Historic milestone for geologists in Malaysia

It has been confirmed!

16/7/08, Wednesday at 11.43am.

That the much and long awaited bill has been passed in the Parliament... Geologist Bill 2008. Indeed this is a significant event for fellow geologists in the country, particularly those who are involved in jobs 'on-land', e.g. engineering geologist, site geologist etc.

Without the bill, geologists play second fiddle to engineers in the country, particularly those in the engineering field. Eh... who knows the ground better ar... engineer or geologist? Of course geologist la! Duh! How can someone (non-geologist) sign or certify a report that is prepared by geologist? And why geological input are put aside as far as anything on the ground is concerned? Imagine this: Moderately to highly weathered argillite ROCK (undergoing physical and chemical weathering, degrade and decompose over time), but when drilled into and sampled, it is described as sandy SILT (can't say clayey SILT according to BS 5930 konon). Hoho... that's a huge mistake... 'rock mass' now being classified as 'hard soil' (N=50). Another example: Drilled 3m into rock and borehole terminated, because one would think the rock is actually 'bedrock' ('continuous' laterally), but in actual fact, the rock is actually a huge boulder sitting on residual soil and the actual bedrock is 10m deeper. But because geological input is 'missing', piling was executed and terminated at the boulder level, but strangely, pile lengths are too short at some points.... why? Wrong interpreted 'bedrock' depth lar! So, the project cost will balloon up and based on the current price of steel bars, the profit margin of the project may be lost even before its completion!

Some people never learned. Even tragedies like landslides that caused the lost of lives and properties can't seem to change the mindset of policy makers or some engineers that some geological input would have stopped these tragedies from happening. A good example I can think of right now is the rockfall at Bukit Lanjan. Although I don't recall someone being killed in the rockfall event, I did remember the hardships (super traffic jams) that the road (or rather highway) closure that had caused.... affecting thousand of motorists on daily basis for more than half a year. A simple rock slope stability after the blasting of the rock slopes could have stopped this rockfall from occurring. A daylighting joint that provides the sliding plane for the blocky rocks could have identified and mitigating measures such as removing the 'loose' blocks of rocks could have been carried out.... and surely the rockfall incident could have been avoided. But I wonder whose money was spent on cleaning up on the mess there? I hope it is not the tax payers' monies. An act of God konon... very irresponsible statement by the minister when asked about the likely cause(s) of the rockfall.

Sinkholes. Settlement. Subsidence. Is your area affected by these? If the answer is yes, your place could have been:
i) a mining area in the past (mining going below ground surface)
ii) a soft ground being backfilled and insufficiently compacted or lack of foundation works
iii) an area that is underlain by karstic limestone (meaning some cavities or voids within the limestone)

Frankly speaking, I'm not a super expert. But if you see significant signs that like any of the above, best is to contact the geological survey department to find out the 'history' of the land. So before you buy a land, why not ask the advice of geologist first before committing yourself to sign the sales and purchase agreement? He/She could have save you lots of money repairing the possible defects on your property... but how to monetize the run-around and time lost in the getting the repair being carried out or identifying the real problem? And peace of mind? That's priceless....

So why not learn more about the profession and let us contribute something to the society in return? But please, we are just humans and we can't see 'through' the ground or hills okay... if we can do that, we would have been super rich, being able to locate primary tin, gold or economical ores/deposits in the subsurface!!!

And being a young chap like me that holds two professional affiliations at one time is not very common eh.... so must salute me when you see me... hehehehe.... just joking here ok.

Anyway... boss, if you are reading this, I need a pay rise. I'm not greedy lar... 50% increase pun jadi lar ... this is to keep myself from being caught up in the high cost of living due the ballooning inflation rate that is predicted to go over 8% this year...


Remediated cut slope (with retaining wall) somewhere along the 'new' east-west highway... between Karak and Kuantan. Judging by the shape of the failure, it looks like a circular landslip. But who cares? Cut the slope and repair later wat... toll payers' are paying for the repair, the contractor and engineers will be laughing all the way to the bank...