Category: Brunei

School Term and Public Holiday Dates for Brunei in 2011

Source: CFBT (PDF file), Brunei’s Information Department

Term Dates for School & Colleges

Term I: Mon 3 January to Thurs 17 March (51 days)
Term II: Mon 28 March to Mon 6 June (50 days)
Term III: Mon 20 June to Thurs 18 August (47 days)
Term IV: Mon 05 September to Wed 30 November (52 days)

Term Holidays for School & Colleges

Term I: Fri 18 March to Sun 27 March (10 days)
Term II: Tues 7 June to Sun 19 June (13 days)
Term III: Sat 20 August to Sun 4 September (16 days)
Term IV: Thurs 1 December to Sat 31 December (31 days)

Public Holidays

Sat 1 January: New Year’s Day
Thurs 3 February: Chinese New Year
Tues 15 February: Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday
Wed 23 February: 27th National Day
Fri 18 March to Sun 27 March: 1st Term Holidays
Tues 31 May: Anniversary of RBAF
Tues 7 June to Sun 19 June: 2nd Term Holidays
Wed 29 June * : Israk Mikraj
Sat 16 July: HM the Sultan’s 66th Birthday (in substitution for Fri 15 July)
Mon 1 August * : 1st of Ramadhan
Wed 17 August: * Revelation of the Koran
Tues & Wed 30 & 31 August * : Hari Raya Aidil Fitri 1432
Sat 20 August to Sun 4 September: 3rd Term Holidays
Mon 7 November * : Hari Raya Aidil Adha
Mon 28 November * : 1st Hijrah 1433
Mon 26 December: Christmas Day (in substitution for Sun 25 December)
Thurs 1 December to Sat 31 December: 4th Term Holidays

* Subject to alteration

La Vida Family Carnival 2010 – Raising funds for La Vida and SMARTER Brunei

Date: Wednesday, 17th November 2010
Time: 12noon – 6pm
Venue: Riverview Hotel Carpark Area
Reason: Fund raising for both La Vida and SMARTER Brunei (proceeds are split 50-50)
Facebook Event Page (Requires Facebook login)

Nothing to do on the afternoon of a public holiday? Stressing out over exams? Wanting something to do on a boring afternoon?

Then come over to the car park behind Riverview Hotel on the 17th of November 2010 where the LaVida Carnival will be! There will be games (loads and loads of games), food and drinks, a puppet show, magic tricks, bouncerS (Mind you, bouncerSSSSSS), a garage sale and more.

And you may be able to finally meet the Mr Friday Night you keep hearing on Pilihan FM! ;)

But the best thing is: all proceeds will go to non-profit organisations who serve the community and help those in need. 50% will go to SMARTER and 50% will go to LaVida. Not only that, the carnival helps to raise awareness about those with special needs. This is YOUR chance to help Brunei!

So I hope to see you (and your families and your friends and your schoolmates and your coworkers and your bosses… ;D) there on the 17th!

Spread the word! It’s gonna be an exciting afternoon. =)

Source: Facebook Event Page

What is La Vida?

La Vida is a parent’s resource centre and toy library, where I volunteer about two Fridays a month. The center’s mission is to care and give compassion to the community. The resources are available for loans to children with special needs and/or those who are financial needy. It is a non-profit company and the funds come from sponsorships.

Source: La Vida Parent’s Resource Centre & Toy Library

For more information about La Vida, do read the following blog posts from http://clickandrender.blogspot.com

B-Mobile’s Android Powered Huawei U8230

Huawei U8230 product image from GSM Arena
(image via GSM Arena)

So I just came back from Australia and I found out that B-Mobile was selling the Huawei U8230 at TechXpo 2010 for only BND$299 [Source Borneo Bulletin (Friday 5th November via Website)]. See the full specifications at GSM Arena. The phone was announced in June of 2009 so it is a relatively old hardware platform but at the $299 price point it is very competitively priced. It runs Android 2.1 and uses the same processor is the old HTC Hero so expect it to perform similarly.

