Swordie Bloggie

Yesterday, after we pass the Kundasang Tamu ground, we saw something quite interesting. Kundasang Tamu ground is located at the foot of Mount Kinabalu. But nowadays, Kundasang is not a cold place anymore like before… the hills surrounding it are all ‘bald’, not much more natural trees… one reason why this place is warmer. Driving along the Moyog is much cooler with the thick cloud surroundings the road. The picture on the right show how it looks like from the Kundasang Tamu ground… on the left should be the Mount Kinabalu (not in picture)

OK, back to what we saw… this ‘kancil’ is more than a ‘kancil’… it carries all kind of food products on top of it and some other stuff inside it… including trays of eggs. We believe they bought these goods at the town to be sold back at their village. Well here, most of the villages are very far from the town and transportation is not always available for the villagers to go to town to buy their groceries. Normally they, the merchant, will make a small area below their house… and turn it into a small shop… it is a home business.

And this one was captured at Telupid district, near Sandakan. This one is for sure a real home business… they do their business and sleep at their stall… probably live there too. Some of them have small room and kitchen at the back of their stall. Sometime it is their house… life far away from town is really interesting. In, near or far from town, everyone need to survive… need food. Tell me what you can see and find in the picture? 😆

My destination for this week Journey around Sabah is Sandakan Region. I will be visiting our offices at Sandakan, Telupid, Beluran and Ranau. The journey is very tiring and right now I’m in Kensington Hotel, Sandakan. This hotel is new… only about 3 months old. I don’t think it has many rooms since it only has 2 floors and located in shop lots. Environment is clean and quite… coz the area is still new 😀

And every time I go for travel, I carry few things with me. Other than travel insurance which is included in our service benefits, these few items are necessity… tooth brush, tooth paste, shaver… and of course soap… but soap normally provided by the hotel including some other stuff like shampoo.

Normally I just pack these things into a plastic bag. But this time is different… I bought a Darlie Travel Kit which I believe they just introduced. The kit includes a small tube of tooth paste and a tooth brush. The travel kit bag is big enough to fit my shaver into it which make my packing easier 😀

Currently I’m here at Keningau on another different route doing Journey Around Sabah… will be here until Friday.

We started our journey from Kota Kinabalu yesterday, Monday, 22 September 2008. Our original plan was to do our task at Tambunan first and stay overnight at Keningau.

But because of the weather looks, we decided to do delivery only for that day. First delivery was for Tambunan then we proceeded to Sook, and then continue to Nabawan.

We arrived at Nabawan before 2.00pm and decided to complete the Nabawan’s task.

Testing on the Celcom broadband… can’t get connection at Tambunan, Sook and Nabawan.

After completing our task at Nabawan around 3pm, it started raining heavily together with strong wind. Our colleague at Nabawan said this weather never happen before… at least for a long time. In fact it did not rain for sometimes already.

I guess we brought the rain and wind with us… it always like that. Everywhere I go, it will rain heavily if the place did not rain for sometimes 😉

Today, Tuesday, we went back to Tambunan to do our task there, then proceeded to Sook after that.

The journey is quite tiring… but what can I say… I must enjoy it… it’s nature everywhere, love it 😀

Nothing but nature everywhere… with majestic fog along the Penampang – Tambunan road… or better know as Moyog. This place, Moyog, should be preserved since it’s the only place I can see the river water is still crystal clear… awesome… we were driving with the windows down… natural air-cond 😀
 
 
 
 

Beautiful Tambunan… green everywhere…
 

Heavy rain on our back from Nabawan to Keningau on Monday…

My journey from KK to Lahad Datu to Kunak to Semporna to Tawau and back to KK from Monday to Friday was great… well it’s more like this… KK – LDU – KNK – LDU – KNK – SPN – TWU – SPN – TWU – KK

Stayed 2 nights at Lahad Datu and another 2 nights at Tawau.

I wanted to update my blog every night… at least, but I can’t until today. It’s all because of my notebook.

On Thursday, after returning from Semporna, at King Park Hotel, Tawau around 4.00pm, when I switch on my notebook, it went berserk…

The mouse pointer has some kind of square shadows… I refresh it by pressing F5, the shadow gone… then it appears again… then I press the F5 again… nothing happen… then press once more… the screen went blank… I can’t shut it down… I end up forcing it to shutdown.

When I switch it on back, the screen is still blank. Then force shut down it again. When I switch it on again, the LEDs lights up but nothing happen… hard disk is not spinning… the hard disk LED just flicker for a while and gone.

Crap… I realize something very bad struck my notebook…

I called my colleague in another room to send me the tools… I want to open up the notebook. I took out the hard disk and shake it… damm… click click click click…

I have not backup my hard disk for the past one year… yes one year… and now my hard disk… click click click click…

I wanted to throw the notebook through the 3rd floor window.

I just pack it back and went to sleep, waiting for my colleague to call me for their ‘buka puasa’… or ‘sungkai’. I did not even bother to go down to take my lunch… my last meal was my breakfast.

Back to KK on Friday… non-stop from Tawau around 10am and reach KK around 5.30pm.

On Saturday, I went to my friend’s workshop… to see if I can recover my data. Before that, I went to buy some tools to open the hard disk screws… although my friend said he has all the tools. It cost me $25 I think… can’t even remember how much it was…

I told my friend I want to open up the hard disk… he advice me not to do it. I said it got click click click click… Well, he said most of the notebook hard disk is like that… but my Hitachi click click click click… is very loud.

