Retracing Hakka splendour...

GEORGETOWN: There are plans to turn Balik Pulau into a Hakka landmark because of its significant heritage traits.

Federation of Malaysian Hakka Associations deputy president Datuk Dr Cheah See Kian said there was a proposal to build a museum in the area and the National Central University of Taiwan Hakka Research Centre was conducting research on the feasibility.

“We want to commemorate the Hakka community in Penang, especially those in Balik Pulau, as we discovered it was a pioneer Hakka settlement.

“It was truly a ‘Hakka village’ in the early days,” Dr Cheah said.

“Balik Pulau may have lost much of the Hakka splendour of the olden days but from the historical point of view, it’s still recognised as the first shelter for those who first migrated here.

“Through the passage of time, though, it’s no longer the realm of the Hakkas, but it remains a Hakka-speaking community,” he said during a workshop on studies of the Hakka community in South-East Asia at Han Chiang College yesterday.

Heritage researcher Tan Yeow Wooi, who was invited to speak on the architectural heritage of the Hakkas, said that the building of the clan’s associations, temples, clan houses and houses were integrated with other clan elements like the Cantonese and Teochew.

SOURCE: The Star - Balik Pulau to be a Hakka landmark

Balik Pulau welcomes visitors from 578 cities...

...virtually, that is.

Since this Balik Pulau blog started about 21 months ago on a Saturday afternoon, on the seventh day of the fourth month in common era year of 2007 (19 Raby` al-awal 1428 After Hijrah), humans and robots from 578 cities in 77 countries/territories from all five habitable earth continents (Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia/New Zealand), and perhaps from Antartica too, have visited this "bppp" (or b3p) domain - a simple blog which was first hosted on blogger.com's blogspot domain, and later shifted to its own dedicated balikpulau.org domain towards the end of 2008.

Over 80% of the visitors were from the home country Malaysia and the rest came primarily from United States (~5%) and Singapore (~4%) while United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and Japan contribute about 1% visits each. About 30% of visits from Malaysia came from 'cities' and towns in the home state of Pulau Pinang, and the rest were primarily from Kuala Lumpur (23%), Ipoh, Perak (16%) and Sungai Petani, Kedah (1.5%).

Traffic Trends

Traffic has been gradually growing, and practically increasing every month, with an exception during the month of July 2008 or specifically on Sunday of 27 July 2008, when this small town website receives a three-digit unique visits on a single day during which a student (alumni) reunion was held at MRSM Balik Pulau in conjunction with the school's Silver Jubilee (25-year anniversary) celebration. Another post on the upcoming opening of first western-food franchise in Balik Pulau was also made on the evening of the same day.


Technical Trends

Our visitors mostly use Microsoft Internet Explorer as their web browser (at nearly 70%, compared to Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Google Chrome at 27%, 1.5%, 1% and 0.3% respectively) and it's surprising that there are a few people who still use the archaic Netscape browser which was dying a slow death since 2004, and finally discontinued by AOL last year on Feb 1, 2008.

Over 95% of our visitors still rely on various flavours of Microsoft Windows as their computer operating system, while nearly 3% are sticking with or have switched to Apple Mac OS, and about 0.5% are using Linux. Other operating systems used by our visitors include FreeBSD and SunOS, and mobile OS-es including SymbianOS and Apple iPhone & iPod. These numbers however do not represent visits to our mobile-specific website at m.balikpulau.org.

Our visitors are fast on the superhighways, mostly using high-speed broadband connection with DSL being the most popular at nearly 60%, and other known types including T1 (6.23%), Cable (2.74%) and OC3 (0.64%). No stats on mobile broadband (GPRS, 3G/HSDPA etc.), which is estimated at around 10% or more, are available at this time, although wished for in the near future. By the way, at 1% or a lot more, it's surprising that many people still uses dial-up internet connection at this knowledge economy age. Over 65% of the traffic to this site comes via Telekom Malaysia (TM) Berhad's network, while other significant networks (at 0.5-3%) include Maxis Communications Bhd, Jaring Communications Sdn Bhd, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Time Telecommunications Sdn Bhd, Intel Corporation, Avago Technologies, Government Integrated Telecommunication Network (GITN), Starhub, Singnet and Core IP Development Network.

Well over 80% of our visitors enjoys viewing this site using comfortable screen resolution
of 1024x700 or larger, with the largest practical resolution being 2048x1536 and the smallest resolution being 122x101 (of a mobile phone).

Over 85% of our visitors upgrade their software regularly or using the latest software installed with Flash version 9.0 or newer and as many as 97% of devices used to access our website currently supports Java.

Human Trends

As this blog is primarily filled with posts in English (without integrated automatic translation as of yet), it's no surprise that our visitors mostly choose English (well over 95%) as their default web browser language, while a handful were observe to have opted for Chinese, French, Japanese, German and Spanish.

Most of our visitors are one-timers while over 15% have made two or more separate visits, and over 1% who are definitely our most loyal visitors/readers have returned 25 times or more. Over 20% stays more than a minute at the site viewing up to two pages (of multiple posts each) per visit, and about 13% stays for three minutes or longer at the site viewing three or more pages per visit.

More than two-third of visitors found us using the two most popular search engines, Google and Yahoo at 37% and 33% respectively entering keywords like "balik pulau" and "pemandangan indah". Other popular items looked for by our visitors are situated in Balik Pulau such educational institutions (KKTM, MRSM, KKBP, PBU, ICT/KTP, SMK Seri, Giat MARA etc.), public amenities (hospital, PLKN training camp, Rapid Penang bus depot, Kompleks Sukan etc.), housing and lodging (Upen Inn, botanica.ct, Fortune Residences and miscellaneous properties/land/houses/development etc.) and tourism attractions (laksa, durian, air terjun (waterfalls), Pasir Panjang Beach, taman negara (national park), homestay programme, Pulau Betong etc.).

