Madai Baturong Forest Reserve Nature Centre

Madai Baturong Forest Reserve Nature Centre or Pusat Sejadi Hutan Simpan Madai Baturong or also known simply as Madai Waterfall, is located just by the roadside of Jalan Tawau - Lahad Datu, somewhere around 50 km from Lahad Datu and 15 km from Kunak, Sabah. My colleagues and I always pass by this place whenever we are on our way to and from Lahad Datu for our work trips but never once we stop at this place. It always seems to be deserted, and I've never seen a car parked inside the area before, therefore the assumption that this place was not open to public. I didn't even know and give any thought about what was inside it. Then again, I think we have never passed by this place during the weekends.

One day, while we were on our way back from Lahad Datu, we saw a police road block set up at the road just in front of the centre. Slowing down, I saw that there's actually a few people sitting at a food stall inside the centre. Thinking out loud, "I wonder what is this place..." and my colleague suggested to stop and take a look inside. It's actually a nature centre and there's a waterfall in it.

Information board at the entrance

Oh, by the way, we have to pay an entrance fee of RM 2 (for adult Malaysians) each. The first thing I noticed was how unkempt the little landscape was as we walked further inwards. At the entrance there's quite a spacious parking space, a surau, toilets and showers and a couple more buildings, one of them was the Information Centre. I didn't go inside that building though. The built pavement was really muddy. A huge butterfly greeted us and it was playing hard to get; fluttering its wings around my colleague while following him as he walked yet it did not allow me the chance to snap a photo of it. I was mesmerized though by its size and (if I may say) playfulness.

a kind of forest plant, I presume ... 

not a good idea to swim

The waterfall was not even far from the entrance. We have to walk down quite a long flight of wooden stairs to reach the river and there's the waterfall with its height of about 10-15m tall standing before us. It was a really nice view. The water falls into what looked like a pond of about 15-20m radius before flowing down the river. The water in the river was quite brown in colour although it seemed pure and clear from above the fall. There's a signboard that clearly warns the visitors from swimming and diving. Yeah, we could see with the rocks all over, it is surely preferable to stay safe.

the waterfall and the pond 

the river

The waterfall aside, as nice view as it could be, I couldn't say the same about the surrounding area. Of course I know it's a nature centre in a forest reserve but the place could be more beautiful, accommodating and safer with a little bit of maintenance. The wooden stairs were old and some parts were really soft and could break if a person bigger and heavier than us stepped on it. Some planks have already been missing from its place that we need place our foot carefully. Fallen leaves and branches were left accumulated on the stairs. There's a gazebo but I didn't feel like resting there.

repair and maintenance long overdue

I spotted a hanging bridge but from where I stood I could see the piles of leaves accumulated on it. I doubt that I could walk on it without fearing my safety. It seemed that the bridge leads to the forest where people could trek and climb hills and mountains. We went up to look for the bridge and found out that the bridge was closed. Oh, well, what a shame. My excitement was cut short. There's nothing more we could do here. I hope the reason it's closed is because of renovation or maintenance work is in progress but if it is, there's no notification whatsoever about it there.

it could have been nice to be up there

the hanging bridge is closed ... huhu

This place is really nice but I was feeling quite sad with its conditions. I'm sure if this place is maintained well, it could attract a lot of visitors who love to be in natural surroundings, walking in the forest while enjoying the environment, the view and the various species of flora and fauna. The plus side of this place, in my opinion, is that it is really easy to access, no need to ride a pick up to reach here. This place should be a hit. I hope this place will be maintained and promoted well in the future. It's such a shame to see a good recreational place like this reduced to shambles or being appreciated for the wrong reasons. Surely, there are a lot more to be discovered here.
 

the stairway to heaven .... ha ha ...nah, it will be stairway to death
if you are not careful!

it's all about chemistry

you and me, we have the chemistry. the thing that i miss the most is having an eye to eye conversation with you. we can talk about everything. we have mutual understanding. we support each others' ideas. we don't just talk to each other, we listen too. we never have to pretend, we just be ourselves and trust each other. we share our insights, and our deep secrets, no matter dark or white. having that kind of trust, interaction, and communication with you, is liberating. being with you, it's like getting a full dose of confidence. with you, i feel beautiful. you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and i cherish our memories together. i am ever so thankful that we met, my friend.

a memoir, a chick lit and a mystery

Footprints In The Paddy Fields is what the author, Tina Kisil, regards as the family portrait and childhood memoir of hers. This captivating book is the author's reminiscence of her earliest life with her Dusun family in Sabah, Malaysia during the 1950s to 1960s era.

