Once Upon A Time

You learn new things all the time. Yesterday, I was at UBD listening to my minister deliver a paper entitled MIB in Development. He delivered a paper almost similar last year MIB in Environment. It was a difficult topic but as usual my minister with his many anecdotes along the way was able to deliver it in his easy manner.

I knew most of the the things he wanted to say. Though during the Q&A, interestingly enough, one lady student brought up the issue of the possibility that water level usage is high in Brunei is due to the amount we use for 'berkaut' or for 'mandi wajib' and other religious factors.

Certainly our water usage is around 450 litres a day. Most other countries use around the 300+ mark. To me personally, there are ways we can bring the usage down by just doing little things like turning off the tap when washing your teeth etc.

However I learnt or rather relearnt three new words last Tuesday. Two during the talk and one when I was chairing the Mini Tender Board at my ministry in the afternoon.

The first word is 'Kandila'. This is talking about the future.

The opposite of 'kandila' is 'Penderatu'. This is talking about the past.

The other word is 'menyahlodah' which means desludging.

Yesterday, during our last Strategic Planning session, we were preparing the final chapter which is foresighting the future. In doing so, we have to do foresighting (which goes well with kandila) and backsighting (which goes well with penderatu).

Comments

View from NY said…
What is the rate of non-tariff water i.e., from leakage, theft or other situations where usage is not measured? This is often a factor in many tropical countries where soil settlement under pipes often cause pipes to buckle and break underground. One only has to look at the challenges soil settlement cause to our roads to appreciate what may be happenning to pipes below ground.

Also, I understand certain industrial processes such as the production of LNG, uses a very significant amount of water. Given Brunei's relatively small population, this could skew the per capita water usage in a material way.

It would be good to learn from your insights into these questions.

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