Bin Gregory Productions

Review: Getting Filthy Rich

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is Mohsin Hamid’s 3rd book. Like The Reluctant Fundamentalist, it is short, well-paced and innovative. At 200 pages, you could read it in a day. In the second chapter, Hamid promises not to waste your time like the pompous gasbags of “foreign” literature such as Salman Rushdie. OK, he doesn’t mention Rushdie by name, but I know that’s who he meant. HTGFRIRA is addressed to the second person: you are receiving directions from the self-help book you hold in your hand. The device works flawlessly, allowing Hamid to zoom way out to discuss the generic you, then narrow in to your most intimate details. At his best, he does both at the same time.

It’s an instruction manual, so it instructs you, for example, to survive childhood, move to the big city and get schooled. The self-help is for anybody, so you aren’t told which city or which school to head for, which country you’re in, or even what your name is. And it works: there is so much about the book that you can see, taste and smell anywhere in the developing world. Yet he also at the same time is clearly describing Lahore, his beloved city, and Pakistan, Land of the Pure.

The anthropological detachment coupled with laser specificity meshes fantastically, such as when you are to join a student movement. “You attend meetings, read the organization’s literature … members of your organization urge you to … recognize your comrades as your true family, and to act through the organization to fulfill your destiny.” It is obvious that you have joined an Islamic party but it never needs be said, since it, like everything in the book, is of interest only inasmuch as it moves you towards the riches you seek.

You implicitly identify with the unnamed ‘you’ – it’s what we do – but you are a flawed man who has chosen riches as his goal and so your life ends with an unsettling mixture of success and tragedy, for yourself, and for your city, general and specific, as you profit from an industry that has contributed “to a noticeable desiccation of the soil, to a transformation of moist, fertile, hybrid mud into cracked, parched, pure land.”

It wouldn’t be fair to such a short book to poach any more of its lines, so I’ll just urge you to pick it up. The author promises not to waste your time and he doesn’t disappoint you.

GoodReads page.

Landscape and Environment in Islam

The Islamic Information Center of Kuching hosts the radio show IIC Speaks every Friday mornings on RedFM 91.9 at 11.30am. I was honored to appear on the show last month to speak about “Landscape and Environment in Islam.” Thanks very much to DJ Syerifah Farah who interviewed me in the studios of RTM Kuching, as well Vivie Abdullah, communications executive for the IIC. The book Green Deen by Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is an excellent resource on environmental responsibility from an Islamic perspective and was invaluable to me in preparing for the interview.

(The Malays say masuk bakul angkat sendiri but since this blog is my bakul already I may as well angkat.)

Man Papaya

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As large as papaya, as small as keranji,
Break a branch and the fruit falls down
A face so lovely with manners so ugly
Like rain falling murky and brown
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Besar betik kecil keranji ^[1]
Patah dahan buahnya luruh
Muka cantik perangai keji
Bagai hujan airnya keruh
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Growing papaya, or [tooltip text=”in Malay” trigger=”hover”]betik[/tooltip], from seed is easy enough – sow them on loose soil straight from the fruit and they’ll come up without trouble. The tough part is figuring out if your tree is a boy or a girl.

[dropcap background=”yes”]I[/dropcap]t sounds strange, but there are a fair number of plants out there that bear different flowers on separate trees, making the trees effectively male and female. Male tree flowers only produce pollen and can’t bear fruit, while the female trees won’t bear fruit without a source of pollen somewhere in the area. Marijuana is probably the most well known plant of this kind in North America. In the tropics it is a lot more common. Rambutans are also this way, for instance. Papaya and rambutan appear together in a traditional pantun:

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Rambutans hanging red and bright
A papaya tree by the fence has grown
Good men need not be taught the right
A thorn in the jungle is sharp on its own
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Batang betik di tepi pagar
Buah rambutan^[2] merah berseri
Orang baik tak payah diajar
Duri di hutan tajam sendiri ^[3]
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[dropcap background=”yes”]I[/dropcap]f there is a way to sex papayas prior to flowering, I don’t know what it is. And so trees I spent months growing to maturity have turned out male: lots of flowers but no fruit. My mother-in-law’s not one to recite pantuns, but she does enjoy colorful language; she once cursed stylish, boastful, useless men as betik jantan, male papayas – all show and no results. I don’t curse them but they do get the axe. The trees, I mean, not the useless men.