Check out an unboxing video below:

Good Points

  • Large & high resolution screen (3.5″ at 320×480 vs other budget Android phones of 240×320 resolution e.g. HTC Wildfire)
  • Capacitive Display
  • Google certified thus has Market and other Google apps (e.g. GMail, Youtube, Google Maps)
  • Dual cameras
  • Accelerometer
  • Cheap!

Issues / Contention Points

  • 2.5mm headphone jack meaning you will need an adaptor for regular headphones
  • No multitouch (souce: Digital Versus)
  • Older processor and may not run more modern games smoothly
  • Not a lot of memory (192MB RAM and 256MB ROM)
    • RAM is required for multi-tasking so expect to close applications
    • ROM is used to store applications and since this is not Android 2.2
  • Possibly no official 2.2 (Froyo) update

I gave B-Mobile a call to see if they have any of the units on display to play around with but alas all the units are sold out and they are waiting for a new batch to come. Not surprising that it is sold out being so cheap and offering so much with Android. I applaud B-Mobile for pushing Android at such an affordable price and, in my phone call with them, they said that it is unlocked too. The phone is not a spectacularly fantastic phone but a solid mid-range phone with great potential with Android. The fact that it is Google certified with the Android Market for downloading applications makes it even more compelling. I would highly recommend this to people wanting to get an affordable smartphone as Android is a currently well supported platform and thus has many up-to-date applications unlike Nokia’s S60.

PS. Anybody in Brunei bought this? I would love to have a hands on.

Other related links:

Movember

The idea for Movember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The guys behind it joked about 80’s fashion and decided it was time to bring the moustache back. In order to justify their Mos (Australian slang for moustache), they used their new looks to raise money for prostate cancer research… never dreaming that facial hair would ultimately lead to a global movement that would get men talking about a taboo subject – their health.

A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations. What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about cancers affecting men – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer. Each Movember culminates in a Gala Partè in major cities around the globe where Mo Bros dress up to match their Mo, channeling the likes of Tom Selleck, Gandhi and Ron Burgandy, vying for the ultimate accolade: Man of Movember.

While growing a Mo is left to the guys, Mo Sistas (women who support their guys) form an important part of Movember by recruiting Mo Bros, helping to raise funds and attending Movember events.

I first heard about Movember last year on PaulDotCom Security Weekly and realizing that it is November once again, I thought I’d give it a go. I know it’s a bit late and I didn’t manage to follow the rules completely (shaving on the 1st of November, think I shaved on the 2nd and forgot to take a photo) but I guess it’s the thought that counts. Taking into account that my dad died of cancer brings this closer to home for me.

I’ve created Team Brunei for anybody willing to join me / donate to the cause.

I’ve joined under Movember Australia as I’m here at the moment and it’s raising funds for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue (the national depression initiative), however you are free to pick a which foundation/organization to support as listed below (source), though I’m not sure if you can still join my team if you register under a different website.

  1. Movember Australia – The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue: the national depression initiative
  2. Movember Canada – Prostate Cancer Canada (Français)
  3. Movember Ireland – Action Prostate Cancer, an initiative of the Irish Cancer Society
  4. Movember New Zealand – The Cancer Society and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand
  5. Movember United Kingdom – The Prostate Cancer Charity
  6. Movember United States – The Prostate Cancer Foundation and Lance Armstrong Foundation

[tags charity, movember]

Notes for ‘O’ Level (1998/1999) & ‘A’ Level (2000/2001)

Page of Notes

Not sure why it took me so long to re-share this but here it is. These are my notes that I made back in the day. I studied them (and I think even made some of the images) from my Casio Cassiopeia E-11. I hope to share this and build upon it and possibly make something like MIT Open Courseware but for Brunei. While the notes may not be fully up-to-date, I believe there are still useful. These are very concise notes and are only meant to be the core information needed for studying in exams. For further understanding and examples I suggest that you search online =)

Brunei Finally has Unlimited Prepaid 3G/Mobile Broadband catering for Tourists

So during my travels I found out about prepaid broadband SIM cards that let you have unlimited mobile broadband (e.g. 3G) while on the go. The ones that I’ve used are fromM1 (Singapore) and Digi (Malaysia). I stumbled upon this poster advertising Zoom! (bmobile’s mobile broadband) while visiting Telbru. This is a perfect opportunity for people to test Zoom! to see how well it works in their area: remember it is a shared Internet connection so it can be slow if the area is saturated. Speed also depends on the modem you are using.

