About Nike Utility Duffel Bag (Black)

Cool bag designed to be carried with the handles/shoulder strap as duffle, with the straps as a backpack or single strap as a cross-body bag.

Large main compartment with zippered hang pocket.

This duffle has a large end pocket that’s ideal for wet/dry storage.

Also has a small end pocket and zippered front pocket.

Water-resistant Tarpaulin bottom. Tough 600 denier polyester.

Size: 25″ x 13″ x 11″

We reach Tawau around 4pm on 24th, and booked into Heritage Hotel. And this is the first time I have to change room. Before we went out around 6pm for dinner and ‘work’, I checked the windows to make sure it is locked, and it was not… and I can’t lock it. The latch is locked but not hooked… I decided to report it later when I come back coz need to rush for dinner… ‘buka puasa’ actually since my two colleagues are fasting for the Ramadan. But we were only back to the hotel around 10pm something… coz after dinner we actually went to install and configure the server and troubleshoot the network that night at our branch office so that we will not be rushing the next day… after all we are still excited with the journey I guess… and it is ‘puasa’ month, easier to work at night.

I called the room service and reported the window problem, and they sent two maintenance guys. They tried and said, they can’t unlock it coz they don’t have the key and the person in charge of the key has gone home for the day. The other guy assure me nothing will happen… it’s safe he said. I scolded him… I asked him what happen if someone kill me tonight?… the other guy was more professional and said, they will find a solution, they need to talk to the manager or something and they left. A few minutes later, the reception called and inform they can’t unlock the window, and the only way is for me to change room… So change room from 312 to 212

The next day after troubleshooting at the Tawau branch office, around 2pm, we started our journey back home by staying a night at Lahad Datu. Lahad Datu town roads are in the mess… I can say it’s a cowboy town… worse than Kota Belud. Then we continue our journey around 9am the next day.

Travelling through this path is a bit comfortable… the roads are all sealed… only a few section under maintenance… but that’s not a big problem compared to the Kalabakan road. But this road are busier… either overtake or trail a long traffics. There are many big size vehicles like lorries, trucks and buses too… and they are speeding like mad man when the road is not climbing but crawling when they climb the hills… Just have to be careful…

The 6 hours journey was great… except for one accident at Ranau. A lorry tanker felled on its side at a corner. When we reach the accident area, it was already quite a long queue and we can see a crane was trying to move the lorry. The smell of the diesel fuel plus donno what chemical from the lorry was giving me stomach ache… feel like vomiting, so I stayed inside the car with the air-cond while my colleagues went outside. After like 30 minutes, the crane manage to shift the lorry to the side of the road so that traffics from both directions can continue their journey.

And along the journey, there were many big buses ferrying passengers to and from Kota Kinabalu to east-coast like Sandakan, Lahad Datu, Tawau and Semporna. And frankly, I never seen double-deckers in Sabah… A couple of few weeks before our journey, I did read on the newspapers about a bus operator which just acquired 3 units of double deckers bus which cost about a million ringgit each. And surprise… surprise… I saw 3 units of double deckers bus… Two yellow colour and a white colours from two different operators. Bus service business along this route must be good… maybe can start bus renting service like the Arizona bus rental… Yeah why not… not necessary the big bus… it can be the small luxury bus… or motor home… that will be cool… driving your rented motor home at your own sweet time… don’t have to worry about hotel or changing rooms…

Some photos…

Lahad Datu old shops.

You really have to squeezed between large vehicles sometimes… they stopped at the road side coz there are Police road block or probably they just feel like parking there…

See that guy on orange shirt?… He simply park his lorry there and walk to the other side of the road to meet his friend…

Previously we thought we were in Florida beach and saw a convertible… this time we thought we saw Transformers…

You want to go to Paris? Don’t sweat it… just come over to Lahad Datu, there is a place called Kampung Paris…

This bus was traveling like beatle… virtually it tried to overtake everyone… sometimes 6 cars at one time although there are incoming traffics… crazy!

Bus… and many of them too.

The first double deckers bus we cross…

Somewhere in Ranau… Mount Kinabalu… Gonna climb it next month.

Maintenance of slope somewhere in Ranau.

Accident in front…

The lorry tanker overturned… lucky the crane manage to put it to the side of the road.

Another double deckers bus.

… and yet another double deckers bus… but this one seem to be broken… or resting?…

Although I can use airplane to Tawau, I prefer to travel by land coz I can enjoy the scenery along the 400km journey. Furthermore time is on our side if we use our own vehicle… we don’t have to rush… we can drive slow or fast… We can stop anywhere we like to relieve ourselves.

