Annah Rais Longhouse - Bidayuh Homestay

For the first time in my 4 years of stay in Sarawak, I've finally lay my first step on the famous traditional Bidayuh Longhouse. Its not really traditional actually. They have those not so modern, basic aluminium basins with basic plumbing system as well as basic electricity and basic 17" televisions.

Located about 60km away from Kuching city, this Bidayuh tribe's longhouse consists of more than 80 families and is said to have history of more than 8 generations.

Upon entering this village, we were greeted with traffic jams and fully occupied car park (=.="").

I've always thought that human skulls were hung at the entrance door to the longhouses. (All because of the rumours and stories that brainwashed me when I was a kid). I was wrong! Maybe its true in the past but not in this modern age! 

The revolutionized longhouse welcomed us not with the skulls, but with the SUGAR CANE CRUSHER!!

The sugar cane CRUSHER!!

Entrance to the longhouse

Wooden bridge

The passage along the longhouse with houses at the left and right sides that sheltered many families.

=)

Family gathering

The flooring were made of bamboo sticks.

A collections of bamboo sticks stored for emergency replacements.

Gong Gong Gong~

BBQ

We toured around the longhouse and watched some tourists trying the traditional blowpipe. With a small fees, they have three tries to blow the pipe with the aim of landing the darts on the targeted area. Each region of the targeted area have its own rewards in the form of monetary and soft drinks.

One of the resident setting up the blowpipe and darts.

The target!

The blowing rule - take a deep breath, aim and release all the air in your lung in an instance!

We ended the visit by entering the house of the head tribe.

What's the thing beside the cage on the left side of this picture and guess what's in the cage??

Its a real human skulls.....

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Early signs of World War 3 ?

It all started with a self-immolation of a 26 year old fruit and vegetables street vendor at Tunisia due to harassment and humiliation from the local authorities.

Uprising began at Tunisia. Followed by Oman, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Bahrain, and the recent ongoing war at Libya which took more than 10,000 lives.

Not to mention other minor protest and middle-ranged riots from Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Mauritania, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Djibouti, Iran, Kuwait and Western Sahara.

A total of about 19 countries (probably more) involved in this 2010-2011 Middle East and North Africa protests. Bringing up to thousands of dead bodies and leaving millions, depressed, devastated and traumatized; by the loss of family and friends.

Most of it were due to poorly managed and corrupted government...

So, who's next?

Are these early signs of World War 3 predicted by Nostradamus ?

I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones - by Albert Einstein

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My Interview with Intel

I had an interview last week with Intel. This post will be used as my reminder in future!

Honestly, the questions asked were fundamental but I am unprepared for their technical questions. Did not do my revision! This was my greatest downfall.

Besides the normal questions such as "introduce yourself, your interest, your capability, ect ect", these are the summary of the questions asked and answers:

1. Draw a CMOS inverter truth table, schematic, stick diagram and cross-sectional view.
2. Draw a CMOS NAND and NOR gate truth table, schematic, and stick diagram.
Answer:

CMOS NOT, NAND, and NOR

3. Design an XOR gate using only NAND gate.
Answer:

Design XOR using NAND gate

4. Design XOR gate using only NOR gate.
Answer:

Design XOR using NOR gate

5. Write a simple source code to sort 10 numbers in descending order.
Answer:

6. Design half adder and full adder, from truth table, simplify using Karnaugh Map and draw the schematic. (lazy to write the solution)

7. What are the 5 layers in physical layer. (I only learn the 7 OSI layers. Not the layers inside the physical layers)
Answer: The 7 layers are Application, Presentation, Session, Transport, Network, Data Link and Physical.

8. What are the functions of data link layer?
Answer: Provide node to node packet delivery service, transmission/reception of structured streams of bits over the network media, sub-divide the physical layer's raw bit stream into structured blocks of packets, error detection and error handling.

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ETP

As promised in my previous post, the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) pictures is here!

