Curtin Alumni Dinner

The trip to Miri was to attend this Curtin Alumni Dinner, held at Eastwood Valley Golf and Country Club.

On 10 May, my foster parents took to the road again. This time the land journey took approximately three hours by the old winding highway. Before arriving at Batu Niah ( half-way through the journey) their pickup had a punctured tyre . They were held up for about forty five minutes to change to a spare tyre with the help of one good Samaritan.

There were plenty of food around, served buffet style. The band playing on stage was no other than Curtin's own music club.

This is the entrance to the venue of the Curtin Alumni Dinner held in Miri.

Friday Prayers

On Friday my foster parent had a self-proclaimed holiday. The special ocassion was to attend his Friday prayers at the Bintulu's divisional mosque named 'masjid assyakirin'. 'Assyakirin' is an Arabic word to mean 'being grateful'.

Loading oil palm trees

I still can't understand how my foster parents say work is fun. This pickup can carry 30 nos of oil palm trees . Here we are busy loading them.

Einstein is more than three months today!

Little brother Einstein, sometimes referred to as 'Little Hitler' by my foster parents, is more than three months old today. Here he is relaxing on top of the filing cabinet. Looking good, his 'white gloved 'hands and feet are very conspicuous now. His moustache is particularly attractive. Extremely agile. Likes to jump and run over anything. Likes to wrestle with little sister 'Inul'. Will have picture of them together soon.

Inspecting the ol palm fruits

Here's me at a fruiting oil palm tree. This month more oil palm trees are flowering and starting to bear fruits. The hot weather must have provided stress to induce the system to flower. Good news for my foster parents. Heard that prices of FFB ( that means fresh fruit bunches) are good now, averaging RM65o per ton for average fruits. Meaning to say that those fruits classified as Grade A can even fetch RM 740 per ton.

Just around the "Tamu"

Well this is one shot they showed me. Dried fishes spread on a canvas sheet are left to dry in the hot, steamy and scorching sun.

This is a picture of the "Twin Tamu" from across the Kampung Jepak fising vllage. Yesterday my foster parents went out , guess what? yah, shopping again!.Will show you the things that they see just around the tamu.

Landscape harvest

Just around the oil palm tree are landscape plants that were purposely planted as advance growing plants. When these plants are in the way of future growth of the oil palm, they are ready to be harvested. While interim inter-cropping can be in many forms, this landscape intercrop is well suited to my foster parents landscaping business.
Here, is a collection of heliconia plants which has been dug out. In the background are other landscape plants that could be harvested as and when required. They are the coconut tree and a fragipani plant.