To be positive, I trusted him, I did not open it… thinking the click click click click… must be the hard disk’s crash protection mechanism…

I connect the hard disk using a powered USB cable. Switch on the borrowed notebook and connect the USB cable. After ‘some’ time, the notebook detected the hard disk.

I open my most important folder first… My Documents… it warns me I have no authorization to open it… I just proceed… After a very ‘long’ time, it shows all my files… to make sure my files are not encrypted, I open one of the text file… phew… it opened.

Lucky I did not enable Bit Locker on my notebook… else I will face more major serious problem.

I slowly backup all my data…

Now, I’m crawling without my notebook… next week our destination is Keningau areas… without the notebook, it will be hard for me to do my work… just like a mechanic without screw driver.

 
While waiting for my stuff to be back-up, I read the Stuff magazine.

2.30am… woke up to go to eat here at Tawau 😀

We checked out from Executive Hotel and proceeded to our Lahad Datu’s office. Around 10.20am we took off to Kunak.

Reach at our office in Kunak around 11.35am. We did our task but faced the same problem… telephone service.

In our initial planning, we will go straight to Tawau. But since it is only 12.40pm, we decided to stop at our Semporna office to send our equipment so that we don’t have to unload it at our Tawau’s office for safety.

We reach at our Semporna office around 1.25pm. We barely missed our district’s boss. We talk just for a while since he needed to attend his task outside. We drop our stuff and headed to Semporna town to see what they have here. This is the first time I come to Semporna.

My first impressions about Semporna… small towns but busy with petty business… a lot of stalls selling all kind of stuff like cloths, food, etc… like ‘night market’ in the afternoon.

Then he headed to Tawau around 1.40pm and reach there around 3.30pm. Check into hotel and I had my lunch at the hotel restaurant around 4pm. Then I slept until my colleague called me just before 6pm. They’re going to ‘buka puasa’… but I decide to continue sleeping. I did not have my dinner since I’m still full with my late lunch. And since my room has two breakfast, I can take both the ‘sahur’ and breakfast 😀

Around 7.30pm, we went around Tawau town and had some tea near the hotel. We invited one of our colleagues here to join us. Went back to hotel and slept 😀

Had ‘sahur’ with my colleagues… it is 4.33am now… going to sleep then going to take breakfast after that… and off to Semporna around 8.30am later…

Count how many small vehicles you can see?… 99% are 4wd! It’s not just a sign of wealth… not just because of wealth, but more on necessity.

More than 400km from home… while in Lahad Datu… now more than 500km here at Tawau.

I thought Danum Valley is off limit from logging…

 
 
 

Today woke up around 3am. We wanted to go find food around 11pm last night for my two colleagues ‘sahur’… but I fall asleep.

I SMS both of them, got reply, they also just woke up. So I called asking whether they went without me. Both of them also fall asleep… I guess everyone are too tired with the long journey.

They wanted to go to the hotel’s coffee house since there was a message pasted on the lift that ‘sahur’ is serving around that time.

They went down first. They called me from the lobby… hotel is not providing any… coffee house is closed! I said… huh… the hotel lied to us. I suggest we go round-round to find food.

So we went round-round on car… and it was drizzling. At the end we landed at one of the shop… which is not very inviting… we had fried noodles with chicken… but there is more chicken’s skin than chicken meat! I followed them taking coffee… which I don’t take… I prefer tea.

Went back to hotel around 4.30am… but I can’s sleep, must be the coffee.

So today at our Lahad Datu office, we completed our task early… but we can’t test what we installed coz we are having problem with telephone service.

Then we decided to continue to Kunak… which we supposed to go tomorrow. We just want to send our equipment and see the place first. Since it is only 12.30pm, we decided to go to the hotel for a while. I took the opportunity to take my lunch at the hotel.

Around 2pm we took off to Kunak… reach at our Kunak office around 3.15pm, then went back and reach Lahad Datu around 5.30pm, just in time for them to ‘buka puasa’ at 6.11pm.

Tomorrow we are going back to Kunak to complete our task there. Then we will proceed to Tawau to sleep there tomorrow.

Took more pictures today… but too lazy to post them…

Today, I started my journey to tour around Sabah… official… a.k.a working. It’s going to take 5 weeks altogether. But since there will be weeks which has public holiday like Malaysia Day (yahoo… 16 September) and Hari Raya Aidilfitri, my journey is extended to 7 weeks.

This week we will cover starting from Lahad Datu, Kunak, Semporna and Tawau. I’m doing this entry at my hotel room in Lahad Datu. Thanks to my Sony T200 camera, I manage to temporary ‘exchange’ it with my friend’s Celcom Broadband 😀 I modified the broadband modem a little bit by adding extra antenna… with it, the signal is more stable… well, it looks stable enough to me… and I’m connected with HSDPA… inside the hotel room here at Lahad Datu 😀

We started this morning from Kota Kinabalu around 10am. I had my breakfast before 9am at Taman Cantek, Penampang. Since both my colleague are ‘puasa’, we did not stop for lunch… we stop at Shell station to take a leak and I took this opportunity to have my lunch around 2.50pm.

This is my lunch… 😀

Arrive at our Lahad Datu office around 4.30pm. Then our boss here brought us for ‘buka puasa’ at the town.

Some photos along the journey…

Mount Kinabalu without its TOP… coz there are too much rain lately. See the white lines… they are instant watefalls. Imagine, Sabah will never runs out of water… as long there are clouds.

Roads are quite expensive to maintain here coz they are running through hilly slopes… that’s why Sabah badly needed the extra Oil Royalty…