You can get used to anything

The hazy weather Kuching had the last few days made me think of an old song from my childhood. It’s by Fred Small, and it goes like this: YOU CAN GET USED Fred Small, 1976 Found on Home-Style Stone Soup: The Streetwax Recording Collective When I was a kid takin’ biology, I learned about man’s […]

Spelling Champions of Sarawak

The biggest annual national spelling tournament in Malaysia is Spell-It-Right. Starting early in the year, several of my daughters had participated in rounds starting within the school itself and moving to wider competitions from there.  Inattentive father that I am, I didn’t realize this was the big day, the State Finals, when I dropped Kak Yang […]

Mengapa rebung adiknya buluh

Bamboo thrusts dramatically out of the soil, clean, symmetrical, very sharp. The shoots grow fast, shooting over my head within a matter of days. Only once they have reached their final height, long slender swaying canes 25 feet tall, will they leaf out and send stiff woody side branches out from the nodes. They can grow so fast because all […]

The Years of Rice and Salt

An alternative history where all the Europeans die in the Black Death and the great civilizations of the world are Islam and China. Such an exciting premise. We follow three kindred souls through group reincarnations era after era. The way their essential inclinations and human potentials are encouraged or limited by the circumstances fate delivers […]