Pavement Needs Some Attention

Pavement in good surface condition is very essential for safe travel to all road users. Sometime, after the road is open to traffic, signs of pavement failures started to appear may be due to several reasons. One of the reason is the quality of the material being used to construct the pavement. Thus, it is essential for the relevant authorities to carry out quality assurance check for all of the material being used and also in term of construction method being used for constructing the pavement.

The following picture shows pavement failure called rutting which is usually associated with subgrade failure or structural failure.

The following picture shows temporary patching of pothole where the materials are disintegrated due to the action of vehicle tyres. The loose materials is very dangerous to other road users especially motorcyclists.


The following picture shows pavement previously being patched and new pothole reappear. The reason of the failure is not being addressed properly causing similar failure appears at the same location. If left unattended, the potholes can cause serious accident to motorcyclists.

Adopting a Fire Hydrant

The Housing and Local Government Ministry found out that there is a lukewarm response from the public regarding their campaign on adopting fire hydrants. The objectives of the campaign are to ensure that the hydrants are not being vandalized, not being stolen, etc. Currently, the Fire and Rescue department inspected the hydrants twice a year and they will never being able to cover all of the hydrants.

I have a suggestion to overcome these issues. I think The Fire and Rescue Department should routinely check all of the hydrants within each of the Fire Station jurisdictions by flushing the hydrants and at the same time used the flushed water to clear all of the clogged drain in the vicinity. By doing this, the fire and rescue department will know the current status of the hydrants, will be able to check on the water pressure of the hydrants, and the same time will be able to reduce the vandalising of the hydrants. Furthermore, the exercise will be able to clean some of the clogged drain and can reduce significantly the occurrences of flash flood.

It is very important to check on the hydrants water pressure because it will be too costly if in actual emergency that the water pressure for the hydrants is not up to the standards. At least upon routine checking, hydrants with low water pressure can be addressed immediately by the relevant agencies.

Of course, the Fire departments will say that they cannot do the routine checking etc because they are too busy carrying out their duties. However, emergencies does not happen everyday and during those free sort of days, they can carry out their duties to check on the health of each of the hydrants under their jurisdiction. If all of the Fire and Rescue Department can carry out this duty, I think they can cover almost all of the hydrants in the country.

However, residents interested to join the campaign can contact their nearest fire stations to register themselves. But again, I don't know what else the residents can do after registering for the campaign besides only looking after the visual aspect of the hydrants. I don't think the residents are allowed to check whether there is enough water pressure for each of the hydrants that they are adopting.

Another Award

Star, 12 May 2009

Another accolade was given to Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. Tan Sri was awarded the Tokoh Melayu Terbilang award at Umno's 63rd Anniversaries celebration. Not so long ago he was given the title tokoh maal hijrah.

A New Yacht

Tun Dr Mahathir got his newly build yacht registered under his famous phrase "Apanama". The next time you see this new yacht sailing, you should know who own it. The 11-metre long yacht is still under construction at the Langkawi Intrnational Marina by a local ship building company J.G Challenge Sdn. Bhd. The yacht can seat 22 crew members and passengers with a speed of 7 knots.

Back to Civilized World

Land telephone line is already in sight in our neighborhood. After waiting for more than two years, at last we can access the high speed internet. Immediately, I registered for new phone line and then registered for Streamyx internet service. After few days, the streamyx is alive and browsing the internet is so fast. After talking to the telephony technician, he mentioned that for each box, only ten phones line are allocated. It means that after a while when all of the allocated slot has been connected to the housing residences then there will be no more line available for internet connections. So, my advice to those who stays within the neighborhood is that do not wait any longer. Go to the TM service center and register for you phone line and get the streamyx service.

It is so painful for not being able to get a good internet connection for the past two years. Everything you do is so slow and a lot of time is wasted just to read a page of browsing activity.