 Exterior view of 4 Point Hotel (building too tall....could not take the picture of the whole hotel)

 Translation: Open day of Economic Transformation Programme by PEMANDU

Chief Minister of Sarawak and other VIPs' vehicles. (notice? there's a red carpet)

We are viewing the presentation through a live telecast....STANDING!!!

Can only 'smell' the foods.....cannot eat yet!

Managed to enter the VIP's hall and watch the CM is giving his speech. (he is one of the most influential and powerful person in Sarawak)

Finally, the official opening ceremony...

Booths that will give a more detail information to investors. They have those lab members who will tell interested investors from head to toe on how to set up a business in a particular industry. From how many and what kind of people you should hire, and what kind of training should be provided to them, to how much revenue you can expect from the business!

Optoelectronic....tough subject! (no hope for me...)

Click the picture to have a larger view on what they could do  from 2011 to 2012 if this programme is successful

~Tea break time~ (did not took any photos during lunch break because too hungry...no time to take)

Curry puffs on the left (weird shape compare to typical curry puff) and among this three kuih, the creamy green cake is the best! ^^

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An Odd Day at Economic Transformation Programme (ETP)

I am one of the selected undergraduate in my faculty to undergo this Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) workshop organized by PEMANDU which was held at Four Points by Sheraton Hotel, Kuching 12 hours ago. (sounds like a grand event)

It is a grand event!! With the presence of Chief Minister of Sarawak and other VIPs from public and private sectors.
Its actually an open day to showcase those results obtained by the representatives from public and private sectors in identifying National Key Economic Areas (NKEA)and to obtain feedback from the rakyat. (Open day means that anyone can attend this workshop. Which mean, I am not selected.....i am forced to attend it!!)

The first moment I stepped into 4 Point Hotel, Kuching, I was.....amazed... (you know la...my 1st time step into this hotel leh....)


Then, I saw so many "higher society" arriving in BMW, Marcedez-Benz, Bentley, and some other "businessman" cars with their own personal drivers. All wearing black suits (like men in black)... Even some of their drivers,  security guards, waiters and staffs wears them. (I am only wearing an old T-shirt with a jeans!! Felt odd...)


I heard that there were about 3000 people attending this ETP open day workshop. Indeed, the place was crowded! There were some people who were shown the way to enter a hall upstairs and some were directed to go to one side of the ground floor (by some pretty event crews, of course!).

We were the ones at the ground floor.....but...problem arises. Where is the seats?? No seats! (Oh no! Do I need to stand from 9am till 6pm?) By the way, we were watching the seminar through a live telecast from the hall upstairs. (will put the pics up soon...)


Those live telecasts are similar to those in the website here (part 1), here (Part 2), here (Part 3) and here (Part 4). And the presentation slides can be obtain here.

Actually, while watching the TV, I believed many were eyeing on the foods there. (all waiting for someone to make the first move)
Of course, with my 'tham jiak' (compulsiveness towards foods) character, I lead them with my first move....took a cup there, fill in the cup with orange juice and start to drink it. (Slumber saja - relaxed only) 
And then....you know...they all start to drink too!

The food was there but was not ready to be served. (can only be 'smelled'....sniff...sniff!!) So, while waiting for the food, we watch the telecast. There were a lot of interesting figures, i admit. They had done a lot of research on this ETP!!

1. Malaysia is one of only 13 countries in the world to have sustained growth of over 7% for 25 years or more since 1945.
2. Our GDP growth for the first half of 2010 was 9.5%. (in order to achieve high income nation, our GDP must grow at least 6% per year)
3. We also reduced our 2010 budget by RM25billion.
4. Our ringgit is one of the strongest in the last 13 years.
5. NKEA will boost our Gross National Income (GNI) from RM23,770 (USD6,700) to RM48,000 (USD15,000) per capita.
6. NKEA was finalized by 1000+ people, 194 MNCs, GLCs, SMEs, Ministries and Gov agencies!! (they mapped the route, the formula, the method and concept.....for our future - respect!!)

