Lion Dancing Now Multicultural
By Wani Abdul Gapar

Belait - Students belonging to Chung Ching Secondary School in Seria assembled at one of the Sungai Liang residences to usher in the Lunar New Year festivities with an exuberant lion dance performance.

Noisy firecrackers went off in the air with a perfect timing to match the beats of traditional Chinese drums and cymbals as two brightly coloured lions performed their annual dance in the area. However, that was as traditional as it got.

The involvement from the non-Chinese community in the lion dance performances has never been more obvious than in recent times. The Brunei Times interviewed some of the district's lion dancing committee members on their take of the event.

Chiew Keng Kok, a Chung Ching teacher, said, "I've seen many non-Chinese students involving themselves with lion dancing it have now become very multiracial. We have Indian, Malay, Iban and students of other communities, who are members of our team.

"It's a new generation. The members' mentalities are very accepting," he added.

When asked about his experience with the lion dance team, 14-year-old Mohammad Aris said, "its syok (fun)! The training is tiring but I really have fun with it."

The Chung Ching Lion Dance Committee is a central figure in the Belait Chinese community as they constitute one of the many lion dance troupes who perform at private residences and at parties during the Chinese New Year celebrations.

"The lion dancing committee has been around for more than 50 years. It was there when I started going to Chung Ching Secondary School," according to one of the members present at the festivities.

Hakka Association Chairman Lim Tsia Ming explained that the lion dancers bring in luck and protection, while chasing away negative influences.

"It is a cultural event, not a religious one," he said.

Bruneians go email crazy By Hadi DP Mahmud

Bandar Seri Begawan - Brunei saw a significant increase in email transactions over a period of 10 months, according to an Asia-Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) report on the sultanate's Internet activities.

The Brunei Computer Emergency Report Team (BruCERT), an elected member of APCERT since February 2005, reported that emails transferred through the Brunet Email System increased from 8.49 million in March to--266.91 million in December 2005, representing over 3,000-fold increase.

But two main threats were identified in the Internet Service Provider- (ISP) hosted email system - viruses and spam, with the latter being more widespread.

In March, 480,555 emails were detected with viruses, while 895,996 were detected as spam. In December, 510,332 emails were detected with viruses, a decrease by half from the month before. A total of 11.01 million emails were detected as spam in the same month.

The report stated that at that time, Brunet had added a new hardware to detect viruses in the system.

Statistical information for January, February and May 2005 were not available due to internal logging problems, the report stated.

It said email usage surged in November and December due to festive seasons and school holidays. In the same months, the email system was 90 and 96 per cent effective, respectively.

However, in the four months prior to November and December. The effectiveness of the email system was below 20 per cent.

The effectiveness of the email system is measured by comparing the number of legitimate and clean emails to the total number of emails transacted.

"Being the first ISP (Brunet) in the country, the email systems hold various email accounts spanning from the public and private sectors. However, the email transaction requires further security improvement to be effective," stated the report. In March and April 2005, the email system was 82 and 84 per cent effective respectively.

For the month of March, a total of 1.37 million out of 8.49 million emails were detected with viruses and as

Spam, while in April a total of ' 6.54 million emails were ' found to be "legitimate and clean emails". The report ' explained the high percentage of email utilisation during those two months is due to the non existence of "big-impact viruses" during that period.

BruCERT handled two incident reports with relation to worms in 2005. In March, a new virus called WORMSDBOT.AYI was discovered to have caused anomalies in some of the computers in the headquarters of a leading bank in Brunei. It caused a major disruption at the bank, according to the report. But BruCERT's research and development team, along with Trend Micro, an antivirus vendor, conducted further containment and carried out eradication procedures.

In October 2005, BruCERT received its second report involving the "Slammer Worm", from which investigations revealed that the infected computers' virus definitions were not sufficiently updated, Lack of security policy and awareness were blamed for the incident.

Public urged to keep hospital clean By Sobrina Rosli

Bandar Seri Begawan - The Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Saleha (Ripas) Hospital has called upon the public to cooperate with hospital authorities in keeping the hospital environment clean and safe.

Sid Mariam Md Jaafar, Ripas Deputy Chief Executive Officer, told The Brunei Times that, "the public too has a responsibility in ensuring the healthy environment because this is a public hospital and it’s also their hospital."

The hospital has been brought under a new management since June last year.

"We welcome any feedback or complaint from the public because we want to improve the services as much as we could, Siti Mariam said, adding that they also needed public's cooperation in protecting the environment and facilities at the hospital.

She also advised the public to dispose rubbish in such a way that the premises will remain clean.

"Rubbish bins have been placed around the hospital for public convenience to keep the hospital clean," Siti Mariam added. -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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