6 Things You Must Have in Sabah

1) Emergency lighting
You know the quality of our electricity power supply. You should have candles and torch light ready at home, in an obvious spot anytime. I noticed some families even use a car battery to power up fluorescent and fan. But the end result is still the same, what can you do when there is no electricity? It will be so warm that you don’t have mood to do anything. Actually I am quite interested in knowing what others do during blackout. Please share your tips…

2) Power Generator
Running a manufacturing factory, meat storage, bakery shop, fish farm and closed-system chicken farm is considered as very HIGH RISK businesses in Sabah. You can lose thou$ands overnight. And guess what? SESB will not pay you a cent as a compensation. They will advise you to sue the monkeys and tree branches. If you insist, you should have budgeted for a power generator.

We never understand those in Peninsular Malaysia makes big HuHa about a 2-hour power down. WHAT is the BIG deal? Just look at part of our power outage records in the past two months:
Jul 12: Sandakan, power down for continuous 60 hours
Jul 13: Lahad Datu, power down for continuous 5 hours
Jul 14: Papar, power down for continuous 8 hours
Aug 20: Tawau, power down for continuous 3 hours
Aug 22: Kota Kinabalu, power down for continuous 5.5 hours
Aug 27: Kudat, power down for continuous 12 hours

And not to mention those hundreds of small small cases. Two hours? Sub Sub Water lah. SESB will classify it as a small case (minor disruption). Also not good enough to become a news headline (otherwise all the column will be full). I am looking for diesel-run aircon, TV and refrigerators but cannot find any on the market. Anyone got any info on Home use Generator? Any solution?

3) Water Filter
You cannot live more than the age of 40 if you drink unfiltered water in Sabah. It is more like a mud water. The water is also “poisonous” due to Chlorine. The fishes will die if you put them in the tap water. When you syok syok taking hot shower, the Chlorine will follow the steam gets into your body. Research shows that chlorinated tap water correlated with higher risk of miscarriage, cancer… Just install a water filter and see the filter turns black in a week. Clean water is so precious in Sabah. The mineral water is more expensive than the petrol (how come we sound like a desert region). I don’t understand why they sell so well coz our mud water got more minerals.

4) Water Tank
Many houses here got water tank to store water. You will really appreciate it when the water pressure is low. Having no water is worse than having no power (e.g. cannot cook, cannot bath, cannot flush toilet). For some regions that use power water pump, they will have big headache during the power outages, coz the pump stops working, the water will stop coming too… So don’t shake hand with others when there is no water…

5) Home Alarm / Security System
I don’t know you, but most of the houses in my taman were broken in by thief before, some more than twice. 20 years ago in Sabah, we could leave our doors opened and it was safe. Today it is the opposite. From time to time, you may see strange outsiders look look outside your house. Be careful oh, that night…

If you do not have a security system, at least get a watch dog. I say “Watch Dog”, not the kind that you can hug the whole day and can put into pocket. A watch dog means a 100-pound BIG dog that has the ability to tear you apart (the best is the one that is so fierce that it also bites you, haha). Get a black one so it becomes a stealth killing machine at night.

6) UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply)
If you have a computer, get a UPS for it. Besides preventing you from losing your unsaved work, it can stablize the power supply. The power fluctuation happens very oftenly, sometimes you don’t even notice it. The power trip can do serious damage to your “sensitive” electronic equipments such as refrigerator, air-con, computer… I have replaced the damaged computer hard disk twice because of the power trip.

Anymore? Please feel free to add…