A hive for kelulut, Malaysia’s wild honey bee.  They are in the genus Trigona, where the bees are small and stingless. Not quite as efficient an operation as the box hives of Apis honeybees,
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By W.E.B. Dubois An old book, over a hundred years old already. Some of the essays have passed from contemporary relevance into historical record, but it is history rarely discussed,
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By John W Kiser An enjoyable and easy introduction to an amazing life. The book is strongest in the first third, showing his upbringing and describing Algerian society in that
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1. Another pop song in the dialect of Negeri Sembilan 2. Originally published as “What’s left to say”, I couldn’t live with it after FB fren AA suggested a far
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A banana leaf wrapped and held with lidis could hold just about anything. In this case, it holds tapioca root, ubi kayu, that has … crossed over. Normally a dense, bland, starchy tuber considered poverty food or at best home cooking, it is transformed into a pillowy soft sweetness soaking in a fiery liqueur
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The Kuala Lumpur Bird Park was so big and so fun we had to go back again.  This year we were less two aunties, but we picked up seven cousins, making
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by Raja Ali Haji (1808-1873)
English translation © Bin Gregory Productions
This is the gurindam of the sixth issue:
Seek you a companion
Who can be for you a medicine …
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“Take the parang beneath the stairs
Use the whetstone on an edge grown dull.
That faith be kept safe in prayer
Prostrate daily five times in full.”
Gardening in the tropics is a constant battle against the jungle. Being properly armed means carrying a machete. From Brazil to the Congo to the island of Borneo, farmers wield some form of long, sturdy knife for slashing and hacking back the relentless encroaching green. The Malaysian machete is the parang.
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