[dropcap background=”yes”]I[/dropcap]f you are stuck with a male papaya, it’s not a total loss. The young leaves are edible if you boil them a while. They are tough and bitter like mustard or collard greens, but palatable with a dose of sambal. The fruits are just wonderful though, with a melt-in-your-mouth consistency, and very soothing on the belly after a meal. Scientists will tell you this is because they contain the enzyme papain, contemporary woo says it’s because they are an alkaline food, while your [tooltip text=”Witch doctor/Spiritual healer” trigger=”hover”]bomoh[/tooltip] or [tooltip text=”Medicine man/Traditional medicine practitioner” trigger=”hover”]dukun[/tooltip] may have explanations that touch on the realm of the unseen. Go with what works for you.

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1. Keranji previously on BGP

2. Rambutan previously on BGP

3. Pantuns sourced from Malay Civilization, English translation mine.

Gurindam 12 Fasal 5

by Raja Ali Haji (1808-1873)

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This is the gurindam of the fifth issue:

If you wish to know the people of high birth,
in manners and speech are shown their worth.

To know the people of happiness,
avoid involvement in the meaningless.

To know the man of high distinction,
look upon his deeds and actions.

If you wish to know the people of wisdom
ask and learn without feeling boredom.

If those with intellect you would know
store provisions now in this life below.

If men of character you would recognize
among the masses observe how they fraternize.

[/two_first][two_second]

Ini gurindam pasal yang kelima:

Jika hendak mengenal orang berbangsa,
lihat kepada budi dan bahasa.

Jika hendak mengenal orang yang berbahagia,
sangat memeliharakan yang sia-sia.

Jika hendak mengenal orang mulia,
lihatlah kepada kelakuan dia.

Jika hendak mengenal orang yang berilmu,
bertanya dan belajar tiadalah jemu.

Jika hendak mengenal orang yang berakal,
di dalam dunia mengambil bekal.

Jika hendak mengenal orang yang baik perangai,
lihat pada ketika bercampur dengan orang ramai.

[/two_second]

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Gurindam Dua Belas is a 19th century Malay poem written in rhyming couplets with free meter. It has 12 parts, each dealing with a different pasal, or issue. It was composed by Raja Ali Haji (1808-1873), an intellectual of the Riau-Lingga court best known for his history Tuhfat al-Nafis (the Precious Gift). I’ll be posting my translations pasal by pasal.

Gurindam of the First Issue

Gurindam of the Second Issue

Gurindam of the Third Issue

Gurindam of the Fourth Issue

Lemang Kukuih

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[dropcap background=”yes”]H[/dropcap]ari Raya Eidil Fitri without lemang is like thanksgiving without a turkey. Like so much of traditional village life, lemang is made from just four components: coconut, rice, bananas and bamboo. Sticky rice mixed with coconut milk is poured into the hollow bamboo shaft lined with banana leaf, and then roasted over an open fire of [tooltip text=”Coconut shells” trigger=”hover”]tempurung[/tooltip]. That’s fine if you live in the villages, but what is the modern Malaysian city-dweller to do? The fire pit and especially the thick smoke don’t mix well with rowhouse living.

Introducing Hajjah Maznah’s Steamed Lemang: Perfect for Your Urban Lifestyle.