Not like travelling by air, have to be on time to catch the flight… I really hate it when the schedule is tight… that’s why I usually take flight in the afternoon if I have to fly… coz I hate getting ready early in the morning. Travelling for official duty and non official like travelling for Las Vegas holidays are two completely different loads… yes loads… for official, the loads like the garments must be neat and well taken care… but for holiday, I can simply chunk my cloths into the luggage without worrying if they get crumple or not…

OK back to our 400KM++ journey… we use the Kalabakan road which cut through the Crocker Range and pass the Meliau Basin… the Lost World. As everyone know, 140KM of Kalabakan road is still in gravel… and it being used by logging truck. When the road is well maintained, although it is gravel, the ride will be still smooth. I’ve been using this road many times since 2008. But unfortunately the condition of the 140KM seem to be getting bad each time we use this road. And this time it was the worse experience… it is raining season… although it wasn’t raining that time. We did not know that there was notification issued early of the week that the road is not passable for small vehicles…

The road was a bit muddy… but some are dried… the logging trucks left two deep tyre tracks at some areas where it is impossible for small vehicles to go through… lucky our Toyota Fortuner is tall enough. But there is one path where our 4×4 almost stuck in the mud… although the mud was not deep, it was slippery. The car can’t move forward… and the deep logging tracks made it difficult to reverse. While we tried to rave through the mud, suddenly the car… slammed… skidded… turned… by the mud almost 90 degrees… the car is no longer pointing towards where we going but pointing to the edge of the road… its no longer parallel with the road but across the road… but lucky all are OK after a few tries. It was a memorable experience… quite an adventure journey

Some photos…

I thought we were in Florida beach holidaying when we saw this convertible from afar…

It turn out to be… we were LOL. This is somewhere in Kalabakan road where there are lots of palm oil plantation.

Common… passing each other with logging truck filled with fresh logs.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to go through here… this is the logging camp and not the road itself. But we were stuck in this kind of mud.

Logs felled into the drain…

Fresh water… very cool… washing my face with the water is very cooling

So many office works need to be completed… backlogs are so much… meetings here and there… to get specifications… to prepare reports… to do technical drawings… going outstations… attending courses…

So many activities coming up… paintball training… paintball competitions… photography outings… donno want to go or not…

So many favors need to give away… lucky no one asked for wedding favors… helping others to prepare reports… digging for information… specifications…

I don’t think I like to do all these anymore… work so hard… at the end nobody appreciate you… well, not all… but some…

I need a break… I need to go for vacation… how nice if I strike the Jack Pot… nothing to worry about… just spend… do charity… travel…

Lebanon famous chef Ramzi Choueiry and the gang preparing the giant tabbouleh salad for a new Guinness World Record at Saifi Market in Beirut, Lebanon.

Thousands of visitors showed up to cheer the 250 sous chefs and 50 of their instructor from the Kafaat School of Catering. Their target is to prepare the world’s biggest tabbouleh salad.

Tabbouleh is salad made of chopped parsley and tomatoes… sound like a very tasty salad and healthy too… which I believe is much better than the best diet pills available today. I like to eat salad very much… the only good place for me to eat salad here is at McDonald Pizza Hut

Lebanese chefs busy chopping tomatoes to be mixed with parsley for their giant tabbouleh.

For the record… the Lebanese chefs manage to prepare more than 3 tons of tabbouleh salad… to be exact, it was 3,557 kilograms or 7,841 pounds of tabbouleh salad. According to the organizer, the previous record was held by Israel.

Lebanese chefs successfully prepared a massive plate of tabbouleh weighing 3,557 kilograms or 7,841 pounds in Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday, 25 October 2009.

The day before, Saturday, they also manage to set a new record for the biggest hummus plate weighing 2,056 kilograms or 4,532 pounds, more than quadruple the previous record.

The giant plate or bowl holding the tabbouleh also set a new reword for being the biggest and largest rotating terracotta-colored hummus bowl.

In other word, Lebanese set 3 new Guinness World Records during the festival.

But these also means war of words between Lebanon and Israel will not stop here… both countries claimed tabbouleh and hummus are belongs to them… I hope they don’t go for war because of food… let’s just enjoy the tasty food ok…

Then there are piles of work waiting back in the office. There was training last week for the system we developed with more than 20 participants for 2 days. I have to make sure the training server is working fine… luckily it was working fine for the 2 days training. But the worse part is, it seems that our network DNS has been poisoned. I was trying to fix it since last week. My next solution is to rebuild the whole ‘perimeter’… that will eat up plenty of my time… again!

Then accounting work also waiting to be done… few things on systems need to be modified and to build… imagine accountants not sure the flow of their accounting works! And we supposed to tell them how to do their work, their work flow… crap, how to do system like that?…

Two weeks ago I was in Singapore attending forum for 3 days. I went there on Tuesday, 3rd March, and back on Saturday, 7th March 2009.

But lucky I was happily touring Singapore during the night and the day before I fly home. It was tiring attending the ‘boring’ forum and touring the city at night. My back and legs were save by my Crocs shoes which make the walking enjoyable… if not, I will be complaining of back and legs pain

OK that’s all for now… no photos this time, lazy to upload

Eh… wait… politic really sucks!!! Really feels like ‘dungu’ when you are outside the country and hearing the stupid politic happening back home!!! Gosh… so ‘malu’…

I have been talking about my journey around Sabah for the past few weeks. Next week we are going to continue with it again, after three weeks of break including the Hari Raya break.

This time we are heading to Sandakan region… Although in our ‘journey around Sabah’, this is the first time we are travelling by road and none of us have driven to all our destinations before, so far we have not lost any of our way. Well, you can say that the road signs along our journey are very helpful, as good as the las vegas strip map

Very true that we have not lost any of our way… and we manage to reach to our destination on time. But I hope by saying this, we are not going to get lost on our next journey… I cross my finger… and I hope our next journey will be just like our previous ‘two weeks’ journey to Tawau region and Keningau region.

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