipment...but no, all he had was a loaner printer, apparently our printer is still on order (although I did physically see the printer about a week and half ago!?) Also, he brought no cables, and the switch is apparently still on order...no word on when it is showing up...yet I have seen lots of them in other shops in town!

In the morning, I had a meeting with Mr. Yong Teck Foo, who is a construction contractor and Jeff's brother. Was getting info on heavy equipment dealers in Brunei. They had pretty nice offices, stone walls, mirrors, etc.

For lunch, went to the Malyasian cantina down the street with Georgi and Maura. Maura decided to be adventurous and order one of the special "meals"...the menu is all in Malay, so we had no idea what we ordered....while waiting, we started looking things up in the dictionary....things didn't look good when the first words we looked up translated to "durian" and "blood vessels". When the food arrived, the center pieces was a huge bowl of clear sticky goo?exactly like the ectoplasm in the movies (a good snot double too). What you did was wrapped in around a pair of sticks, dipped in a sauce, and then swallow it?don?t bother chewing, that is a waste of time, just slurp it straight down off the sticks. The other part of the ?meal? as small fried whole fish, and the plate of curried blood vessesl?we have no idea what they were, kind of like tripe, but I am pretty sure it wasn?t tripe. The girls had one try of the goo, and didn?t have any more. I have terrible food guilt, so felt obliged to eat as much of the goo as I could stomach. I also ate my two fishes and finished up the blood vessels.

After work went for a run on the trails near the water reservoir. They were excellent, ran along the ridges, very steep, and the trails was kind of steps kicked into the hill side. Saw some big monkeys too, that was pretty cool.

VCD & second visit to Sg. Akar
In morning had a meeting with the Dept. of Environment guys. Went very well, got lots of good information and had a good discussions with them. Afterwords, I went back to meet with Mike Morgan at JT about the mapping. Had a pretty good discussion, met his data manager (Kitt), their agricultural consultant (Bobby T ? who was keen to get us hooked up with some waste re-processing group he is involved with in Malaysia) and also the Australian consultant who is doing the land availability study and the GIS. They all were super nice and seemed to have lots of time to talk to us. In the afternoon, Paul and I went with the surveyor (Jeff?s brother) to look at the Sg. Akar landfill site. It is pretty big site, I think it is bigger than what they allowed for in the budget. Saw some rats a bit closer today, but no good pictures yet. Lots of dogs here, some are pretty cute, but I never want to look too close!

Also bought a cheap DVD player today. Went to the bootleg DVD/CD shop (the one with the pumpin? dance music always blasting next to Jeff?s offices) ? turns out this shop is owned by another of Jeff?s brothers?now I know why he never complains about the blastin? music. Anyway, bought some $2 VCD movies, and even splurged and bought an $8 DVD. Watched on of the VCD movies, now I know why they are only $2?people walking in front of the screen, important parts missing, repeated parts, knee in front of the lower half of the screen for parts of the movie?I guess you get what you pay for. Now, I think the 8$ DVD is probably worth it!

Sleepy Day
Not much to report today (Sunday). Slept in till almost 11am! Took it easy around the house. Jeff came by with his maid so she could clean out all the cabinets in the house...things are slowly getting cleaned up here in the house. Paul gave her $15 after and she seemed pretty happy. We suspect that once you work it out, they are getting less than $1/hr. Everyone has a maid here, and every house an apt. we looked at all has a maid's quarters...some of them are okay, but one place we looked at, the maids room looked like a jail cell.

In the afternoon went out to do yet some more shopping...seems like all we do is shop. There are just so many little things you need to setup a house/office. So, we were buying yet more sheets and pillows 'cause Maura arrives tomorrow.

In the evening, Paul and I put together a questionaire for the Municipal Board of BSB to get a handle on thier role in the waste collection system.

Forest out.