Dear Stephen Then,

Thank you for your report on the Kuala Baram haze issue. But Kuala Baram is part of Miri City, Sarawak, not Sabah.

Please kindly amend your geography knowledge. Thank you.

Yours truly,
Alex Allied.

Wah Tat Bank was the oldest bank in Sibu. Founded by Chew Geok Ling and his business partner, Teo Chong Loh. The business started with Wah Tat Money Exchange and Remittances which was the forerunner of Wah Tat Bank. In 2001, Wah Tat Bank merged with Hong Leong Bank to form the Hong Leong Bank Berhad that you see today.

The now defunct Sibu Wah Tat Bank building. Shot taken from the Sibu Tua Pek Kong temple’s pagoda. Click for larger view.

Mary and I were researching on HDR photography for quite a while now, and we finally took the initiative to have a go at it with Sibu town as the subject. It’s been pretty hot and sunny this few days, not a very good weather for photographing, but Mary brought over her dad’s infrared camera and this kind of weather is just perfect for infrared photography.

Let’s start off with some of our virgin works of HDR photos.

Sibu Old Town. The building with a green oval-shaped roof is the Sibu’s Hawker Centre, the biggest of its kind in Sarawak (or Malaysia?). Most of the shops here were built around the 1950s, surviving the World war II. Taken from the Sibu Tua Pek Kong temple’s pagoda.

“If the pig sneezes, he’s fucken dead.”

I wonder how’s the pork sales doing? Still pretty good in Malaysia eh?

May 2009: Global pandemic “Swine Flu” hits the World. H1N1 flu virus originated from the pigs, mutated and infected the humans.

If you need plywood or timber, please contact me, Alex @ +6013 8380 333, or e-mail me at ezylink@sibucity.net.

Common public impressions suggest that, Sibu is that dull and boring town, sitting by the unattractive milk-tea-colored muddy Rejang River, waiting for time to pass. The town might seemed so, but go further away, in the suburban forested areas, you’ll realize that this is not quite the case. There, you’ll see sawmills, timber yards, plywood factories of ISO standards, bustling and producing hundreds and thousands of cubic meters of timber products every month to feed the world’s hunger for wood.

Sibu houses a handful of global timber conglomerates, namely the Rimbunan Hijau Group, Ta Ann Group, Sanyan Group, WTK, The Sarawak Company, just to name a few, among other big private owners of sawmills and timber concessions. They’re the timber export powerhouse and the primary driving force of Sibu’s economy.

ISO standard plywood industry. At ground level, it doesn’t really tell the whole story of how big this industry is.