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For me, the book is an eye opener for the customs and traditions of the native Dusuns, related by the author through her family's roots and lineage, their life journey, values of life, relationship with other natives, survival and sustenance methods, crafts and skills, sources of entertainment, sadness and joys and everything else under the sun in an engaging way and all through the eyes and the perspectives of Tina Kisil, the young Dusun child at that time. Written as a memoir, this book is more interesting to read because of the honest narration of personal experiences. I was taken back to the times when I flipped the pages of serious books about Sabah and saw those old black and white pictures of native people in their traditional attires and holding baskets of their trades. I had thought nothing of them, until I read this memoir, and suddenly I realize that each and every faces in those old black and white photos has a story, a personality ... a life of their own. It is something to be appreciated and respected. It is a refreshing read.

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I picked up The Men's Guide to the Women's Bathroom purely because of the interestingly curious title. I had a sense that it could be a light and easy chick lit and I was not wrong. The narrator of the story is Claire St John, a 30-something woman who had just lived through a painful divorce, quitted her lawyer job and moved from New York to her mom's rental house in Austin, Texas. The whole story is about Claire's emotional journey to get over her post-divorce era and try to move on with her life. She decided to become a writer and her junior effort is to write about the women's bathroom. It's quirky and funny to read her notes about women and their association with the ladies room. As the author said, the women's bathroom is a sanctuary where every deep, dark secret is revealed... Of course, Claire found herself a new romance, experienced a few embarrassing moments, had a gay male friend and several other girlfriends who were as quirky and funny as she is ... a typical setting. The story doesn't have much of a depth but interesting enough to kill away time with light entertainment.

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In Death In The Clouds, Hercule Poirot solved a murder that happened right under his nose. It was in the airplane of Prometheus, where an old moneylender, Madame Giselle was murdered by a snake venom pricked to her neck via a blowpipe dart. Naturally, everybody in the rear car of the plane were the suspects and it's up to the brilliant work of M. Poirot to find the murderer ... and somehow arranged some matchmaking works in the process! As usual, the obvious question to be answered is who had the highest probability and possibility to kill, when everybody denied having seen anything related to the murder? But it is also important to learn about the victim herself. Madame Giselle is not the real name, an estranged daughter came to light, or perhaps it's one of the clients? In the end, M. Poirot caught his murderer in his usual grand 'moments-of-truth' speech.

Chin up!

CHIN UP!

"Chin up!" was one of the popular phrases when I was in secondary school. Specifically for us 'bandgirls' aka the members of the school's marching band. It's what I was being told by my seniors during my junior years, and it's also what I told my juniors when I was their senior.

Chin up, girl. Don't let your head down. Chin up when you bask in the glory of the glaring sun in the middle of the field coz we have to look proud and smart standing in our reds and blues.

When you feel that your self-esteem is degrading, chin up!

When you feel people mock you for your lack of ability, chin up!

When you feel bullied by people who think that they are better than you, chin up!

Don't ever wallow in self-pity and let them get the better of you. Do not let the negative things catch up on you and anchored you to the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes, certain things might not work out for you, it's inevitable but you can never let it affect you so much. Because you still have a full life ahead to live.

Chin up, go forward and never look back.  

The Long Walk

My encounter with this story started when I saw the movie, "The Way Back" (2010) last year on the movie channel. From the movie, I learned that it was actually inspired by a true story written in a book titled "The Long Walk". The movie gripped my attention till the end. It's one of those adventurous story of prison escape that I have enjoyed after The Great Escape (1963) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). So, when my eyes caught the book on one of the library shelves one day, I didn't hesitate to pick it up for reading.

The Long Walk is a story of Slavomir Rawicz's adventure of escaping the infamous Siberian Gulag camp during the Second World War (WWII) and traveling about 6,500km south on foot from the camp in Siberia down to India, traversing harsh weather and difficult terrains including the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas. His arduous and gruelling mission for freedom was shared together with six other inmates consisting of two Polish soldiers, a Latvian landowner, a Yugoslav clerk, a Lithuanian architect and a mysterious American engineer from the camp and later on joined by a young Polish girl, all were victims of the war. Rawicz himself was a Polish cavalry officer. Of all in the group, only 4 people including Rawicz succeeded in reaching the British India, while the rest succumbed en route.

I have also learned that this story's claim as being a true story that occurred to Rawicz has been debated by many, due to certain parts inside the story that were deemed inaccurate or questionable. Another fact that being brought to light was that the story actually happened to another Polish soldier, not Rawicz. However, as far as I know, none of these debates were definite in confirming whether the whole story told by Rawicz was really true or not. After all, it happened during one of the biggest war in human history, where the world was in chaos.