Hajjah Maznah, my mother-in-law, is a self-reliant entrepreneur of the first order. Unwilling to do without fresh homemade lemang despite living in a cramped and crowded housing estate, and sensing an unmet need in the market, she commissioned an aluminum kettle to her specification, propped it up on blocks on her front patio and fired up her propane tank. This holiday season, I tagged along on the day before Raya as she made a batch of superb steamed lemang from scratch. By the end of the day, half of the batch was ready to feed her 24 grandchildren in the morning, and the other half was sold among the neighbors at a tidy profit. Click on the coconuts to launch a fully annotated slide show of the process.

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Other Stories about Holiday Rice-product:

Roasted Lemang previously
Lemang/Ketupat hybrid even more previously

Hari Raya 2014

Selamat Hari Raya Eidilfitri, Maaf Zahir dan Batin from all of us to all of you.

Me and Megan Fox

Megan Fox and I share a tragic intertwined destiny. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Meghan Fox is the star of such movies as Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Our fates became tangled together years ago. I’ve told you how the Sam Raimi-directed Nintendo commercial was the biggest gig I ever took. It wasn’t the biggest gig I ever won.

“What, me worry?”

Remember the movie Adventures in Babysitting? It was a big hit in the 1980s, launching the career of Elisabeth Shue. A high-minded affair, it involved two adolescents loose in Chicago with their babysitter, a spitting image of a Playboy centerfold. The boys know this because the 13-year-old sidekick has a copy of that month’s Playboy magazine, a major plot device. It was such a big hit that Disney decided to make a TV spin-off. As is customary, a pilot episode would be made first, and if it was well-received, the series would launch. Disney trawled the Midwest for “talent”, meaning actors, and I was called to audition for the part of Daryl, the sex-crazed sidekick.

Amazingly, I made the cut for the first audition in Detroit, and was called for a second round of auditions in Chicago. My father booked us a commuter flight out of City Airport, took a day off work, and off we flew. During the second audition, among the quality material I was asked to read were lines about approaching a girl in class because “she wears a bra, Brad, a big bra!” I was mortified to tell my father afterwards.

Contract for Adventures in Babysitting — My name in bright lights.

Brothers and sisters, I got the job. There’s the proof in black & white: entrance to the House of Mouse. If you check the fine print though – no, not even the fine print but the big print – you’ll see it was no gold-plated offer. In fact it was pretty meager. A few grand for the pilot episode, and if the pilot was successful, a 20K/year deal that would require the family to move to L.A. Dad would have to move his practice. Mom would have to chaperone me on set with my baby sister. I would have to leave school and get tutoring on set. The money wasn’t there, but the chance, the dream of a Hollywood career was.

It was a tough call. We had only a few days to decide. My agent begged us to take it, but my parents felt wiser counsel was in order. We consulted an Indian guru, a Jesuit harlequin, a Jewish pianist. None were willing to say it was a good idea. In the end, we turned it down. Having snubbed Disney and humiliated my agent, the phone never rang again.

Three and a half years later I converted to Islam. Ten years after that I moved to Malaysia.

All’s well that ends well. But what about Disney? What about the show, which, they say, must go on? Deprived of the guy they wanted, they settled for the guy they could get. The pilot crashed, the series was never made, the end. Sorry, Disney.

The guy they got, though, managed to do all right for himself. In fact he won a Young Artist Award for his portrayal of Daryl. After Adventures in Babysitting, he landed a role on Beverly Hills 90210 that he held for 10 years. Brian Austin Green has since gone on to build a respectable career as a working actor, and in 2010, he married Megan Fox. By now, it should be clear for all to see exactly what I’m driving at, so I’ll get straight to the point. If I had taken that job, if I had moved to LA, if I was the one who was now a 6’-tall blue-eyed Hollywood hunk …

… Megan Fox would be a practising muslim in Jakarta.

Duit Pisang

[dropcap background=”yes”]A [/dropcap]house needs people to live. Empty, a house slowly decays. In the humid tropics, it decays with a startling quickness. Mak moved out of my wife’s childhood home, temporarily, to start a child-care business at [tooltip text=”Simpang Empat” trigger=”hover”]Four Corners[/tooltip], the small town connecting Bagan Datoh with the rest of the world. Nothing is so permanent as that which is temporary, as my old boss Joe Figa would say. Only ten years later was Mak finally ready to admit she is never moving back to kampung and gave us the green light to gut the house.

