As a person who is developing his understanding on poverty at a greater depth, I found this post rather impact-ing to one of the many solutions that we could do to alleviate poverty here in our country. Called Semillas al viento or translated as seeds in the wind is an effort made in Argentina to nurture children at their grass root level on teaching them to farm for survival. This is one of the models that could surely work here since following past experience, the poor in Brunei constitutes mostly in the rural areas and education is highly unattainable due to monetary reasons. Why not teach them to farm, instead of pushing them to do something that is costly for them in the short run i.e. paying for education?

"tungguuuuu akuuuuuu" was the words that she would say when an impromptu decision was made to either breakfast or lunch. She would be seen unplugging her laptop and the accessories that came together with it. The shutdown procedure would take at least three minutes and the packing of accessories would take another five minutes. It would be altogether around 8 minutes before we could leave after a decision to dine out was made. We would just sit down and wait for her to finish off her business, or otherwise sarcastically stand with the door opened so as to make her rush. I miss those moments.

In four hours time, you would be 23, but sad to know that you've left us for good when you were 22. You left without a goodbye, and the last time I saw you, you made an impression that I will be seeing you again the following day. Had I knew what was going to happen, I would've stayed longer at uni and spend more time with you. Our last class together was Econometrics, I remembered that because it was the gruesome test that we had to endure on that day itself. You've complained of headaches, but I thought it's the Econometrics that's giving you one, just like how it gave to the remaining six of us in the class. It later turned out that blood clot in your brain was causing you the major headache. You fell into coma two days later.

I prayed day and night for your consciousness but five days into coma, Allah has other plans for you. You've left us for good on 27th September 2009, a day of grief for everyone at uni. It was a day full of barkah when you left us, it was on a Thursday, Ramadhan, and on an odd date in the Islamic Calendar for which it may be the day which Malam Lailatul Qadr falls (27th Ramadhan). Alhamdulillah.

You and I have several things in common, one of them would be in favour of the number 28. It marks the intial on our birthday dates. It's very typical of her to get stuff which has the number 28 printed on it, and the next day she would show it to me and in anticipation that I'll snatch it from her. But I did not. I miss this too. Benetton was your choice of brand collected from all over the globe because most of their items had '28' embossed on it. More specifically, it must be all green!

You will be greatly missed. Happy birthday. Al-Fatihah.

Dear readers, please recite Al-Fatihah for the late Dk Hjh Raihana Hazwani.

This is an advertisement post for a friend so it's just copy and paste

Assalamualaikum to all.

Apparently a friend of mine residing is Besoncon, France (Bezonzon nya org Brunei) is going about to become Brunei's authorized genuine Longchamp Bags. Well that's the first time I heard of it and strange enough she's not getting into the stream of Prada and Chanel, her number one choice. hahah. Anyway, here's the deal:

" I'll (Masitah Jaafar) be selling Longchamp bags on facebook through a friend of mine, Mona Bakar.

If you're interested to buy a Longchamp bag, go to the search engine and type MONA BAKAR and add her as your friend.

These collections I'm selling is for PRE-ORDERS only.

The 6th semester will draw its curtain soon and honestly, it only felt like I've only started the semester a week ago. A lot has changed over the years in my university life, and it changed for the better. I've actually gained and learned a lot from this semester itself, particularly the value of life. There are a lot of things I've seen over the course of the poverty project and I am very thankful for the blessings that I am living in right now. One might live in a dilapidated home, one might live in a hut, one might live without access to water and electricity, and yet all of them have one thing in common; they have always welcomed us with smiles even though deep inside them it's all misery hoping for a better living condition. I really respect and admire their strength on living life having to work odd jobs for 10 hours a day and seven days a week just to make ends meet for their families. Yet, I'm still complaining on the pile of assignments that I have to do when it's only sitting and googling for information for which it could be done in 2 hours. This is the part of me that I have to improve on, complaining on workload.

The best way to end this semester was when the Vice Chancellor himself patted you on the back and congratulated you for the job well done on the poverty project. Alhamdulillah. It's good to know that the hard work we've put on was well paid off. :)

Alhamdulillah. 68 days later since we've started our Poverty Project, the team have finally managed to reach out to the public yesterday through a public presentation on An Exploratory Study of Poverty in Brunei Darussalam held at the Lecture Theatre of the Chancellor Hall. It was attended by the Vice Chancellor of UBD, Dr Hj Zulkarnain as well as other staff members of UBD. Also present were representatives from BIBD, Sounds of Hope, students and members of the public.

The event started with a welcoming speech made by myself as the team leader of the project team, followed by the presentation by Azmi Yassin and was closed by a Q&A session.

We're grateful for the congratulatory messages we've received from lecturers and members of the public who took great interest on our project, and it made us feel that the hardwork that we've put on for the past months have really paid off.

Yesterday marks the end of the poverty project, I'm surely gonna miss the experience with the team during the holidays.

Thank you to those who were involved in this project either directly or indirectly, you've contributed to the huge success of it. Cheers :)

(L-R) VC of UBD, Dr Zul, Head of Sales&Distributioin Channel and also Head of CSR, BIBD, Hjh Nurul Akmar, Dean of Student, Dk Dr Nurol & Dean of FBEPS, Dr Roger

making that welcoming speech, pretty nervous back there

Azmi as the master of presentation & Q&A session

FBEPS lecturers

Q&A session

our supervisors

and the best moment, receiving the certificate presented by the Vice Chancellor himself.

Dr Zul presenting the token of appreciation to our sponsor, BIBD