To gain the government support (to get them do something), they even sent 12 labs report, 131 entry point projects, 60 business opportunity and 3.3 million job opportunities to the ministers and asked them to read it in 4 days!! (take note that all these are reports...some were reports as thick as your text book!! Of course, you know, the ministers won't properly read it.)

By the way, ETP is actually a PROGRAMME and not a PLAN for Malaysia to become a high income nation by 2020. And, 92% of the investment will come from the private sector, not public sector. They will publish a book contains all these valuable information estimated at 26 October 2010 to the public. (so that people take action and not talk only)


Note: We were served lunch (rice, slices of lemon fried FISH, soy sauce chicken, vege, salads, puddings, and fruits) and tea break (coffee, tea, curry puffs, cake and cake)...hahahaha

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Batang Ai Hydroelectric Dam

Last week, I went for a field trip to Batang Ai Dam. It is located at Batang Ai National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia (coordinate 01°08′50″N 111°52′26″E) and is operated by Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (SESCO). The 24 km² dam could power up to 100MW (MegaWatt) with its 4 massive turbine!

The journey there started at about 8am and reached the destination at about 2.30pm with some stops along the journey (Serian, Lachau, Sri Aman, Lubok Antu). A normal journey without stops will be about 3-4 hours.

Every places there is a special landmark. In Sarawak, statue of Cats (Kuching), Durian (Serian), Pigeon Bird (Sri Aman) and Fish (Batang Ai).

People Mountain People Sea

People mountain people sea. What does it mean?

Its a direct translation from the chinese character ren shan ren hai (人山人海) which bring the meaning of a lot of people gathering in one place at a time. People from the mountain and even people from the sea, swarms onto the land.

This is what happen during the recent Chinese New Year week. Suria FM was having a road show in Taiping Sentral and this picture shows it all.

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The Manhattan Feast

Location: The Manhattan Fish Market
Event: Birthday Celebration
Total Price: RM300++ (9 teenagers with monstrous appetite)

The Manhattan Fish Market

Nothing special....just a fish chasing the squids. Fish eat more squids become tastier and then the fish will be hooked up by the fisherman and be taken to the Manhattan Fish Market and be served and eaten by us - customers.

However, the process of catching fresh and tasty fishes have some risks. The sea creature, such as in above picture, will harm those innocent but cruel fisherman's ships that roam around the sea. So BEWARE!!

The fishes will be served on this specially branded round wooden foodware (don't know what this is called)

Alright, finished with the 'talking crap' from previous photos. Lets begin with the sauce. Do you know that sauces are very important in Spanish foods? Opss....this is not Spanish foods by the way. The black colour sauce is the soy sauce and the white colour sauce on the right is the tartar sauce. The red colour sauce is none other than the sauce you were served when you ate chicken rice at the hawker stall - chilly sauce.

 

The Fisherman's Giant Fried Platter set (enough for 2 or 3 people). There are variety choices of scrumptious and crunchy sea foods in this platter. Including are fried prawns, fish, calamari, mushrooms with tasty chips and also garlic rice for those that yearn for appetite satisfactions. What I can say is that I love the fishes on the left of this picture. It has tender but crispy layer of fried skin and the most important is the fish is very fresh. When it enters your mouth, you will feel the abundant of fish meats splattering and swimming in your mouth while massaging your tongue and the sauce from the toppings will intrigue your mind to savour every bite of this well cooked fish.

 

This platter is served for 2 person and it has perfectly grilled fish, calamari, big prawns, oysters and of course garlic rice as a wholeness of this set. What is different with this platter and the previous is that this platter is grilled. Which mean its healthier and suit for those that are sensitive towards fried foods.

 

Before this two platters are served, the waiter and waitress will perform some exciting and eye opening demonstration to the customers. The prawns and fishes on the platter will be burned with a highly flammable Bunsen burner which will bring out the aroma from the foods on the platter especially the prawns and the grilled fishes with special sauce on top of it. Burning it with a high degree fire instantly will create a sense of smoothness on the fishes and blend the sauce and the grilled/fried fishes together as a whole creating a newly formed, perfect aroma which will entice everyone within 99999km radius.