[dropcap background=”yes”]F[/dropcap]or two days, a few kampung boys, my nephew, my wife and I pulled load after load of disintegrating plastics, moldering fabrics, crumbling furniture and rusting appliances out of the house. There wasn’t much to save. Anything of real value had been taken by Mak down to Four Corners when she moved, or bit by bit over the years since then as she needed it. A few things were of some use to my brother-in-law who lives next door:

[dropcap background=”yes”]B[/dropcap]ut in the end was a big pile of rubbish. We called a scavenger to come have a look. Amazingly, with his hook and scale, he proceeded to weigh not just the metal scraps, but all the plastic, all the glass, all the foam, all the paper and paid us cash on the spot. Ok, not very much cash. But real, honest-to-goodness private sector recycling, and in the countryside no less! By comparison, most “recycled” materials in US cities wind up being landfilled in sorted piles.

[dropcap background=”yes”]W[/dropcap]hen the recycle-man left, I was left with just a few things that were of no use to anyone but I couldn’t bear to toss out. Above, a buffalo horn. Not just any buffalo horn, but the horn of the buffalo that fed the multitudes for my [tooltip text=”Wedding reception” trigger=”hover”]kenduri kahwin[/tooltip]. The horn of this buffalo:

[dropcap background=”yes”]T[/dropcap]he buffalo came down from upstate a few days before the reception, and spent his remaining time on earth in our neighbor’s coconut field. A team of seven or eight villagers brought him to his demise in an expertly coordinated operation. Surrounding him at a distance, they passed a bull-rope back and forth to one another, over and under and around him, all gently and delicately done so that it never startled. Then, with one tug, the ropes pulled tight and the buffalo fell onto its side, completely immobilized.

Most of the buffalo went to feed the kenduri. A few choice parts, like the tongue and the tail, went to the slaughter crew. The horns were split between me and my brother-in-law who also had his wedding reception that day. Upon the return of my wife and I ten months later to deliver my first-born son, Mak offered to cook up the last of the buffalo. Who could refuse?

I was sent up onto the roof where I retrieved the buffalo hide, which Mak had put there to cure in the powerful sun the year before. It was as large and rigid as the hood of a car. I had to literally saw off strips with a carpenter’s saw. That night, I ate buffalo hide masak kuning, cooked in coconut milk and turmeric sauce. The hide itself was rubbery and tasteless, but you know, anything cooked in coconut milk and turmeric sauce ain’t half bad. After all that history between us, could I bear to just that horn away? Friends, it resides in my living room now.

[dropcap background=”yes”]I[/dropcap] knew Mak was a bit of a hoarder, and I was half-expecting to find a bit of money squirreled away in the floor boards or an old pillow. Sure enough, I stumbled across hundreds of dollars in cash! Problem is, it was duit pisang, banana money. The Japanese occupied Malaya for several years during World War II ^[1]. During that time, they set up a government and printed their own local currency the locals called duit pisang because of the banana on the 10-dollar bill. It was worthless by the end of the war, and not worth any more than that now. But I couldn’t throw it out – I had to ask my wife to duit.

[dropcap background=”yes”]B[/dropcap]ut nothing was more thoroughly obsolete and worthless than my final discovery. Money, horns, brass Hajj trinkets: these things were, if useless, at least recognizable. These objects, though, completely stumped by daughters^[2]. Even the recycle-man didn’t want them.

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1. I met an old man in Sarawak who told me proudly of serving four governments in the course of his career: The Rajah Brooke government. The Japanese Occupation government. The British Crown government. The Malaysian government. How’s that for a dedicated government servant?

2. “Wow, cool. You made a 3D model of the save icon!“