Official Organ of an American Muslim in Malaysia
The small walfdorf-esque grade school I went to was heavily into drama. We used to do several plays a year with the whole class. Mostly they were mythological themes: the Norse saga, the Krishna story, the Gilgamesh epic. I loved it. When our school principal’s daughter opened up an acting school in Royal Oak, I and a bunch of my schoolmates signed up. That led to a few auditions and a couple of very minor local jobs, mostly commercials, a couple of which even paid …
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It is often my job to gather ingredients for the meal from our garden. Our ginger has lately done well enough to allow some occasional harvesting. Considering we use it in virtually every meal I doubt we’ll ever be self-sufficient but it’s nice to eat from your own land when you can.
Living in Malaysia and not making bonsai is like living in Minnesota and not snowmobiling. You’re just not taking advantage of what is on offer. With a 12-month growing season, plenty of sunlight and rainfall throughout the year, the slow, slow pleasures of bonsai come just a little bit quicker.
It took me years to come around. I thought bonsai was for people who can’t appreciate the natural beauty of the plants growing all around them, that it was cruelty to trees, that it was …
The mighty coconut palm provides an afternoon’s entertainment. The fronds (Malay: pelapah) dip low enough that the kids can grab them and sling themselves into the air. After an hour or so of swinging the frond is swung out and hangs limply from the trunk. It’ll take a few weeks until the next one has grown to the right size and position for more swinging.
It’s a fact. According to the FAO, Americans waste as much food at the table as South/SE Asians lose in their entire supply chain from farm to table! Put another way, individual Americans throw away 10-15 times more food than South/SE Asians. And that wastage is one driver for the global rise in food prices. Reading articles like The New Geopolitics of Food, you find a lot of concern over for instance the masses of Chinese who want to give their children a taste of milk, …
…Millionaire Magazine? No. No, I don’t. Not on its pages either. So imagine my surprise when I found a family photograph of mine had been stolen and used to promote a lame holiday-photo competition of a glossy, nationally-distributed for-profit magazine. A letter to the editor demanding proper attribution produced a bland apology and a request to overlook the mistake since the magazine existed only as an act of charity to “help the bumiputra”! And only Malaysians know how many mistakes they are expected to …
Winds are changing, rain falls harder, durians are appearing at the roadside, and the Malay Spiral Ginger is flowering again.
Tis a gift to be simple
Tis a gift to be free
Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be
And when we have come down
To the place just right
We will be in the valley
Of love and Delight
When the true
Simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend
We shan’t be ashamed
To turn, to turn
It will be our delight
Till by turning and turning
We come round right
An old Shaker hymn that my mother liked to sing when I was young. I sing it to my kids now. The Shakers were very Sufi I …
What a pleasure it is to come across a book or a song or a movie that feels like it was made expressly with you in mind. There have been a number of works lately that felt that way, well at least that I was among the intended audience. Narcissism, I’m sure, and yet what a feeling! You don’t get that from downloading the latest George Clooney vehicle, I’ll say that much. I recommend them all to you.
The Infidel: Comedy about a Pakistani-British Muslim who …
“But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are tastefully accoutered in raiment seamlessly blending East and West, that are contemporary yet timeless, daring yet refined, modest yet sophisticated, and i think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as sartorially fabulous, I get worried. I get nervous.” – Juan Williams, NPR Senior Political Commentator
No, that’s not what he said. He said our muslim garb makes him worried and nervous. A regrettable statement, …
Author and Professor Dr Jamillah Karim spent a year living in Kuala Lumpur. Read this great interview by Sister Brooke, and then visit Dr Jamillah's blog for a series of thoughtful reflections on what living in Malaysia was like for her as an African American Muslim, what insights she gained about the immigrant Muslim experience in America and more.
Granfalloon (n) : "A proud and meaningless association of human beings." A word coined by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) in his book Cat's Cradle. I was recalling the concept recently for some reason but couldn't bring the term to mind. There it is: A granfalloon. The idea is illustrated in the book by a woman from Indiana who is just thrilled to meet Hoosiers everywhere she goes, a Hoosier being a name for people from the state of Indiana, but the shared qualities she recognizes in Hoosiers exists only in her own mind. Thanks, Kurt.
The Brass Crescent Awards for 2011 are open for voting. There are just a huge number of quality blogs up for consideration. Polls close on November 7.
