STORY 1124 — BLOGGING

From 2004 until early 2008, I found myself stranded deep in the interior of Sungai Kinabatangan.

Then, in 2008, I was once again sent into the interior—this time to Long Lama, along the Baram River, near Loagan Bunut National Park.

Life in the Kinabatangan was truly a life in the middle of nowhere. At that time, I depended on a dial-up internet connection with a maximum speed of only 56 kbps. Opening a single website could take several minutes. As for watching a video online—forget about it!

Looking back, those four years could genuinely be described as living deep in the wilderness.

When I started working at a new place in 2008, smartphones were becoming increasingly common, and for the first time I had access to a much better internet connection.

By the following year, my eldest child had reached the age of five and was ready to begin early education at kindergarten. I therefore made the decision to rent a house in Miri. My wife and children would stay in the city while I continued to commute to the plantation on working days.

That was also when I bought my first car—not for myself, but for my wife to use in the city.

From 2004 to 2009, I did not own a personal vehicle. Alhamdulillah, however, the company provided transportation as part of the facilities for my position as a mill manager.

While searching for a rental house, I was fortunate to meet a fellow traveller who had been living in Miri for many years, a teacher named Cikgu Hasan. He had lived in Miri for almost twenty years before retiring.

He was an exceptionally friendly person and had helped many people from Peninsular Malaysia who came to Sarawak, whether to work as teachers or in other government positions. He was also active in bringing together fellow expatriates from Peninsular Malaysia for monthly gatherings, meals, and Yaasin recitations.

He helped me find a rental house, and eventually, my family and I rented a terrace house directly opposite his home.

After securing the house, we registered our eldest child at PASTI Miri. We also subscribed to an internet connection—my first proper high-speed internet service since becoming a plantation worker.

It was a completely different world from the old 56 kbps dial-up connection.

Soon after that, I created my first Facebook account and started my blog, **Kembara Insan**.

One of the main reasons I started the blog was to share stories about the palm oil industry.

At that time, finding information about the palm oil industry was extremely difficult. Very few Malaysians knew about the real stories behind the industry—the challenges, the struggles, the sacrifices, and the everyday lives of people working in plantations and palm oil mills.

That was something I found disappointing.

The palm oil industry has always been an important contributor to Malaysia's economy. Yet the stories of the people working behind the industry were rarely told.

At that time, many political bloggers were also beginning to make the new media landscape in Malaysia much more vibrant. I thought that perhaps there should also be a space where stories about the palm oil industry, plantation life, engineering, and the experiences of people working far away from the cities could be shared.

The blog eventually became more than just a place to tell stories.

When I was preparing to sit for the Steam Engineer examination and later pursuing my Master's studies, I also used the blog as a personal study tool.

I would read my notes, identify the important points, and record them in the blog. Once they were published, I could access those notes through my smartphone wherever I was—even while working deep inside the plantation.

What started as my personal revision notes eventually became useful to many other candidates preparing for the same examinations.

And the best part was that they could access the notes freely and easily.

In the past, I had to search for notes from senior engineers or colleagues whenever I wanted to prepare for an examination. Through the blog, those notes became available to anyone who needed them. They simply had to visit Kembara Insan.

Over the years, the blog changed from one theme to another, depending on my interests, circumstances, and experiences.

Sometimes it became a technical blog.

Sometimes it became a place to share stories about the palm oil industry.

And sometimes, without me even realising it, it became a personal journal of a man who was constantly moving from one place to another.

Perhaps that is what life really is.

We are all travellers.

We are all khalifah who are temporarily entrusted to live on this earth. We may stay in one place for a while, but eventually we will move on.

Even if we never leave the place where we live today, one day we will all make the final journey—to the hereafter.

Therefore, we should never become too comfortable with where we are today.

For many years, I had also carried a dream of becoming a writer.

Writing on the blog became my training ground.

Every story I wrote was another small exercise in learning how to express my thoughts, record my experiences, and tell stories.

Over time, I accumulated hundreds of posts.

Some of them became references for me, especially posts containing photographs that carried special memories and meaning. Others contained words of wisdom, encouragement, and motivation that I kept for future reference.

There were times when I felt lost, tired, or uncertain about the direction of my life.

When that happened, I would return to some of my old blog posts and read them again.

Sometimes, the words I had written years earlier became the words that encouraged me to keep moving forward.

That is something I have been doing for the past seventeen years.

The blog was never intended to become something extraordinary.

It simply started with a desire to write.

But seventeen years later, I realised that those thousands of words were actually pieces of my life.

They recorded places I had visited, people I had met, lessons I had learned, challenges I had faced, and memories that might otherwise have disappeared with time.

Over the past few months, I began going through the old posts and collecting selected stories to be compiled into a book.

What I once wrote casually on a blog is now slowly finding its way onto printed pages.

Insya-Allah, my first book will be published next month.

Please pray for its success.

Perhaps this is where the journey of Kembara Insan enters another chapter—not the end of the journey, but simply another stop along the road.

And perhaps, after all these years, I have finally understood that sometimes we write not because we want people to remember us, but because we do not want to forget the journey that made us who we are.

That is my story today.