For me, true or not, this story is an ultimate tale of human perseverance with gripping adventure, exploration of different cultures and tragic disasters before freedom is finally accomplished. A captivating story.

Title : The Long Walk

Author : Slavomir Rawicz (ghost-written by Ronald Downing)

Published:  First published 1956, this edition was published in 2011 by Constable.

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recent indulgence

Hola ... oohh, it felt so wonderful and nice to be able to indulge myself in some books after so many months of not doing it. I don't know why I deprived myself from reading ... maybe too much distractions coming my way. However, it's time to hit the library and let's take a look at my recent accomplishments in the reading department, which consist of  2 very familiar authors in my book archive, Jeffrey Archer and Agatha Christie.

Honestly, I have never read a full novel from Jeffrey Archer, but I have enjoyed several of his short stories collections instead. New additions to the list are "A Quiver Full Of Arrows" (1980) and "A Twist In The Tale" (1988). Most of his short stories are inspired by true events, while a few are his own creation. The most common experiences of reading these stories are (for me) are, one, it's like reading a person's whole life biography, where a story could tell a tale encompassing decades of years, and two, the tales are often normal and bland in the beginning but smack you with a twist or something surprising or unexpected in the end. In these two short stories collections, I have several favourites i.e. from the "A Quiver Full Of Arrows"; The Luncheon, The Coup, Old Love, The Perfect Gentleman, One-Night Stand, Henry's Hiccup and A Matter of Principle. In "A Twist In The Tale", my favourites would be The Perfect Murder, A La Carte, Just Good Friends, The Steal, Honor Among Thieves and A Chapter of Accidents.

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Next, my favourite crime novelist, Agatha Christie. I have read so many of her books, yet there are still many more that I haven't read. Hallowe'en Party (1969) might not be as grand as her other stories that I've read, but it's still one of the best. And it's a bit dark story, when the victim is a child. Now that is quite different because there's never been a child victim in the books that I've read so far. In this book, Hercule Poirot is helping his novelist friend Ariadne Oliver to figure out who and why a 13-year old Joyce Reynolds is murdered in a Hallowe'en party.

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There, those were my recent conquests. And right now, I'm just starting to read a fourth book, all in one week. Perhaps, I'll write about it in my future post. Till then, au revoir.

merdeka di tawau

Normally on every August 31st, I would be glued to the TV for almost the whole morning, watching the live telecast of the Merdeka Day parade in KL. It's a must because it's a very important day in the country's history and I looove parades. Last year, I made it to Dataran Merdeka on the day itself for my first time experience of the live event (and I've blogged about it in here). This year, I just stayed home in my base and decided to see how the Tawauians celebrate this M-Day.

The Dataran MPT

Unfortunately I arrived an hour late, and the parade has just finished  :( . So I stayed on to see what was in store for the rest. The location, the square in front of Majlis Perbandaran Tawau, where in any other day is just a big parking space. I wondered why they didn't do this in the big Tawau Sports Complex.

As in any M-Day celebration, there are always .....

the flag bearers ....

the marching band ....

the VIPs ...

and the Merdeka oath ...

uniformed and security agencies ...

the people ...

Another thing I enjoyed other than parades and marches is military tattoo. The following photos are some of the silent march tattoo from the navy youngsters. It was a small scale one but still entertaining.

Ok, that's it for my M-Day report from Tawau. Wondering where will I be next year, in shaa Allah if I am still around .... Perhaps I should see in other places. Till then. To my country I wish you Happy 56th year of independence.

it's all about trust

My Facebook status updating behaviour is a combination of many things. One of them is venting. And sometimes I vent on a certain topic more than once. One of that is TRUST.

For me, and I am sure it is the same for all of you sensible and mature folks out there, trust is like a china glass. It is so precious and fragile that you wanna hold it with so much care and gentleness. Coz you know, once you let it slipped off your hands, it will fall down and crash and it can never be the same again.

That is how all of us should treat trust. Not just be cautious in trusting other people but also be a trustworthy person yourself. Trust is a major thing in building relationships with your life companion, family, friends, and co-workers. Of course you expect more on spouses and immediate family members. When trust is gone, who is going to back you up when you really need the support? Who will believe you?

Throughout our life we can been hurt because of many things. Some of those pain can be forgotten, can be forgiven, can be mend ... and that's what we should do. But the pain that's caused by  violated trust  by someone that is close to us by blood is something that is very hard to be digested by our mind. It is something that would still linger at the back of our minds even though it has passed on for some time.

