What a truck can bring around Tripoli

During several trips around Tripoli I captured some interesting use of a truck in Tripoli.

Here are the four first uses:

a. To bring cartoon boxes of fruit drinks from agents to stores











b. To bring Camels back home after feeding them in the fields











c. To bring piles of rubbish from houses to collection and the workers while enjoying the smell












d. To bring and sell green grass blocks to the passing buyers












I will keep adding the pictures to this blog as I collect them.

My Trip to Leptis Magna

The name of Tripoli came from Tripolitania or Three Towns: Sabratha, Taraboulus, and Leptis Magna. During Roman Empire, these 3 places together with few other eastern areas of Libya were populated as ports and center of activities. Believe it or not. Leptis Magna is the current most complete and preserved of Roman Ruins we can find to date. When you are in Tripoli, go and visit it by car. It is only 2 hrs by car. You will need to bring your own food and drink as there are not many restaurants or cafes around the area.

One day, I and my wife, one Indonesian friend who just came to Tripoli, Heru Danardatu and a couple of Malaysian friends, Shahrin Shariff and his wife Azah Johari decided to go to Leptis Magna on one Friday. We left from our home around 7:00 am. As it was in winter, the sun rose started at 8:00 am. We did not want to miss the sunrise. From our house we passed our office tower of Dat El Imad, they are 5 "up-side down Johny Walker bottle shaped" buildings.

Dat El Imad tower complex is just next to one of fe big hotels in Tripoli, and surely the most modern among them, Corinthian Hotel. International Seminars and Symposium are normally help here. For some businessmen who visit Tripoli, staying in the hotel may not be a very safe option not in security measure but in certainty that you can stay in the room you have booked. As it is a government Hotel, the priority of the Hotel usage lies on the government officials and their visitors. So you can find yourself to be called by Hotel receptions saying that you have to move from your hotel room, even you have been staying there with your valid booking. That is why our company has arranged a Guest House at center of Gargaresh Road as the place the company visitors can stay to have assurance the room to sleep. This situation might change quickly two or three more years when the currently being built hotels now are ready. Just next to Dat El Imad complex is being built a 5-star hotel named Daewoo Tripoli Hotel. I believe this hotel construction progress is promising I can see in Tripoli. Others have not been progressing so much. Intercontinental hotel is also being built at the center of the city facing the beach. In July 2008 the hotel bottom foundation seems almost ready.

We passed the corniche and the Tripoli port where the ships upload and download the containers of goods. At the right side we saw the lighting showing the face of Libyan leader colorful. Few kilometers afterwards we realized that it was almost sun rise time and tried to locate ourself so we did not miss the few minutes sun rose.
When we reached Leptis Magna, we stopped by near parking lot and had some cofee. It was awful coffee and had our own breakfast that we brought with us. I really regreted that we did not bring our own coffee as the bad coffee taste stayed in my mouth quite long.

We arrived around 09:30 am. Leptis Magna area has not open for us to enter. We did not anybody else visiting Leptis Magna this time. Around 10:00 am, the ticket counter was open and we started our journey in this "mini-town" called Leptis Magna.

Leptis Magna journey started when we passed the huge gate. The rocky path after this huge gate brought my mind to try to imagine the time the Romanian stayed in this place.

If you see left and right, you will wonder what all these poles for standing there. They are actually part of building supports. While the building itself has already ruined, some poles standing out could show us the positions of building how they were during those time. Some writing in Roman langauge shows on some of the rocks. Obviously I did not understand what the meaning was.

My wife enjoyed the trip and a bit regreted that my daughter did not go with us. She wanted to organize another trip to Leptis Magna with the children and created activities by asking historical puzzles and also asked them to paint the building they would like the most.

A huge stadium stands just at the beach. You can see mediteranean sea while seated on your top stair levels. What a beautiful scenery! Not sure what this stadium was used for, but as the story, Romans used to enjoy their time by watching fights between gladiators and the lions.

The city of Leptis Magna had "market" to trade anything. The seller will stand inside the market counter with their goods, while the buyers will bid their price from the windows.