 

Three sets of dishes from Manhattan Fish Market. By the way, we ordered peach drink. For your information, it is refillable. We do not know this until one of our friend went to refill. You can actually share a cup of drink and having unlimited refilling of the peach juice. (only certain drinks)

Clean and Clear. Shining and Sparkling. (**Cleaned the plate because we do not have enough $ to pay...**)

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LOTTERY of the century!

Just got myself a “lottery” today! At 6.15pm, when my roommate and I was having a soundly evening nap, suddenly, the room door was knocked hardly by someone. While still in a blur state, I opened the door and got myself a lottery of the century.

The “lottery” ticket or should I say a summons from the college’s authority

They claimed that our room is very messy and dirty. And, of course, we couldn’t denied it because the room, at first glance, looked quite messy. This is due to the fact that, recently, my roommate’s stuffs were all around the room as he was busy with his assignments.

Ironically, in my apartment, my roommate and I was the one who cleaned the whole area in the apartment occasionally including the dirty toilet. Yes! Toilet! The toilet which I post some time ago in this blog!

Even though we cleaned the apartment and toilets and of course our own room, we still get a summons. Although, its only a small amount that we need to pay, a mere RM20, but it took away our pride and dignity. Why? The people who made the apartment and toilets dirty and did not even cleaned it did not get any punishment but we, who always consider about the cleanliness of the surrounding got punished. Where is the justice in this world?!

Alright, enough of the complaining and back to the positive point of view. We were actually very fortunate that the group of people who entered our apartment to inspect, namely the college’s principle, Felo, hostel manager, college’s technicians, and university’s guards, were lenient in the inspection. They did not search our cupboards and our belongings.

If they really checked our cupboards and belongings, I’m sure that we will get another hundreds and thousands of free lottery tickets with the amount of the lottery exceeds 10 times the amount that I currently got. There are numerous illegal’s stuffs that we smuggled or hide in our room. Some stuffs were hidden in our room due to some favours from our friends from other colleges. Some were our personal stuffs.

You can start imagining things that are illegal to be brought into hostel. Things that involves fire, alcohols, “foods”, oil, electric devices and so on. Opss…..I just revealed and admitted my transgressions or crime. ^^
Nah…Its actually nothing seriously wrong. Just the rules sucks and meant to be broken for the sake of surviving in this hostel in the middle of the jungle for 4 years long!

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SuPeR bLaCk FoReSt bIrThDaY

By popular demand, I tried to find some pictures on my birthday to post it in my blog. Unfortunately, there are NO SUITABLE PHOTOS that could be publish in public!!!How sad could this be....and funny actually. Hahaha. All the photos that are taken are either being sabotaged or there are some people demonstrating obscene act.

If you were asked to choose to find a decent photo from a large album to be presented to a morally minded public, what would you do if all you could find are photos that shows people digging nose, guy and guy hugging from the back (like Titanic scenes), a girl who in the picture looked like a guy, a taiko who seems like asking for some "protection money" and the victim lowered down his head acknowledging the intimidation (UGUT laa), a person digging his teeth, a guy who smile like uncle (apek) with the mouth looked like kissing, a person eating candle showing bad example to the kids around while at the same time smashing his face onto the cake, and even a person drinking cocktail but looked like choking from fake teeth and the list goes on...??!!

Alright, I've already make you all imagined the photos that were taken during my birthday. So, I'm sure you all are already satisfied. Haha...

Anyway, I'll just write something spontaneously without editing this time and post some photos of the cakes...(sounds like cake have a more important place than the people themselves). :P

This is the cafe where they celebrated my birthday. The shop name is VERY nice....HAPPY GARDEN. BUTTT....read further and I'll let you all know what this shop is all about!!