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I have trusted you coz you are my family. But every time all you did is break it. You gave lots of promises but you never keep it. Don't promise something if you are going to break it later. What more can I do, when you have drained it all, my love, my affections, my hopes for you to become better, my money, my trust? You know what's right but you chose to be weak. You know you've messed up a lot, but you never learn from your mistakes, you never step up to win the big breaks. Instead of making your past mistakes as your drive to success, you chose to whine and wail over them like bad music. Throughout your life, you have been given so many second chances, yet you failed to appreciate any of them, always landing yourself in trouble.

But the most heart-broken thing for me that you are still doing... is you turn your back to Allah... if you ever wonder why everything and everyone seems like failing you, it is because you have failed yourself. All that I have left, is my prayers. You are an adult, no more a child. Your parents have failed you when you are in need of love and guidance, but you have other family members who have helped you and advised you a lot all these times. Why can't you appreciate?

My prayers for you is about everything....be strong and cut the crap once and for all.

Aku Melayu di Kota Inggeris

I like reading travelogues, especially the ones written by a Muslim traveler. I like travelogues because I always like the idea of traveling although I have not done it as much as I want to. I really wish I can travel more in the future, to more distant places and doing much more different things. I always enjoy reading a Muslim traveler's story because I always want to know how to manage oneself by being a Muslim in places where everything is different from my home country, a country where there's no problem in living my life as a Muslim. I like to see the 'other' world from the traveler's perspective and learn how 'the others' react to the traveler. Having my own little share of travel experience when I lived in a foreign country for almost a year several years ago, and though I have collected many wonderful moments and learned a lot of new things there, I wished that I could do more than what I had done in seeking experiences from the aspects of Islam.

 

From my old posts, perhaps you readers have read some travelogues that I had read and reviewed here, like here, here, here and here. Recently, I found this book while waiting to board a plane (most of my travel books I bought while I was on a journey to other place, such a thematic purchase...). Aku Melayu di Kota Inggeris is a book in Malay language written by a Malay scholar, Dr. Muhaimin Sulam, about his experiences while studying in University of Wales Trinity St. David, UK. He divided his story in three parts. In the first part, he shares things about the community around him and the country in the cultural, socioeconomic, historical and political aspects. The second part touches more on the life of Muslims in UK and his experiences and involvement in the Muslim community activities there. The poignant memoir of his late father is evident in the third part, showing how important he is in the author's life. Although there are three parts in this book, I don't feel that there's any distinct differences between them. I feel that there's everything in every chapter and it is full of values.

 

I don't have prior knowledge about Dr. Muhaimin but from this book, I think that it is quite obvious that he is very knowledgeable of the nation's politics and is involved in it at a certain level. However, this author is pretty fair in his comments and presents his discussion in a way that make the readers ponder about it without misconceptions or bad impressions on anybody.

 

All in all, Dr. Muhaimin's travelogue is enjoyable to read. It is always good to learn things that others have learned and to be mindful or aware of the things that happen to ordinary people like us but who lives so far away, and also of the things people take as their values in life.

 

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Miss Simplicity

There are some things in my life that I like to be perfect by my own standards or up to the quality that I wanted. But for most of the other things, I don't mind being simple. I like to be simple for things that need to be simple. Over the years, especially the years of growing up, I might have made some mistakes in choosing what I need. But as I grow older, I learn more.

Being simple in your life has connections with good prioritizing. And after all of the complexities that we have to deal with in our marriage, our work, and the various systems that we are involved in, it's better to cut down the stress level on other things that we can manage to be simple.

The idea of simple can be translated in many ways. For a woman like me who doesn't care much for high-end fashion, it doesn't matter not having tudung Fareeda or Ariani to cover my hair as long as the affordable ones that I wear can cover what it's supposed to be covering. For Hari Raya self-preparation, it doesn't matter to me that I don't buy new clothes, new shoes and new scarves for myself, as long as I can spend my money on something more deserving such as my mom's needs and home supplies. And if I have kids of my own, I would spend it on my kids in a way that I can also teach them the value of money.

Being simple is not the same as being a cheapskate. That's two different things. It is something that I am always teaching and reminding myself. In the financial aspect, if we have limited resources, we have to manage it well so that we won't be landing in great debts. If our resources are abundant, we still have to manage it well so that we can help others more. Sometimes when we have more, we can invest on something good that can last long. Just for example, if we spent it on a pair of shoes, let them be a pair of shoes that we can wear for at least the next Hari Raya. 

Outside of the financial aspect, being simple is just being who you are, being comfortable, being moderate and being able to concentrate your time and mind to other important things in your life. In the end, if your personal taste is in good harmony with the average thickness of your wallet, then it is no problem to lead a simple life.