Other search engines/portals like Blogger.com, Google Images, MSN/Live and MyBlogLog also contributed some visits in addition to the following sites/blogs that in combination contribute as much as 15% of the traffic to this blog (Thank you!):-

1. rasarasa.net
2. ritahyahaya.blogspot.com
3. anilnetto.com
4. haziamyperspective

Social media like twitter (microblogging), facebook (profile portal) and flicker (image blogging) have also been contributary to some traffic...

Sebuah Bas Kilang Melanggar 6 buah motosikal, 3 maut di Jalan Tengah Relau

Berlaku pada 6.00 petang semasa kesesakan lalu lintas di Jalan Tengah, Relau, Pulau Pinang. Kemalangan dikatakan berlaku di mana sebuah bas kilang ASE hilang kawalan kerana memandu laju akibat mengejar lampu trafik sebelum bertukar kepada merah. Akibat kerakusan pemandu bas dan pada masa yang sama segerombolan motosikal dari arah yang berlainan yang juga tidak sabar menunggu lampu hijau turut memecut. Akibatnya 6 buah motosikal menerima akibat bila bertembung dengan bas kilang tersebut. 3 daripada mereka maut dan yang paling mengerikan ada seorang penunggang motosikal tersangkut dan terheret di bawah bas.

Permasalahan yang berlaku di sini ialah sikap para pemandu yang masing-masing tidak sabar dan rakus dan yang paling malang tentulah pemandu motosikal khususnya yang amat terdedah dengan bahaya.

Adakah kerajaan perlu memasang strategi yang lain seperti dengan menggantikan lampu sedia ada dengan lampu trafik mengikut kiraan nombor untuk memastikan langkah keselamatan pada masa akan datang. Bersama kita beringat-ingat dan saling mengingati pemandu kita untuk lebih bersikap berhati-hati semasa memandu.

Spotlight on crimes...

Looks like the fresh new year of 2009 for the small, usually calm Balik Pulau is being marred with crimes, one after another - trade cheatings, illegal trades & armed hostage and now, attempted murder? Read on...

GEORGE TOWN: The case of the 16-year-old schoolboy who was abducted and forced to drink liquids, which scalded his mouth and throat, on New Year’s Day had been classified as attempted murder.

State police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Wira Ayub Yaakob said they were now looking for two men, in their 20s.

“One of them is a local youth who is well-versed in Thai. He has ‘more or less’ been identified based on a photofit from Muhamad Akhir Idris’ description.

“The victim, who is now recovering at the Penang Hospital, is only able to talk slowly.

“We should be able to get more from Muhamad Akhir when he is fully recovered,” he said.

DCP Ayub, who visited the boy at the hospital yesterday, said a suspect, in his 50s, who had been arrested in connection with the incident on the same day has been released on police bail.

Muhamad Akhir claimed that he was abducted outside his home in Sungai Gelugor and driven to an office in Minden Heights nearby.

Once there, he was first forced to drink a purple liquid, and later tortured and forced at gunpoint to drink a second liquid that caused a sharp pain in his mouth and throat.

He then pretended to faint, and his captors drove him to Balik Pulau and pushed him out of the car in Jalan Baru where he managed to get help from a trader.

On the five unknown liquids recovered from a building in Per­matang Pasir, Balik Pulau on Friday, DCP Ayub said police were waiting for the results of a chemical analysis to determine whether they were same liquids forced down the boy’s throat.

SOURCE: The Star - Case filed as attempted murder

Perhaps, the guys and gals in the District Police HQ need to run more rounds... or it is time to revive the ol' Rukun Tetangga (neighborhood watch) initiative in addition to the Rakan Cop programme...

The start of new year 2009 in Balik Pulau:-

Deal to trade python skins goes sour
The Star - 8 Jan 2009
By ANN TAN BALIK PULAU: Four men armed with two pistols held eight people hostage for more than five hours after a deal to trade python skins and mineral ...

Teenager recounts harrowing experience of being abducted and tortured New Straits Times - 3 Jan 2009 Unable to stand the torture anymore, Mohamad Akhir pretended to have fainted and the men reacted by throwing him onto the roadside in Balik Pulau. ... Rescued boy tells of kidnap and torture ordeal The Star Father wants abductor rearrested New Straits Times all 6 news articles »

‘Datuk’ faces 10 years’ jail and rotan The Star - 2 Jan 2009 GEORGE TOWN: A 29-year-old man who goes by the name “Datuk Kabi” claimed trial in a magistrate’s court in Balik Pulau to cheating a car salesman of RM75,000 ...

Terjun Gaung Puaka

By K. KASTURI DEWI

BALIK PULAU: Two brothers narrowly escaped death when a Honda VTEC they were travelling in ran off the main road and plunged down a steep slope in Paya Terubong.

The brothers, both in their 20s, were believed to be on their way back to their house in here when they apparently lost control of the vehicle along Jalan Paya Terubong in the 3.30am incident Sunday.

A witness said the car whirled a few times before hitting an electric pole and plunged down the slope nearly 30 metres.

The witness also said the electric pole which was hit by the car fell onto the road, causing about six motorcycles to stumble.

However, no motorcyclists were injured.

Passers-by helped the driver who had fractured his arm and his brother who had sustained minor injuries out of the vehicle.

They were sent to the Penang Hospital in an ambulance.

SOURCE: The Star - Brothers survive after car plunges down slope