Sibu's Floating Basketball Court

Sibu is built on swamps and today many housing areas are literally on water.

One of the housing estates has a very nice basketball court which people nickname "Floating Basketball Court".

Sibu is famous for producing some of the best basket players in Sarawak. Every young boy who can shoot a basket will be recruited to play basketball. With good training many boys and girls become good basketball players.

A friend sent this to me recently :



The Chicken claw construction method was founded (invented) by Prof. Ir.Sedyatmo when he was consulted by the constructor of the Jakarta Soetta International Airport since the airport was build on swampy grounds and also the highway (toll road) to the airport has to go through swamps. He was inspired by a trick jungle people did when they have to go through swamps or mud filled grounds, that is to put wooden planks on top of the muddy ground where they can walk through.The secret is distribution of weight to all areas of the wooden plank (or in the case of construction a concrete wide plank or floor).So he device a construction method by building concrete piles not so deep on the swamps and on top of the piles he build a concrete floor either for the road or for the airport runway. The piles resemble claws of birds or in his case he name it chicken claws.... The construction method was proven to be very robust and till now there are no complain report of the runway or highway sinking down. The highway did get flooded at times when it rains heavily but it remains strong... So it was now widely used (of course the patent is still his but the idea is public) for building a strong foundation where the ground is not stable.(Donny Sirait - formerly of Sarikei and Bintangor, in Medan, Sumatra.)

I would like to remember Minar Sirait , Tulbas Sirait and Donny Sirait with this article. All three played good basketball, especially Minar who played basketball in Methodist School Sibu. May their souls rest in peace.