Thanks to the largesse of the Malaysian government, I was able to bring my family for a one-month vacation at the end of last year. We brought the whole family, and our maid for good measure, and the nine of us went gallavanting from my brother-in-law’s in Tanjong Malim all the way to the Langkawi Archipelago, with stops all along the way. Believe me, when you travel with six small bladders, you stop All. Along. the Way.
Actually two of my brothers-in-law live in TM now, and …

Mawlid season has come and gone once again and I’ve only now had the chance to put a little something together.
This time, I’ve got some fresh video clips, and new this year, an audio recording of our Kuching mawlid recital.

Hey, child, where are you going? There’s a wedding reception on! Don’t miss it, it’s at Hasan Abang’s place, 400B. You can’t miss it. Down the lane, make a right, and keep going….

The ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional, lost four more states to the opposition, for a total of five, and fell to below two-thirds in the national parliament for the first time in the country’s fifty years of existence. As an outsider, I don’t have a stake in the outcome either way. I can only applaud the country for having a political environment that sustains such lively contests, with over a dozen distinct parties to represent their interests: UMNO, MCA, MIC, PBB, SUPP, PPP, PKR, PAS, DAP and numerous others. …

The earliest plants I have any memory of are my neighbor’s mulberry tree, and the frangipani in our front courtyard. The courtyard was of cement or maybe stone except for where the tree grew, against the high wall. What I remember most clearly is how the flowers looked after they had fallen from the tree and littered the courtyard floor. Being closer to the ground back then – I was only four or five – I would pick them up and examine them. The frangipani is a …

Sarawak and Sabah share a long land border with Indonesia that runs mostly through remote areas of rugged mountains and deep forests. From Kuching though, there are several easy border crossings within an hour or two’s drive. I recently had cause to head down to one of them, to the small village of Sirikin just on the Malaysian side of the border, about an hour from here. There, Indonesian traders take advantage of the easy crossing and the proximity to Kuching to set up a small but …

Every year, all over the world, muslims in the spiritual lineage of the great saint Imam Abdullah al-Haddad gather together to celebrate his life and remember his great wisdom. He is most fondly remembered in the parts of the world that have benefited from the dawah of the scholars and saints of Hadhramaut: Yemen, the Swahili Coast, the muslim parts of the Indian coast and the Malay Archipelago, the Nusantara. In the Nusantara, as elsewhere, the hadhrami da’is did not only preach, but stayed, intermarried and naturalized. …

Awang Goneng’s book is finally out, and feted at the Royal Asiatic Society no less! The warm and colorful recollections of Growing Up in Trengganu started off online at Kecek-kecek, but were far too good to stay there forever. You may now pick up your copy in Malaysia from MPH Online, or from Monsoon Books if you’re outside the country.

Two more chicks have met their doom since last I wrote. Both were mauled by biawak attacks that I fended off too late. By the time I would race to the scene, shovel flailing, I could only succeed in denying the perp a meal, but could not save the lives of the victims. The first time, a chick was dismasted cleanly at the knee-joint. Though the bleeding stopped quickly, a legless chicken’s prospects are bleak: despite my ministrations, it was dead within three days. The …

The most riveting programming on Malaysian TV is the advertisements. Not the advertisements exactly, but the public service announcements put out around holiday times by the major national companies like Perodua, Telekom, and Petronas. Petronas has really outdone itself this year with a wonderfully nuanced and introspective look on nationhood here at the eve of Malaysia’s 50th anniversary of its independence. The acting, the direction, the storyline are all so so good. Non-malaysians, it is subtitled so have a look.

Ali Eteraz mused recently that the key to making Islam compatible with Mosque/State separation in Muslim countries is to declare Islam as the official religion, while retaining a lawmaking process that is not subject to theological review.
Great idea! That’s precisely the arrangement that exists in Malaysia. The government is predicated on a secular platform – there is no formal institutional method for vetting a law to ensure it’s compliance with Islam – but establishes Islam as the religion of the country, and …

My wife woke with a start just after 5, a few minutes before subuh prayer. The glow of her cell phone cum time piece was still on her face when she heard a loud sickening snap, crunch and pop coming from the backyard. Shortly, the chickens started squawking at DefCon 3 levels. That wasn’t enough to wake me up, but after some prodding and poking I mustered and stumbled out the door to investigate. In the early twilight, without a flashlight, I made my way to …