s both of my regular readers are well aware, the major focus of this blog is whatever adorable thing my children happen to be up to at the moment. Nonetheless, I do try to intersperse that with other topics to keep things fresh, and so with that in mind I’d like to share with you this latest bit of news:

o it looks like I won’t be making that trip home to Michigan that I thought I would this June, due to, how you say, irresolvable differences of contractual interpretation between myself and my employer. I’m tempted to give in to sentimentality here and list out all the things I really miss about home, but where would that get me? The places you dream about are also the places your nightmares come from, and so maybe I ought to reflect on that.
This is the Southfield-Jeffries Interchange, …

Brooke of Sheer Fluency has organized a Blog Carnival on White Privilege and the Ummah.
It’s a great topic, but it occurred to me that for plenty of us white folks, myself included, the first step is figuring out what white folks are in the first place. During my discussion with Umar about white Muslims and the comments from different people that followed, a common idea that came up was that white people are a distinct race of people with distinct culture and traits, and by distinct I …

ho should come into town but HijabMan, fresh from a posh international wedding photography gig in Penang! Scarcely had he set foot in my house but my children were hopping around with balloon helmets, balloon flowers, balloon swords and balloon dogs (strictly halal). Uncle HijabMan knows how to get in good with the little ones.

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 …

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama:
“Well the correct answer, he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is ‘what if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that’s not America.”
Thank you, Gen. Powell…

Selamat Hari Raya and Eid Mubarak, everybody. It’s been a heck of a few months since I embarked on an overambitious home improvement project. The bricks began to fly in July with the demo crew, and it has been non-stop since then.

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. …