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)