New Intel Core i5 750 Computer System

On December 25, 2009, Christmas Day of last year I ordered parts for a new computer system. I bought the parts from a local retailer and because I paid with PayPal (I had money left over in my account from an eBay sale) the parts had to be shipped via the courier service and therefore I only received the parts in the middle of January.

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Originally I did not plan to build a new computer system as I was satisfied with my 2006 era Pentium D system with 2 GB of ram and integrated graphics. However because my Pentium D system could not playback high definition video cards without stuttering, I decided to upgrade my Pentium D system with a new external ATI Radeon 4670 PCI Express video card.

Brunei: Kampong Ayer (Water Village) and Wild Monkeys

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On May 14, 2008, on our second day in the capital of Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan (which everyone just calls "Brunei" as it was just called "Brunei Town" before its name was changed to Bandar Seri Begawan), we went to Kampong Ayer (Water Village) which took up most of the morning and afternoon and then walked around the "downtown" area a bit before returning back to my cousin's house.

My aunt and cousin lives in Brunei and it was fortunate for us that my aunt had a spare Toyota Vios car or else we could not have gone anywhere as there is no public transportation system at all. My sister drove the car (they drive on the left side of the road) and I was the so-called navigator. I had to rely on an old map book that the oil company Shell had produced a number of years ago for their expatriate workers.

Because Brunei is an oil producting country, gas was really cheap, it was around $0.30 per litre in Brunei dollars ($1.00 Brunei = $0.74 Canadian). As a result of all this cheap gas, almost everyone drives an SUV in Brunei and the whole city feels like a transplated American suburb with "Southeast Asian characteristics". Unlike other Asian cities where there is a vibrant downtown area full of energy, the downtown area was completely dead, devoid of people and any sort of energy. We would later find out that most of the people did their shopping in suburban malls and suburban shophouses.