As Leptis Magna was really a town, it was too large for us to visit everything as it would need full day to see everything in details. We bypassed few building ruins. Amazingly we passed "non-ruined" wall with its few passages. Good to understand how come this wall not destroyed by the earthquake which supposedly destroyed most of the town.

At near end of our journey we entered a ruined basilica church. We could still see where the altar and estimated the size of this building. It was large and quite similar size to the church of Notre Dame in Paris.

Finally I would like to think a bit on the structure on one of the gate as shown in the pciture. What made it stayed as shown in the picture. Would the big size rock fall on us when we pass under it?

Who bombed this building ??

One day in 2007, I was in my office in Dat El Imad building. Suddenly fire alarm rang and everybody rushed out from the building. I saw many people are outside the building already.
Wow, I thought this was the first time a Fire Drill succeded so much as there were so many people outside the 5 towers, 15 floors buildings.

However, there were so many policemen

I am sorry if the video is not properly oriented.
This was a life report using my handphone and was not planned.

But what happened with this building?
Who were inside this building?

arghh, it is demolished for building new one...

Tripoli business centers are being developed and organized. At one time there are so many construction projects happening in Tripoli. Some of them are quite slow implemented as per normal construction standard and left with only the pile of machinery and new building pictures shown every where. But I see some progress. Good for Libyan who enjoy the escalating price of land during this time. Government of Libya must think more on generating productivity and manufacturing industry for their future. Building facilities is good but it needs supports on the business activities.

Eating Cracker: A Game of Indonesia

Normally during celebrations of Indonesian Independence day, one of the games for children is competition cracker-eating. The winner will be the one who eat the fastest.
This is also fun game which is popular in Indonesia.
Esti and Tika, Schlumberger Personnel Administrators visited Jambi, Sumatra-Indonesia together with Indra Kesuma and Surya Hartarto as regular visit to capture employees' concerns and discussion.


(TIK)

Pillow War - A Fun Game

Monica Purnamasari and Rumbi were involved in a cold war inside the swimming pool. Apparently they were very aggressive and really aimed to hit each other until the opponent fell into water. While Surya Hartarto, the Schlumberger Personnel manager Indonesia at that time watched the game at the side of swimming pool.

Schlumberger Personnel Department Jakarta held a gathering in March 2004 in as yearly gathering function in a beach hotel around west Java. It was fun.

Yogya Bantul: School under the sun

After 6.3 Richter scale earthquake and its twice aftershocks 4.8 and 4.6 Richter hit Yogyakarta in May 2006 morning, one of the city at central Java, Indonesia, I felt touch of so many people tried to gather their resources to help the victims. As relatively higher salary paid employees, O&G employees and Families have been helping to develop their surrounding commmunities as our social responsibility.

Bantul area was the worst hit by the earthquakes. There are a bit less than 6,000 deaths and 36,000 people injured in total due to this earthquale. It was smaler scale than the earthquake and TSunami of Aceh during christmas 2004 with 9.2 earthquake costed around 130,000 lives and half million displaced.

Employees of my company showed their employee social responsibility outside what will be supported by the company itself. by collecting some money. In Jakarta, Balikpapan and Pekanbaru after getting some thousand of dollars of donation. They quickly organized the relief support for the earthquake. Some of the victim were also our employees.
The tents, blankets, medicines and food were the main what required in the area. My employer, Schlumberger Indonesia, acted quickly by sending their representative, Ronny Hendrawan, and they purchased tents, foods and blankets.

In Jakarta itself, the collected money was used to purchased few thousand of quality books for the 3 schools which were destroyed by the earthquake.

I was astonished with the facts that the children still laughed and smiled although they had to go to school under the tents and their houses destroyed.

We, as the more fortunate people, need to think and act quickly to support our neighboors who are more unfortunate than we are. (TIK)

Remembering Lady Diana in Paris

As memory of the death of Lady Diana inside Akma Tunnel below Rhine river in Paris, we will see people putting some flowers in the monument to remember Lady Diana's death.

She was in rear seat during the car accident when their "drunk(?)" driver speed up the car escaping from the gossip magazine photographer's (paparazzi's) motorcycles taking her photo with her boy friend, Doddy Al Fayed, son of London Harrod's owner.

