Kuching revisited 古晋重游篇

Going to Annah Rais longhouse is fast becoming an annual ritual.

This was March ‘09:

March ‘10:

“Changyang if you are reading this, where’s the pix? =)”

February ‘11:

But this time we are more adventurous, even attempted successfully  to cross this rickety two-planks-wide (narrow would be a better word) bridge.

Perhaps it had to do with the destination at the end: a cool refreshing river, which was too inviting to resist on a hot blustery day.

Or was it false courage from the Tuak?

With a surplus of adrenaline steering our decision-making, (and also clouding the route identification skills of a certain Kuchingnite), we decided to go to this place next:

A beautiful, peaceful place to relax. Look closer and you will see pink lotuses floating serenely.

Look closer still, just beneath you feet and you will see

 

Yeah, its a real crocodile. And not only one, but thousands of them, because this is Jong’s Crocodile Farm.

 

Tell all your macho friends, we farm crocodiles here in Sarawak. Aren’t we brave?

Besides these places we also cover all the usual food and drinks and city walks which I think I had written about in previous years.

But we do did something out of the ordinary, thanks to KY’s Padini card. Half price member’s exclusive discounts are too hard to resist, especially if someone has The Card.

 

We may be at the wrong side of twenty, but we are still young at heart =)

CNY 2011

New Year card I drew using paint this year.  Specially for anyone/everyone who dropped by here. Wishing you all – all the very best!

兔兔高升，兔年行大运！

Mukah news

You know you had diversified too much when you are a post office and you don’t even know how much it costs to send a snail mail from Mukah to Melbourne.

Post office Mukah very canggih (advanced). There I can settle my sesco (electricity) bill, telekom (telephone) bill, insurance bill, even top-up my Digi (handphone) line. And the fellas there do it efficiently. But then when I asked for stamps to send snail mail from here to Melbourne, the fella who served me go “Errrr…..nanti ar…tunggu sekejap…”(please wait) before hollering “boss!”  =.=’’’

Hello! Isn’t the post office supposed to be the expert in posting letters???

Mukah doesn’t have much of a new year mood. I think mainly because there’s no shopping malls where you can pull all the senses and sights of CNY together and showcase them in a contained space. 

All you will see here are sparse splotches of red in front of sundry store selling made-in-China cheap wares and the occasional blaring of CNY songs from VCD vendors. Haih..

Anyway still got a couple of shops selling lokam. The bright orange colour exudes so much CNY feelings that I couldn’t resist buying one whole box and share it with the hospital staffs last week. Just to spread a little bit of CNY feel around. Being here, I seriously don’t feel that CNY is just one week away. 

A lot of the guy staffs here called me “Boss” (coz my ‘rank’ higher) but most of the female staffs called me “Boy” (coz I look young and adorable?). And officially from last week I am literally the new “Boy Boss” of the pharmacy.

Okay that’s what I called myself anyway. My boss got transferred. So now I am at the helm steadying the ship and avoiding the icebergs while waiting (hopefully) for a new captain to come abroad. Felt so weird being boss to a group of people much much older than me.  I went for my first department heads meeting today – and yay I was also the youngest around. Really makes me feel twenty-six is so far away...

以身作则

放工时分，我饮着一杯冰冷咖啡，满足的迈向家而行。

“哇，你天天叫我别多吃糖，竟然自己喝甜水？”

突然从侧面传来一位老兄的声音。

这老兄蛮友善的，偶尔会在药剂部领药时与我交谈。我记得他因为他不只个子高大 - 血压胆固醇体重血糖也很高。

我也常常劝他，多照顾饮食，多运动，药一定要准时吃。

这次糟了。本人犯法被扑。

我很想对他说，其实糖尿病四大因素为基因压力过胖不运动，并非多喝甜品。但这不是重点。

成为药剂师，不只配药要精灵，也要懂得成为病患者的鼓励资源，学习的好榜样。

要劝人一周运动150分钟多吃菜少吃肉，自己要能做得到才有资格劝。我相信这一点，不然真的可以被称hypocrite了。

最后，还是得笑眯眯的‘认罪’，然后尽快闪开话题，把焦点转移他身上。话谈中发现他血糖最近有改善，乘机多给他称赞鼓励，让他也笑呵呵的离开。

下次喝咖啡要躲在家里喝。

乡下点滴

好久好久没有静静坐下来收拾心情写写部落阁了。

我在这小镇常常闹纳闷，无聊， 叽里咕噜埋怨多多，但不知为何却不善用这多余的时光分享生活点滴心声。 可能没心情吧。

这几天，天空好像失恋了，乌云密布， 倾盆大雨陆续下了好几天。 有云儿逗它笑，也是偶尔的两三个时辰， 很快它又转换回阴蒙的心情。可怜的人们得受天的气。

一眨眼，半年了。我也渐渐习惯了木胶的缓慢生活节奏，懂得在宁静中悦赏淡淡的海浪声；在空闲当儿观赏点缀绿田中的鸟儿。我习惯了一个人生活。

一起床给自己一个鼓励，上班时给病人一个笑容。傍晚时分，沿着海岸跑步，陪着散发出温和热光的太阳走下山。晚上互联网成了寂寞者的饮茶室，连续剧是暂时迈进梦想迷幻世界的良伴。我的日程如盖印一般，日日复日日，日日似日日。

但在这期间，我相信我是有成长的。陌生的环境制造了许多新鲜的经验，让我大开眼界。在这乡下所得到的领悟我相信是后日可取的。新的一年，我要学得更多更好。我要掌握药剂界的所有一切，成为一级等的药剂师。不要紧，再熬多两年罢了。。

Trip up north (2)

As much as I had heard about our friendly neighbour Brunei Darulsalam, I had no conception on how it looked like. Does it resembles Singapore? or Malaysia? or a unique place by itself? Well, at last now I got my answer.