Amount Days of Unlimited Usage
$4 1 day
$8 3 days
$20 9 days
$35 18 days

Note: Just realised my titled was wrong. I forgot to put the word ‘Unlimited’. This is important as DST Go! and bmobile Zoom! already have prepaid options but they are not unlimited. This new unlimited option is a great option for tourist who are here for a short period of time and need not worry about the amount of data they use.

Prepaid Zoom Broadband Poster
Prepaid Zoom Broadband Poster

TelBru Upgrading their Infrastructure

It seems that TelBru will be upgrading their infrastructure from the 7th to 31st of October. There will be possible disruptions of Internet connectivity and lets all hope that this will bring a better Internet experience for all eSpeed and Zoom! users. For further information or queries contact their customer care centre at 111.

Source: TelBru – Upgrading Network and Systems for BruNet New Infastructure Project

I believe Brunei Times is messing with me

So the day of my wedding, Brunei Times decides to migrate to a new E-Paper implementation leaving my Unofficial Lite Edition more useless to mobile devices as they have switched to rendering the pages in Flash (in .SWF format) rather than a picture format (previously it was JPEG file). On the positive, the file sizes are smaller so it should be a quicker download for those using the official E-Paper site.

I guess I shall have to find ways to implement what I want. I just wanted a way to be able to view the full Brunei Times newspaper from mobile devices (e.g. phones) that don’t support Flash and also to be able to download and read the papers easily but I guess that is not meant to be. You can still download all the Flash files via the downloader script. Will work on a way to view the files easily

Customer Service

A few weeks back I had a food tasting session at Orchid Garden and we were happily enjoying the food until the final dish when we were greeted by a entree that we did not specify. It was supposed to be Chinese pancake with sesame covered balls filled with red bean but we got some layered cake and pandan puff (pandan filled curry puff). The unwanted dish was among the initial list of dishes that they would normally serve by them, but my mother/’aunt’ had told the guy in charge, several weeks back, that we wanted to change it to the Chinese pancake and sesame balls.

As the dish that was presented before us wasn’t one we wanted, we informed the (head?) waitress and she said that she understood but since this is a food tasting session we can always change it at the actual dinner. How are you supposed to conduct food testing when the food you want to test isn’t served? I wasn’t satisfied with her answer and apparently neither was my mother or aunt and they managed to ask the chef out of the kitchen to discuss this matter (there wasn’t anybody else in the restaurant so I hope and I guess that did not inconvenient any customers). Seems that there was some confusing or lack of communication and our request was not listed but in the end the chef did prepare the dishes we had wanted.

Around the same time I had a hankering to buy a webcam to try out some stuff. I managed to get an ProLink PCC8020A which is an auto focusing webcam that has ability to record at 1280×1024 (Windows only though) for B$37 from Oregon Systems (located next to Rejoice Chicken Rice in Gadong). Anyway I was playing around with it and swiveled it left and right and managed to break it. Now I didn’t anything that was intended to break it nor did I do anything that it wasn’t designed to do. I took it back and they were kind enough to give me a replacement webcam without any questions asked after I explained to them what had happened.

Recently my brother got a car and when he picked it up, it was handed over by a person who wasn’t the salesman he was dealing with. The car did not have a full tank of petrol but a couple of days later the salesman that he was dealing with called him up and offered to refund him the money for the full tank of petrol. How good is that?

Customer service is important and I believe here in Brunei we need a great improvement. I’m not just talking about when people have complaints but even as a normal customer asking questions: be attentive and courteous. Treat them as how you want to be treated. A bad customer service experience is what will put people off from coming back. Anybody care to share there customer service experiences in Brunei? Please try to be as constructive when giving these feedback as we are all here want Brunei to be a better place =)