Let's begin with the cake they bought and present to me. Yummy~

 The cake name is very special. Its called SUPER BLACK FOREST! I think the picture explain everything in detail...I like the blackcurrant! (opss...just realized the picture written -current instead of -currant)

 A broken chair which brings out a lot of unfortunate event which provoked and almost leads to quarrels and fights around the whole world!!!

This restaurant had been operating for more than a millennium and of course, the chairs in this restaurant are also as old as the dinosour age. And could broke anytime injuring the seaters and damaging the floor. One day, there are more than 20 people went to this restaurant to have a party. But, due to the happening event and joy of celebration, a chair is broken by a taiko (remember the Digi advertisement about the big boss?). Fortunately, the taiko is not injured because, as you know, taiko is usually very swift and careful of what happen in the surrounding. If there is anything that happen, he is usually the first one who will react.

Since the chair is broken, we put the chair aside and continue what we are doing as we thought this is only a small matter. However, after we pay the bill for the foods and drinks, we are still around the area discussing what we usually  expert in. Asking each other the next destination.

Suddenly, the taukeh(shop owner) called one of the taiko's brother  to come over. Without knowing anything, that guy was scolded savagely and mentally tortured with mean tone and language. Why? Because of that little chair. Taiko's brother was very honest. He told the taukeh that he is not the one who broke it. And thus, taiko's brother just made the biggest mistake in his life!

The taukeh was raged by the answer and he claimed that the chair is very strong and new and even can withstand the weight of an elephant! How could a chair break by its own! The lecture goes on until the taiko beh tong (cannot withstand) with how his little brother got psychologically bedridden by a stranger.

The taiko go near them and listen for a while and the first sentence comes out from the taiko was, "I am the person who broke the chair!" (He just admit it!)

"What you want now?! The chair is so old and you were fortunate that I wasn't injured! How could you blame the customer for breaking a chair who had been there for so many years seated by hundreds and thousands of people!"

The taukeh tone changes from an angry and loud voice to a soft, peasant and polite language. "I am not asking you all to pay or what. I know you all are good student. If you all are kind hearted and feel that you all are responsible for this chair, you can pay me."

He is indirectly saying that it is entirely the taiko's and his gang fault!


The debate goes on and on and eventually the taiko's brother asked how much is the chair, the taukeh replied, "Its only RM30." (I've forgotten the exact price as this event happened last month)

How could an old plastic chair cost that much! And thus, the taiko's brother thought of a brilliant suggestion that he thought is fair to everyone, "How about we both divide the amount and both share the damage."

He suggestion was bluntly denied by the taukeh! Remember what he just said earlier about, "If you are kind hearted,.....then you can pay me....", which mean the payment is not even necessary but he still negotiated the price!! Sohai lar! (click the link for definition)


At that instant, another of the taiko's mediator who did not follow the whole story, went ahead and paid the taukeh. He does not want the situation get worse. And so, everything settled with some cursing and gossiping and backstabbing the taukeh.

NEXT DESTINATION = ~BARSAGA~

Since all of some of us stress out and wanted to relax, we went here. An isolated place called Barsaga which offers customer from Heineken to Bacardi and even from Vodka to Chivas up till cocktails standard!

 

The left contestant is the beautiful and stunning tongkat ali with Ginseng ALIKE flavour called Margarita and its opponent is none other than the famous and brutal AK-47 which of course, taste like AK-47!! You can imagine drinking Ginseng and drinking pure and strong ginger drink with only lemon slices to protect your tastebud. The white powder on the Margarita glass is actually salts.

For your information, the Margarita cocktail is made up of tequila, Triple Sec or Cointreau , fresh lime/lemon juice with the ratio of 7:4:3 respectively. AK-47 is made up of Bourdon whiskey, Brandy, Cointreau, Gin, lime, rum, vodka, whiskey and soda water with the amount of 1/3 each.

Warning: AK-47 shot down my friend and paralyzing him for a few hours!!


Can't believe I wrote so long...thank you for reading.. :D

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