Bapak Tarakan

When I was posted to Tarakan, never had I heard of this name in Indonesia before. But a Google on the web, I noted that Tarakan to be a significant name for Word War 2 history. It all started here. So, how on earth a small island like this can garner so much attention from the Japanese invasion?

The Japanese wanted Tarakan for two reasons: a rich oil field and as a strategic air base from which further attacks can be launched. Nowadays, it is still obvious to see them here when most of expats who flew with me on the same flight are Japanese and Dutch. I guess most of them work for oil based company that are stationed here. If not, I really don't see why someone will be attracted to here.

When it comes to Indonesia, people will just mention the name like Bali, Bandung, Jakarta or Medan. Tarakan? You just dumbstruck one people's conversation. It is so remote that I even had to make 3 transit flights in order to get there. If you think LCCT2 is a market, wait till you hop on the flights in Indonesia! You might elevate LCCT2 back to Tesco hypermarket status.

Though Tarakan is just another city like Terengganu or Kelantan, you still find some familiar faces back home. Like CIMB. Wow. Just imagine I can pay my Direct Access credit card or bank in my check here. KFC? Well, tried that. The menu and set are just not comparable to those back home.Furthermore, they don't serve bread but instead plain white rice.

I was staying in the only 5 stars hotel in town. Swiss-Belhotel Tarakan. The place has nothing to shout about. Just that I'll have FOC morning call from the morning prayers. Ironically, my stay here was not so lonely. I was actually staying with a group of Malaysian primary students who were having the 12th Asean Age Group Chess Championship in the town. With all those thick glasses student accompanied by their respective coaches and teachers, it reminiscend my day as chess player for my school. The difference nowadays is I do more check-in to hotel and flight rather than check-mate your opponent.

After some hectic night work, I had my ups and downs there. For the first time, I was sent into hospital  overseas. I had to be given jab to treat my allergic to an unknown insect bites. Even worse, I encountered a flattened dead cobra in the middle of the runway. Just imagine that, in full darkness, out of the sudden it was just 2 meter besides you. I knew of a movie called Snakes On A Plane starring Samuel Jackson. I guessed there might be someone up there threatened to follow the act from the movie too in Indonesia.

All these while, I never felt so proud of my work until I came here. The only time, I got journalists so close to me was when I boarded the fully-chartered flight for my friend's wedding. This time, I even had a group of journalists taking photos and interviewing us. Felt like a Justin Beiber doing an engineering job. Last but not least, the fried fish I had there was probably the best seafood meal I ever had. I had it for every meal. Lunch and dinner for 3 consecutive days! Just fried fish, rice, and some raw vegetables that were eaten with fresh sambal (chili paste). The Japanese must had left their fishy cuisine here though it must had been Indonesianised now.

I even tried their Nasi Padang there. The waiter in the restaurant immediately served the dishes directly to our table. Within seconds, our table was quickly set with dozens of small dishes filled with highly-flavoured foods such as beef rendang, curried fish, stewed greens, chili eggplant, curried beef liver, tripes, intestines, or foot tendons, fried beef lung, fried chicken, and of course, sambal. We took and paid for only what we had taken from this array of dishes. It is just like eating mixed rice just that this mixed rice is much more variety and expensive.

The people there was very polite. I found it so funny that I was called Bapak whenever a person greeted me. I think my most memorable moment during this trip was my immigration clearance in Jakarta. The conversation below was translated from Bahasa Indonesia.

Immigration officer: What you doing here?

Me: Business meeting.

Immigration officer: ... (stared at me and then my passport).

Me: ...(I smiled while my attention turned to the weird hand print sign on the counter-top which I never encountered any in other airports before)

Immigration officer: Hand (He said in a stern tone. I quickly divert back my attention to him)

Me: Huh!?!!!?? What?!? (I was confused by his instruction)

Immigration officer: Hand!! (He voiced in a louder tone this time)

Me: OK. (I raised both my hands up thinking that he is checking whether I'm in a sober stage or not)

Immigration officer: ON THE SCANNER!!!!!!

Shoot!!!

My First Building As An Engineer

As an engineer, nothing is as proud as designing your own first building. When I first started working, never crossed my mind that I will be getting the chance of designing a building. Though not that fancy multi-storey skyscraper, but to be able to have a building under your name is already quite a remarkable platform to me personally.

I posted so many pictures with the iconic buildings behind as background. But I think this picture deserved to be ranked among the top on my list. Not a significant landmark. But it's just me and the structure I designed. With not much computer involved, I was taught the hard way of using pencil and calculator by the senior checking my work. I remember one of the great story my lecturer once told me. In the old days, a bridge engineer was asked to design a bridge while he's on his business trip on one evening. With such short notice, he asked for one pencil and a few sheets of paper from the lobby. He worked over the night. The next morning, he submitted his design and calculation complete with the sketches of the bridge to be built. By just using pencil and paper, he had charted the fortune of the people who will benefit from the construction of that bridge.

Though I was not involved during the construction, I have this guy above supervising the whole construction process from A to Z. We had our ups and downs with constant telephone calls, letters and emails dealing with site issues. Luckily, this guy is so high in EQ that he managed to deal with lots of issue faced. Though I felt a bit guilty at times as I was too busy with office issue that sometimes I can't lend a hand and he had to face the bricksbats eventually. Nevertheless, I take that as a learning curve in my life. I have to be thankful to so many people for giving me the chance to entrust me with this task.

