Nice, nice, very nice…

When I flew over to the peninsula at the beginning of the month, I had the opportunity to use the brand new Sibu airport…

It had its soft opening on the 31st of July and is expected to be fully completed by September, next month.

It is really huge and spacious, unlike the old one, and fully air-conditioned so one would not have to suffer in the heat any longer when going somewhere or sending someone off…

or while waiting for someone to arrive…

I saw a lot of people on Facebook expressing their delight that finally, this little town has a very nice airport but as expected, there were all those very negatively-inclined people who would criticise everything under the sun, grumbling and complaining about everything with a whole lot of finger-pointing and accusations left, right and centre. I suppose for people like those, nothing that you do would be good enough and they would always have something to say. Frankly, I really wonder how these people’s minds function and why they are that way.

When you are looking for flaws in every little thing, I am sure you will  always find some and the thing is you are the one who will end up unhappy. Why sweat the small stuff? Be thankful, appreciate every little thing, every little blessing that comes our way…and I’m sure our lives would be a whole lot less miserable. For instance, there was a comment that there was only one lift…

…but then again, who would want to use the lift when there’s the escalator right beside it? Duh!!! If I am not mistaken, that lift is meant for those passengers with special needs like those on wheelchairs.

Then I saw one comment saying that it isn’t an international airport and there aren’t any flights to Singapore or abroad. I wonder how big they think (if they have the capacity to do so, that is) the population of Sibu is…and how many passengers there would be on those flights. Business is business and if there is money involved, lots of it especially, I am sure the people concerned would fight tooth and claw to come here and grab your dough! What do you expect? Charity? Dream on, my friend, dream on!

And don’t talk about tourism in Sibu, don’t talk about there being nobody coming here – ask yourselves what the town has to offer, what you have done to make things here nice and attractive enough so that there would be people who would want to come. Everytime you open your mouth, it would only be to criticise and shoot yourselves in the foot and people would actually believe this town is a whole lot of crap. Who, in their right minds, would be foolish enough to make a trip here then?

A town or a place is like an individual – it is not what is outside, the physical but what or how you feel about yourself inside and how you are able to project that to others. Just as in the case of the airport, if you are negatively-inclined and going all out to find faults, those would be exactly what you will find.

Anyway, to get back to the new airport, this is a section of the departure lounge and an exit to the boarding gates…

The air bridge is not ready for use yet, I think but it did not matter as now, there is an escalator for passengers to use to get to the ground floor and proceed to the aircraft from there. I also noticed that there is a lift as well by the side of this particular escalator. So who says that there is just one lift at the new airport? Tsk! Tsk!

All in all, I would say that the new airport is very nice, maybe a bit too big for a small town like Sibu but time passes and maybe someday, we would need such a big one to cope with the traffic, who knows? For one thing, I do hope that the authorities will pay special attention to the maintenance – checking and making sure that everything is in tip-top shape…and taking pains to see that the toilets are always dry and clean. Knowing what the people here are like, despite all the efforts made by the parties concerned, I am afraid that more often than not, the conditions of the toilets would not be quite satisfactory at any time of day. It certainly would be a step in the right direction if everyone can work on changing their toilet habits first (and at the same time, their littering as well) but I really do not see that happening at all…ever. As they say, old habits die hard.