Thoughts at 2am

I haven't been blogging here for a long time so thought I should do my duty now and hopefully, anything that comes on is at least half-coherent.
It's Week 5 at Stanford, and like I've bemoaned to every one of my friends unfortunate enough to meet me online, I've never studied this hard in my whole life before.
The homeworks just keep a-comin' and 24 hours in a day never seemd so short before. It's 2am right now and I haven't gone to sleep, but I should. Goodness knows I don't get enough of it from Monday to Thursday.
Am staying up late because have been doing an abstract for a term paper for one of the courses I'm taking called Water Resources Management. Have chosen as my topic: the Bakun Hydroelectric Project. And you guys all know what a sensitive subject that is. The problem is, it's really hard to get any data on anything related to Malaysia on the Net and Malaysian scientists don't really publish papers (bad, bad habit people). So I will have to rely on foreign sources of information and on websites that are clearly anti-Bakun...o how to get an objective view on the whole issue??
But seriously, my own personal opinion is that it's just a giant white elephant. Have come across statements from our government ministers saying that Bakun is "environmentally friendly". Hello?? Do they even know what a dam is?? No dam is "environmentally friendly"! Nothing is "environmentally friendly" when you have to raze huge tracts of land and essentially drown it to build the darn thing!
But all that protesting against the project is futile because it's almost complete (should be done by the end of next year or so). The thing I'm hoping to focus on is the impact on the local people, some 10000, that have been relocated to Belaga in 1998 and in some respects, have yet to come to terms with their new homes and adapt. How could they, when you take away the land they've been living on for centuries and essentially tell them to find a new way of living? For all the government's statements about how the project is bringing development to the people, nobody asked if the people were unhappy with how things were and if they even wanted to be "developed" in the first place? I'm sure they might have said "no, thanks" if they knew that they were going to have to leave their fertile land for a less productive one in Belaga, or that they could no longer fish or hunt as freely as their ancestors did, or that they would be compensated for the land they lost but would have to use part of that compensation money to buy houses that the government built for them in Belaga (Huh??). Some of them aren't even compensated due to legaities and such: people in the interion aren't too particular about keeping land records and such. Did you know that one of the saddest things about it is that the graves that they left behind. If they want to relocate the graves, they would be paid RM1,000 and if they leave them behind, they get paid RM2,000 per grave. I have no words.
So.
As good Sarawakians, we just stood aside and let things happen because that's how we Sarawakian do things: we don't like to cause trouble. And keep in mind that the dam was being built in the first place to supply electricity to Peninsular Malaysia.. Not Sarawak, or even Sabah, but Peninsular Malaysia. It boggles the mind. It wouldn't even directly benefit us, the government had to come up with plans to develop side industries like cottage industries or ecotourism so that we wouldn't be totally left out. It brings to mind the image of a dog eating scraps thrown from the master's table. Sigh.
OK, going to stop now before I get ISA-ed. Blogs are dangerous. Didn't Sarah just do a rant against the Establishment a few months back?
It's 2.15am, time to go to sleep. Have to be up at 8am to go to Jasper Ridge (Stanford's "Rimba Ilmu", UM alumni would know what I mean).
Ta ta!