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The Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) will celebrate "Girls in ICT Day' last Thursday.

The celebration organised jointly by the iCentre of the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), Tech One Global and Google Developers Group (GDG) Women Brunei Darussalam and backed by International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The aim of the celebration is to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider careers in the growing field of ICT.

A series of events for the girls and young women has been arranged starting from today's opening of Clip-IT, a video-making challenge organised by AITI. The highlight of the celebration will be the opening ceremony on April 30 at KHUB in Kg Anggerek Desa, Berakas, together with two parallel workshops, namely Vid-IT and Tech-IT being organised on the same day and at the same venue.

The Vid-IT is targeted for Year 10 female students in making a simple animation video using Adobe Flash, and will be facilitated by Tech One Global. The Tech-IT workshop will gather matured audience from the higher learning institutions and the public to discuss various ICT-related topics presented by aspiring women and entrepreneurs in this field. The last programme will be the Pitch-IT session to be held on May 1 at AITI. This session hopes to encourage participants to generate innovative ideas on mobile apps and then pitching their ideas towards commercially potential products. Hopefully through these event the participants, especially girls and young women, would be more attracted to the fields of ICT and aspired towards a career path in ICT-related professions.

According to AITI, this event was not intended to discriminate the males; but rather to promote and increase the involvement and interest of the females in ICT with the support of its male counterparts.

The public is welcome to share any other initiatives or activities to commemorate this event towards improving the girls and women's involvement by tweeting the global hash-tag #girlsinICT or emailing it to Farihah Said at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

For more information about Girls in ICT events, please visit AITI website at www.aiti.gov.bn/girlsinICT or you can also contact Dk Nisa 236 6609 or Hamimah 236 6610 or via email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Text courtesy of Aaron Alwines of The Brunei Times

 

HRH Prince ‘Abdul Wakeel and HRH Princess Ameerah Wardatul Bolkiah during the prize presentation ceremony at the National Run

A record 11,276 people in all four districts took part simultaneously in the National Day Run 2013 with the Brunei-Muara District having the biggest turnout of 8,084.

Among the participants were HRH Prince ‘Abdul Wakeel and HRH Princess Ameerah Wardatul Bolkiah.

Also in attendance were YAM Pengiran Anak Raheemah Sanaul Bolqiah with her siblings YAM Pengiran Anak Hariisah Widadul Bolqiah and YAM Pengiran Anak ‘Abdul Raqiib.

Also taking part were YAM Pg Muda Abdul Mu’min and YAM Pg Anak Khaliilah Khalilatul Bolqiah.

The guest of honour who sounded off the horn in the Brunei-Muara District was the Minister of Education, Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Kerna Dato Seri Setia (Dr) Hj Awang Abu Bakar bin Hj Apong. Also present were the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Pehin Orang Kaya Pekerma Laila Diraja Dato Seri Setia Awang Hj Hazair bin Hj Abdullah; the Deputy Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Datin Paduka Hajah Adina binti Othman; and Deputy Minister of Education, Dato Seri Setia Awang Hj Yusoff bin Hj Ismail.

The National Day Run was aimed at commemorating the 29th National Day that came with the theme “Negaraku Brunei Darussalam” or “Brunei Darussalam My Country”. It was also aimed at strengthening the ties and interaction among the youths and many stakeholders in the country. The turnout of this year’s National Day Run was bigger than last year as the 2012 run saw only around 1,300 runners.

The Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports in an interview on the sidelines of the National Day Run said, “I am overwhelmed and touched by the huge number of participants. Throughout the country, there were more than 11,000 participants. The number was so much bigger than last year.” He added, “I am really happy to see so many young people participating in the run to celebrate the National Day which showed their appreciation for the country. Running has become popular and a growing number of Bruneians are running towards a healthy lifestyle.”

He also expressed his appreciation for the support of HRH Prince ‘Abdul Wakeel and HRH Princess Ameerah Wardatul Bolkiah by joining in the run.

The National Day Run, he said, “is also in line with ASEAN Sport Industry Year as Brunei is the chair of Asean Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) Council this year. Through sport, we can unite people and sport can also develop better understanding as well as contribute to peace and stability”.

YAM Pg Muda Abdul Mu’min and YAM Pg Anak Khaliilah Khalilatul Bolqiah during the National Day Run at the Hassanal Bolkiah Stadium

The warm up exercise that had some question marks from the participants

Off they go....

They were all smiles

The National Day Run 2013 which took place simultaneously in all four districts saw Belait having 1,074 participants while Tutong had 1,728 participants. In Temburong, some 390 participants took part in the run.

The guest of honour who flagged off the run in Belait was the Minister of Health, Pehin Orang Kaya Johan Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Adanan bin Begawan Pehin Siraja Khatib Dato Seri Setia Awang Hj Mohd Yusof.

While in Tutong it was the Minister of Communications, Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Hj Abdullah bin Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar.

The Minister of Industry and Primary Resources, Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Utama Dato Seri Setia Awang Hj Yahya bin Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar was the guest of honour in the Temburong District. Text by James Kon of Borneo Bulletin. Some of the images by Muiz Matdani of Media Permata.

We finished the 10km race in just under 2 hours *lol* Thanks to the heat

It was such a great turn out!!

One of the route leads inside Yayasan school

Volunteers cleaning up the mess

 

Did you know that all participants even the Fun Run category will receive a finisher medal? Awesome!!! The Run organised by Pusat Ehsan, happening on 9th June. Click image to enter website!!