Sitiawan - Swiflet City & The Venice Of Perak

Since Han Ching moved to her new job, she gets to travel more on local scene. Though this time is not China, Pakistan, Indonesia or Thailand on wings but instead Perak, Penang, Johor, and Selangor on wheels. As I still have leave to clear from last year and after a hectic an d sleepless month working for ironically a project in Perak, I was surprised to go back to the town where this project was. Manjung. I dropped Han Ching off to the factory in Sitiawan and began to loiter around Perak not-so-famous-for-tourism town. Happened to be the town is so dead and quiet that the focus is more to industry-driven purpose. Wondered how they claimed themselves to be Venice of Perak.

Harvesting bird nest is one of the activity you can relate with Sitiawan. I took a drive along an "abandoned" shop lot a distance away from Han Ching's factory. I was hoping for some places for food. To my astonishment, the brand new shop lots were all closed. Shut doors! Gee, the business must be really bad there. Upon looking closer, the windows were fully opened. Weird thing was though it was opened it was blocked by brick wall laid behind the windows.

After making one round of that eerie feeling shop lot, I came across the word Taman Eko Burung Walet on building which means Swiflets Eco-Garden. The name is nice. Eco. Good enough to fool people and birds by the fact that it was meant to be a bird nest harvesting ground. This shoplot isn't catered for human dwelling. It was built for the purpose to lure swiftlets to built their nests in it and while they are away hunting for food on the daytime, harvesters will come in and stole away their nest. Poor birds. I'm sure the swiflets must be furious like an Angry Bird when they got home.

I wound down my car window and I was treated to relentless sound of birds' chirping indicating to me that more than hundred of birds dwelling inside the buildings. With no sign of human beings, I drove down to the nearby town and I came across many abandoned building converted as the harvesting ground for bird nest. It's very simple to notice one along the road. Their windows was opened with brick wall (sometimes with opening through it) laid behind it. The door was closed. Nope. Not "chicken" ground. But multi thousand dollar business ground. Recently, some of the bird nest from Malaysia has been banned from other countries due to the authenticity issue. It's just not so "natural" anymore.

As it will be quite a while before Han Ching finished her work, I tried googling the web for some local delicacy to be found in Sitiawan. Guess what? I'm doing it with my "baling-anjing" Nokia phone. And I came across this shop called Sin Lay which is supposed to be famous for making "kon pheah". I bought myself a few pieces of the pork-lard oil infused, caramelised onions stuffed biscuits. I asked for the shop's staff for permission to snap some photos of their making process.

One could feel an ancient taste of how this biscuit was made by sticking the biscuit inside the wall of the oven filled with burning charcoal. The taste is awesome yet traditional. Pork lard tastes so good that you never thought to be guilty eating it without someone telling you that's it's unhealthy. I saved some for Han Ching and by the time she managed to get a hand on it, the whole car smell like one of the biscuits. I would recommend those who dropped by the shop to eat it fresh or while it's hot as once cooled, the biscuit is a bit chewy just like a hardened fat.

A few biscuit does not satisfy my stomach. As I was hunting for another famous eateries shops, most of them was either closed or still haven't started their business. I was left with disappointment. Both my GPS and baling-anjing Nokia phone couldn't find me anymore specialty food around. With no major entertainment around except Tesco Manjung, I drove down to Lumut to catch a glimpse of the harbour nearby. I parked by the river side and took a stroll while watching big vessels docking in and out. Frankly speaking, there is nothing to see and buy as souvenir in Lumut.

Except some "ham yue" (salted fish).

The Day 1 Million Youngsters Spoilt My Company Event

Company event was something which I always perceive as an event where the whole company goes out for a little get-together. I always into the idea of going out traveling. I missed the last time the company went for a holiday trip to Melaka as I was in Middle East posting.

I've seen company going for a Mount Kinabalu hike. Angkor Wat trip. Though it is something to be jealous of, but sometimes instead if thinking negatives why not count our blessings? One of my colleague said to everyone in the meeting,

"Why are you complaining so much? In my previous company they don't even have annual dinner!"

True. We have to go back to basic and reality. We are being paid salary. That keeps a roof above of us. Meal on the table. And wheels on the road. Bonus and annual event is deemed an extra thingy. If you have it, then we should be thankful. If we don't have, life just goes on.

Having been an organiser for two dinner functions in my university, makes me appreciate the effort of the organiser. Meeting. Marketing. Sponsors. Venue. Decision making. Effort to please everyone (that's the toughest part). Of course when there is a list of 3 choices given to us to choose from, we tend to come up with the fourth choice which is our own "suggestion". There is always a possibility that you won't get a round table agreement unless choice number one is an all-expense paid 5D 4N trip to Disneyland! 

Even when the venue was chosen, people will start arguing that their partners and family members need to be in the event too. Now this is the part which I have my reservation on. First and foremost, please get this right. Company even is supposed to be a company staff event. Though I understand that partners and family are  important person to each staff but I always believe that annual event is something where we get along with our colleague and build up a better teamwork. It does not serve the purpose if you are just sitting with your family the whole event. But, if they allowed and budget is there, then why not? Never say no when there is a "rezeki".

Fortunately, the lucky draw are entirely for the staff. Just imagine, if there are top three prizes of IPad2, IPhone 4G and IPod Touch went to the wife of XXX or the child of YYY .

Shoot!!!  I'm sure you won't get along with that colleague/ boss for one week (unless that XXX and YYY are your family members!). Nevertheless, a sumptuous meal, slimmest thumb drive and a good RM200 shopping voucher.

Triple Tap - Are You Ready?

Angry with tight dateline?

Fed up with paper jam?

Run out of tissue paper in the pantry?

ARE YOU READY????

To vent out your anger after a tough working day?