I guess it reads “Welcome to Brunei?”

Bandar Seri Bagawan was a 2 hours car-ride away from Miri. The main reason we went there? To eat the famous Escapade Sushi!

So-so from the outside

But classy inside! And the sushi… is just so scrumptious and fresh.

Other places we visited include this very golden museum. Most of the exhibits here are gold plated and no photos allowed. This is what they call oil rich…

As rich as Brunei is, there are also people living on wooden water villages where their main mode of transport are water taxis aka sampans and speed boats.

A magnificent mosque in downtown Bandar:

A shopping mall

And a six-star high class hotel

My favourite pic of the day: dolphins dropping by the hotel adn swimming towards the horizon. Hope you liked it too.

Trip up north

The last time i was in Miri, it was a 3-hours space filler enroute from Kuching to Mukah. But this Oil Town impressed me enough to warrant a longer ‘official’ visit.

So after the New Year trip to Sibu, Miri became the destination of my 2nd trip.

This is a bird’s eye view of Miri atop Canada Hill. Miri is quite big and it felt like Kuching away from Kuching. Only that it is hotter.

The colourfully decorated trees along Jalan North Yu Sheng, one of the main streets of Miri.

Miri has a lot of beautiful beaches just a short drive from the city centre, for example this esplanade beach.

And their public parks are much more well maintained compared to those in Kuching. This pic is taken at the Taman Awam park.

This is the Grand Old Lady of Miri, which is a must-visit icon. It is the site of the first on-shore oil well in Miri. 

And here is the friendly sea-horse, the mascot of Miri city. Looks similar to Singapore’s Merlion.

Food wise, nothing too spectacular but all the same very nice. They have this nice dish called Lalapan:

And also delicious grilled fish.

And yes, not to forget about dim-sum which will put all the dim-sum joints in Kuching to shame.

Of course a trip to Miri wouldn’t be complete without a trip to their friendly next-door neighbour, Brunei. Since there’s so many photos in this post, Brunei will be up in next =).

Last of all, thanks to all my dear friends in Miri who makes this trip fun and memorable.

New year 2011

New year 2011 was ushered in in a burst of fireworks under the long shadows of Wisma Sanyan, the tallest building in Sarawak. 

For those unfamiliar with Sarawak, Wisma Sanyan is in Sibu, which in turn, is the nearest big town from Mukah.

The fireworks was preceded with a yummy New Year eve dinner, karaoke session and some lovely fruit dessert.

New Year morning 2011 started with a long queue to get a taste of Sibu’s famous Tomyam Hung Ngan.

 

The source of the 30-minute wait and the need to play waiter in bringing the food to your own table:

Tastes delicious, albeit probably Ajinomoto induced as resulted in half day long polydipsia.

New year dinner in turn consists of a huge plate of pineapple rice, crunchy soft shell crabs and sinful banana pancake.

So yeah theme for the New Year: Food, food and more food. Not a bad way to start a new year =)

How Dalat got its name

For a lot of modern Semenanjung kids, I’m assuming Dalat is the only place they know in Sarawak besides Kuching, as it was featured in the secondary school’s literature curricular.

It was also because of “How Dalat got its Name” that I was intrigued to go and find out how does the real Dalat looked like.

A little bit of geography - Dalat is located approximately 40 minutes or 50ish KMs by road from Mukah.

The first impression of Dalat was that it was quite modernised.

The market square was full of modern shop houses, market stalls and even a fuel station. 

However there do exist little enclaves of time warped images of yesteryears, like this quaint hair-dressing salon neatly juxtaposed by the modern-defining VCD store next door. 

This is Dalat’s most famous and sacred landmark – the Jerunei. It is the place where ancient Melanaus put the corpse of a dead king – and together with it a fair maiden was left to starve to death on top to accompany the king into the after-world.

The Jerunei was craved out of a Bellian tree and intricately designed.

Like many small towns in Sarawak, Dalat is situated next to a river, with a jetty filled with plying boats offering to send passengers to the kampungs across river.

There was also the ubiquitous Chinese temple by the riverside. This one looked newly refurbished and somehow reminded me of a koala bear.

And of course, being a Melanau-dominant town, there’s this big Melanau umbrella offering lepaking kids shade from the sun .

So there goes the mystique and allure of Dalat, another place unfortunately torched by fast-paced modernisation. I guess I expected the town to look like Oya, situated between Mukah and Dalat, where the town square consists of a row of colourful wooden shops with flies buzzing around in the lazy afternoon sun.

There was no lingering signs of the kampungs and warriors of the story in Dalat – confined it is, to be a fairytale of a bygone era, forever.