Closing date of registration is 9th May. Btw you can also collect your donation cards at Pusat Ehsan Bengkurong and KB and Coffee Bean outlets

 

You heard it.. The topic for today will be my views and also comments from the public on yesterday's National Run event. Image by Muiz Matdani.

RA says Welcome once again to my segment of the Ugly Truth. If I refresh my memory, my previous UG was with regards to the roundabout traffic light fiasco which now has slowly taken a much positive turn after some minor changes were made. A big hand to the JKR (of the Ministry of Development) for looking into this matter and attending to the responses of the public.

Today I want discuss about organising events that relates to running or marathon. In actual fact, running a marathon event is not cheap. If you demand a great, top-notch service type of marathon, be prepared to fork out at least $300K to $400,000. A bigger population such as Singapore or Malaysia would be a much ideal place if you want to deliver the best type of marathons and of course, their market is huge.

I'm pretty sure the Standard Chartered Run organised recently may have caused a fortune and mind you, these are inclusive of the hundreds of volunteers who play a major role in making the event run smoothly. The next major running event will be in June known as The Run which made its debut last year organised by Pusat Ehsan and they pulled off a great job last year though minor things can be improved. I'm wondering whether HSBC will organise another Walk, Run, Cycle event this but from the looks of it, there might not be one pretty soon as we are already hitting May and no news of it as yet.

Ok, why am I going around the bush? *lol* My intention here of talking about marathon events is because I want to create awareness on what factors need to be looked on for and how can this be improved coming from opinions of the public. I do hope the organsiers don't take this personally but more of a learning experience and also create a win-win situation for the organisers and the end users.

Yesterday, I was dissatisfied with the organisation of the event. The biggest thing that I believe that needs addressing is the timing of the runs. The event poster stated that the event will begin at 7am which means that the first flag off might be half an hour later and my prediction was right.. 7am the Guest of honour will arrive then the warm up exercise before runners take their place. Give and take, that alone can take up 15-20 minutes. So by the time, we started running it was already 7:30 am.

We have practised our run at this hour before and it's not an easy task I have to say. The major concern here is the heat. That's why you will hardly see people doing their normal jogs after 8am. Well, there are still a handful of them but most people choose to do it before 7am. It does make a difference when you start running at 6:30 am as compared to 7:30 am. For myself, a 6:30 am run would be just nice for my 10KM run. But not for a 7:30am run.

Fina and I struggled to keep our normal pace for a 10km jog. We kinda predicted that the morning heat will slow us down for sure. It did and there were even thoughts of making short cuts half way through the jog but we eventually completed the 30 mins later than our usual time. Most of the journey we just walked and treated it as a casual fun walk.

But from the looks of it, I've seen people who turned around from their 10km jog and gave up because of the heat. I would say an average of 20-30% or even more had shortcuts to get away from the morning heat. I believe this wasn't the first time that the organisers set a similar timing too.

Now this is something for the organiser to look into if they want to listen to the positive criticism from the public who shared similar views to myself with regards to the morning condition yesterday and a suggested time for flag off. I do hope the future major running events will look into this matter as well.

It was super hot especially after 8am. We almost took a shorter route but ended up finishing the whole 10km route.

She tried to block away from the sun's heat

Now the other issue that needs to be highlighted is the disposal of rubbish. The resources I felt were limited. The number of volunteers or the people involved were just enough to marshall the check points though there were only 4 check points for the 10km route. These are the times you appreciate what SCB run can offer in terms of the check points and also the cheering team.

Anyway, back to the rubbish issue, I found out that joggers had no place to throw their drinks or bottles and they ended up throwing them by the roadside. This is not encouraged but there is no area to dispose them so it gave them little choice. So by the time, we reached past the 5km mark, I could see the tons of blue cap bottles on the ground.

I would have thought that the organisers would rectify the rubbish issue hours after the event was over. However, last night, someone complained that the bottles were still seen along the road and roundabout near Sg. Akar. I was even shocked that one of the teachers at Yayasan school tagged me on instagram of a picture of the rubbish or leftovers that were left unattended at the mini roundabout outside Al-Falah and Yayasan school (refer to image below). Now that's a sign of mismanagement if little things like rubbish from the event is not given attention after the event.

The plastic cups littered on the road

One of the teachers complained how the boxes of rubbish were found this morning outside Yayasan and Al-Falah schools

Another complain that was raised was the distribution of the t-shirts for the National Day run. Some of them had trouble collecting their t-shirts because of the lack of signs or directions to where they are supposed to collect their t-shirts. Some had to wait for hours only to find out that they are queueing at the wrong place.

I was fortunate enough that my friend Sabrina helped to register and even collect the t-shirt on my behalf. I'm not sure of her experience during the t-shirt collection. Perhaps ushers and clearer signages for t-shirt collections would have smoothen the flow and avoid longer queues too.

This are some of the things that I feel need addressing and I'm pretty sure there are more complains but let's keep them to a minimal.

The organisers have done not a bad job overall but the flaws stated are things that can be improved in the near future. So don't take it personally but as constructive criticisms so future events can run smoothly. The committee that I communicate with have been very helpful so it shows that they are great people. It's more of the system in place that needs some fine tuning.

The distribution of t-shirts at the National Stadium

The comments from my instagram

The comments from my instagram