(TIK)

Riding Bicycle for work in Paris

With fuel price reached US$150,- per barrel, more people got pressure to lower their cost of transportation. In Paris, one entrepreneur had pushed so hard to have fully automated bike rental. They have many bike parking stations all ovre the city. Also they provided credits to purchase for bike rental per hour or per 8 hours.

Paris Mayor also supported the use of bicycle replacing use of the expensive fuel drinking vehciles. He provided "bike-way", bike signs, and we feel very comfortable using bicycle as one of the transportation tool as it is supported by the government and also healthy way of living. By using bike to work, at least we have sufficient sports daily and reducing pollution and green house effect and help to reduce the impact of global warming.


I am dreaming Jakarta and many other polluted cities follow the use of bike and support the riders by giving special "bike-way" and for the businessman to provide many rental points.

(TIK)

Musee du Louvre: Da Vinci's Monalisa painting fame

Libya is a business unit of an Area called Europe-Africa in my present employer, Schlumberger.

The headquarter of Europe-Africa area is in Paris. Quite often I was called for meetings and Seminars to Paris.

If I brought my family, I would like to bring them also sightseeing or touring town of Paris.

One of famous places to visit would be Louvre Museum where most famous artist paintings are exhibitioned and preserved.

The shape of Louvre Museum is glass pyramid and located underground at the middle of palaces.

As the religion in this area was mainly Roman Catholics, the greatest artists paints were mostly the ones related to the life of Christ. It is normally visited by all the people around the world to see Monalisa, one of the well known painting of Leonardo Da Vinci. It became very famous after a congtroversial Dan Brown's Novel, Da Vinci's Code. Monalisa was wife of Leonardo's friend, Francesco del Giocondo. As there was no photography yet as like now, it was very often rich family had themselves "photographed" as paintings.

The original of the painting was inside a glass showing a strange famous smile of Monalisa. I don't quite understand if people respect the painting or respected Leonardo Da Vinci. I am not an artist anyway to be able to appreciate how great is this painting.

The museum is also a great place for the current artists to learn and develop their skill by cloning the well known paintings. They normally fulfil an order from Museum itself to give them a copy of the paintings or request permission from an Institute of Arts from all over the world.

Painting can also be used as historical tools to capture the great event of the year. One of the paintings shows an old complete musical orchestra inside a grand huge ball room where 5 storeys of balconies at the two sides of the room were full of spectators. During those times, the royal and richest families entertainment are classical music concerts and operas as there were no movies yet.

(TIK)

Tripoli Stoned Band: how it started

History:
To pass time here in Tripoli, Libya, Indonesians here in Tripoli are used to gather minimum once weekly in any selected house, normally enjoying some Indonesian foods and chatting. Historically Indonesians in Tripoli are comprised of Oil and Gas Employees, embassy people and also recently construction employees. Starting around year 2000, some Indonesian agreed to collect money voluntarily to buy sound system equipment and lighting equipment to support some gathring parties. As time passed, the equipment collection grew and many O&G parties required them to help them to support lighting and sound system. Some people really such as Wolf a German Husband of Indonesian good singer Denia, Ari Priadi and some others also since 2004 already wanted to have band but of course it needed a lot of musical resources.

