Last month we had a special visitor all the way from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sister Nzingha with her mother and four children on their summer holiday. Part of her visit to Malaysia was two weeks in Sarawak, during which we were able to meet with her on a few occassions. Nzingha gave a […]
Category Archives: Journal
KakAndak
My wife gave birth to a baby girl on Saturday, 26 June at 11.25pm. She and the baby are both well and have already returned home after one night in the hospital. It was a long and difficult labor but the baby was born naturally, weighing 4.0kg (8.8lbs), our biggest yet. We have named her […]
Books Lost and Found
If I have one piece of advice for my sister who is in college right now, it is “Don’t Sell Your Books!” I regret selling off my books. I regret that in a general way; I wish I still had every book I once had, if only to have a library that resembles the libraries […]
Arabic Class
After a 12-year hiatus, I’m finally taking formal Arabic lessons again. It meets once a week at night in the “basement” of the ustaz’s house who gave the talk at our surau last week. Not a basement really but a room built on the ground floor, underneath his house on stilts. The last classes I […]
MLM Madness
This afternoon, after returning from a day at the beach, my neighbor’s son comes to the house to say his father invites me to his house. This happens all the time – a lovely part of neighborhood life here is the various kenduris: get-togethers for weddings, graduations, funeral rememberances (tahlil) or often much smaller events. […]
Abang Long’s first grade test
Now that <abbr title=”Firstborn son”>Long</abbr> had graduated from kindergarten, the next step for us was to find a grade school for him. We decided the best option would be the Islamic public grade school, often called the madrassah around here. Lest we hastily jump to images of rows of boys rocking back and forth over […]
Abang Long’s graduation
Abang Long has matriculated. In November, having successfully completed the necessary requirements of kindergarten, Long was graduated from Taski Abim, Seri Wangi branch. And, as befits such an accomplishment, a ceremony was held for him and his classmates at the Dewan Pustaka dan Bahasa. Parents are of course suckers for seeing their kids in this […]
Catching up
I’ve been neglecting my website of late. Two entries in 2 months? I won’t be winning any blogging awards that way. Well, in fact I did manage to split the win for Macvaysia‘s Best Malaysian Weblog by a Mat Salleh Award. (Mat Salleh?) That could only be because it wouldn’t be fair for the more […]