08 April 2010

Pictures in the Papers

Here's a picture from page 3 of the 6 April edition of Media Permata, the national Malay language daily in Brunei. The headline says 'Painting exhibition gets encouraging support', and the article is about an art exhibition arganised by the Alliance Francais.The woman in a pink dress in the middle of the picture is my wife.

In fact, it is not the first time pictures of us have appeared in the Brunei newspapers. Here is a picture from page 3 of the Media Permata of 2 December last year. The headline says 'Lucky customers receive gifts', and the article is about customers winning gifts in a lucky draw held by HSBC.The old-looking chap in a white shirt is me.

Given that we don't attend a lot of official functions or go to many parties organised by the embassies and things like that, it seems extraordinary that we find our photos in the newspapers so often. But then there are only about 400 thousand people in Brunei, and it must be tough for journalists to find major news articles to fill the newspaper every day. So the fact that they tend to focus on what might seem like quite minor issues is perhaps not so surprising after all.

I guess we should just be grateful that there aren't more murders and robberies here for the papers to report!