One year after her arrival in 2005, Natalia Desi had been wanting to be in a band singing to do her real hobby.
In October 2007, some Indonesian gathered in one of friend's house, we talked that we should have a vocal group here in Tripoli as our Indonesian friend, Desi, has very beautiful voice in singing. I play guitar but not very skillful. Detti, my wife plays piano but not as good in keyboard, Desi got very excited and was very happy if we would have a group for this. This discussion as usual went only as ideas among us Indonesians. Ari Priadi, a REPSOL employee friend, as one of the long serving Indonesian in Tripoli showed his leadership by pushing this "band" idea. Desi's husband, Akbar, who headed a O&G service company, HOTHED, in Tripoli, also got excited as he knew that his wife would enjoy this band idea so much. Many people are consulted to get supports of this idea.
I, myself, had spanish classic guitar, chinese violin, TECHNIC keyboard, YAMAHA alto saxophone, SELMER soprano saxophone, a YAMAHA flute. I don't really read music notes. But my wife Detti and my daughter, Anin, are very good in reading music. They play piano and some simple violin as well. I would be happy if this band idea went into reality.
Ari and wife, Tamy, own Sound System, microphones and 8 channel mixer, normally were used in Karaoke and parties in many gatherings in Tripoli are the great pusher on this band. This time, Landong, the GM of Pertamina in Tripoli, said that he has one staff who played guitar very well, Faisal, who works as Finance Manager in Pertamina Libya. Ari talked to Faisal to join to make this idea comes true. Aji from Indonesian Embassy also joined us as Singer. We agreed make the first practice session. However, it was awful and very unorganized. we did not achieve anything. Now it started getting a bit more serious. Ari, Tamy, Akbar, Desi, Indra, Detti and Krishna then made appointment to go to a Yamaha Musical Instrument shop in Gurji Road Tripoli to see what can be completed before we could make this idea come true. I bought an electric guitar and its speaker as I did not have it yet.
Ari was looking for better mixer and more power sound system, and checked the prices.
This time also we started to learn that there is a drummer, Andi, an architect in CKG, an Indonesian Construction company in Tripoli. We could not contact Andi, Faisal involved the band second practice in my house. It was not very productive practice.
Ari Priadi and Tamy discussed with Faisal on what other equipment should be purchased. This time when Faisal went back to Jakarta during his day-off rotation, he asked Faisal to purchase a YAMAHA PSR-700 keyboard.
This time we asked Denia, Indonesian lady who married a German Siemen Project manager, Wolf, as second Singer adn Wolf as the guitarist.
We performed first time at Velentine party 14-Feb-2008. Unfortunately Aji had job to go to Indonesia.

A review of our performance soon gave us feeling that without bass or drum, it sounded very empty.

Later on Ari and Tamy again asked Fasial to buy a bass from Indonesia after his other days-off schedule. The practice was then moved to a party container in Siemen Camp as it was inside the camp and more controlled environment. All started to kick off. We kept practicing with configuration without drummer yet but with a bass.

This time, we were to perform second time at the Indonesian Embassy to perform the band for an Indonesian Food Bazaar Day, 21-March-2008. This time we were told that Andi, our currecnt drummer, would have come to meet us in Embassy. In the function we directly asked him to join by playing the bass as we did not have enough member yet to play all musical instruments.

Ari and Tamy went on with Faisal and Akbar to buy drum in Megarief street and brought that to Siemen Camp. For the first time we completed our instruments and players.

Practices were done regularly minimum once a week. And often 2-3 times approaching the performance day.

Third performance was 30-May-2008 for a Brithday party of Tamy. This time Faisal could not attend and Indra played the guitar and Nawan played the bass.

Lately Ikhsan from CKG company also joined us as bass player.

Fourth performance was to celebrate Peter's birthday, a German Embassy staff, in his beautiful garden house in relatively far Janzour as a Garden Party on 6-June-2008.

Wolf, one of our member, would leave us to go back to German as he finished his Siemen project in Tripoli. So far we had been practicing in the Siemen party container, just outside their house in the Siemen camp. With them leaving us, we would have big loss and felt very sad. we performed fifth time on their farewell party in Siemen Camp. This time German and Indonesian communities came to send their gartitude on how much Wolf and Denia have done so far. The farewell was done 20-June-2008.

On 26-June-2008, Dominic, a friend from PetroCanada Libya had his birthday in PetroCanada Guest house inside Regatta complex (where expats normally live) around 70-80 people invited.

Dominic has a beautiful Lebanese wife enjoyed very much the party and thanked Tripoli Stoned for the opportunity to have it perfoming in his birthday party.

Here are our configuration in June 2008:
* Drummer: Andi (Emanuelle replaced Andi during Andi's off)
* Bass: Ikhsan (Nawan/Indra as back-up)
* Rythm Guitar: Wolf, Indra Kesuma
* Saxophone: Indra Kesuma
* Lead Guitar: Faisal Tanjung
* Keyboard: Detti Kesuma
* Singer: Desi, Denia, Aji, Krishna
* Manager: Ari Priadi (supported by the CFO: Tamy)

(TIK)