The Daily Brunei Resources

YB Pehin Hazair speaking during the 5th AMCA Meeting in Singapore. Besides him were Haji Mohd Rozan bin Dato Paduka Haji Mohd Yunos, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports and Datin Hajah Shireen binti Haji Mustafa, Senior Special Duties Officer at the Ministry of Culture, Yourth and Sports and Chair of COCI Brunei Bandar Seri Begawan - Culture plays a crucial role towards the consolidation of a caring Asean community of mutual cooperation. This was said by the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS), Pehin Orang Kaya Pekerma Laila Diraja Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Hazair bin Haji Abdullah, during the fifth meeting of the Asean Ministers Responsible for Culture and Arts (AMCA) in Singapore on May 26. "Culture is also recognised by the world as a source of enrichment, sustainable development, eliminating poverty and empowering communities to actively contribute in cultural development," he said at the meeting, according to a press statement f...

The Museum Department recently celebrated the International Museum Day. The celebration was the normal one of those launching days thing. What struck me the most were the exhibits on the side of the Museum foyer. What the museum folks did was to show the old stuff and its modern equivalent. It really struck us that we have not changed that much. Modern stuff maybe, some with electricity but in the long run, things have not changed. Here are three of them:-

I remembered when I first started blogging, one of my earliest entry was about the state of our signboards. Most of our small businesess in Brunei are run by our South Asians friends and also by our ASEAN friends and these two groups are not Malay speakers. There have been too many signboards in broken Malay and broken English. This particular signboard brought to my attention by a Malaysian fb friend is not in Brunei but in Kelantan which can be interpreted as either advertising human trafficking in another of our south Asian friends at a particular road in Kota Bahru or a misspelling the sale of the word Banglo located at that particular road in Kota Bahru. Obviously it is the latter and it is a mispelling (I hope!).  I am a bit worried that this mistake can equally happen to us in Brunei if we are not vigilant. Note: An alternative view. One of my colleagues said this could be an example of brilliant advertising by the ...

Someone posted this photograph on fb. I have to admit I thought I have seen every photo of Seria there is out there but this one I have not seen. This was taken on 15 September 1954 where Jalan Sultan Omar Ali is closed to make way for a bazaar. You can make out the Marina Cinema at the end of the road. Most of the shops or not just the shops but the shop building has now disappeared and replaced with modern buildings. Note the Union Jack flag flying together with the Brunei flag. This is Seria from another angle taken roughly about the same time as the first photograph. In this photograph you can see the houses in the background.

 © Crown copyright. IWM (TR 18612) - IWM Non Commercial License I found this photograph on the British Imperial War Museum website. It is an interesting photograph taken during the aftermath of the 1962 Rebelion in Brunei. It is a British soldier patroling on the roof of the State Secretariat Building in Jalan Elizabeth II. You can make out the four British helicopters hovering on the background above the SOAS Mosque. You can also see the old Bandar Police Station to the left of the photograph. That police station obviously is no longer there. The caption of the photograph from the Imperial War Museum website which gives more detail about the soldier and the British unit that was stationed in Brunei during that time, is as follows: "A trooper of the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars on guard on the roof of the Government Secretariat Building, following the rebel uprising. In the background is the golden domed mosque in the centre of Brunei town, and flying over are four h...

I never get tired of searching for the first ever Brunei's paper money which is this A series issued in 1967. Everytime I see it and with the right prices I would get them. These I bought off the ebay with ebay international prices and when I won it, I was quite surprised to see that the seller lived in Brunei. Anyway he contacted me and gave me his telephone number and we managed to save ourselves from paying postage costs. The seller lived in Tutong and I found out later that he was related to one of my aunties husband. Small Brunei world. For some reasons, these notes still appeal to me and even though over the years the prices have increased considerably, I still continue to acquire them. I personally have not used these notes as these were issued in 1967 and by the year 1972 when I have started going to school, the portraits have changed to that of our present Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah. Of course in those days, none of us carry dollar notes to school. Only the wealt...

When I arrived at the office today, I saw this book from the Economic Planning and Development Department. This is the preliminary report of Brunei's Population and Housing Census which was done last year. I still remembered the young lady who came over to our house and asked all these questions. I sure hope that half an hour that we gave will contribute towards knowing much more about Brunei. This book has some interesting data and it leaves a lot of questions as well. Since this is only a preliminary data, I can't wait until the statistics people analyse the detailed data and tell us more things about Brunei. The major finding is that last year we were just short of 400,000 people. it was 393,162 with 202,668 guys and that leaves 190,494 for the opposite gender. These 393,162 make up 68,208 households thus making each household about 6 people (5.8 to be exact). The most interesting data that is that 81,903 houses and apartments and other living quarters and surprisingl...