The Sarawak Tribune is reporting that the Kuching Mental Hospital in Kota Sentosa and parts of the Sarawak General Hospital are under quarantine pending verification. The SGH is within walking distance of my wife’s office. A woman from the mental hospital died of bacterial pneumnonia several days ago at SGH. Her case is being reexamined […]
Monthly Archives: April 2003
Suffering Asian People
That’s the real meaning of the World Bank’s SAPs. Have a look at The Whirled Bank, a very well done parody of my least favorite lending institution. From Sassafrass by way of this Metafilter thread. Inside the Whirled Bank site, they have a surprising speech byHerman Daly, a former WB chairman, in which he quotes […]
Bup Kudus
A religious controversy came and went here in Sarawak before I even heard about it. The Bup Kudus, the translation of the Holy Bible into the Iban language, was banned two weeks ago, and dis-banned today. The Sarawak Tribune I picked up was so information-poor, I could not discern from the article why they banned […]
Cooties
Girls have cooties. Every young boy can tell you this. Girls may claim that it is in fact boys who have cooties, but that is preposterous. I spent much of second, third and fourth grade avoiding cooties. I also had a number of hand-made cootie catchers, but for some reason, they did not catch or […]
Strange Fruit, pt 2: Mata Kuching
The next fruit I present to you is the mata kuching, literally, cat’s eye. It’s about the size of a quarter, with a thin peel that covers a juicy greyish meat that covers a hard shiny dark brown seed. The fruit is sweet with a musky, almost salty aftertaste. They are inexpensive in season. They’re […]
Malay Contributions to English, pt. 3
Recently, the Congress of the United States of America preserved the pride and culture of our great land by passing a resolution renaming French Fries “Freedom Fries”. Yes, they did. This of course was due to France’s unwillingness to support the war on Iraq. But members of the Coalition of the Unwilling are still at […]
A Kuap by Any Other Name
If Malaysia is the land of odd fruit, then Sarawak must be the capital. I have just as much fun looking at it all as I do eating it. This one is called a Kuap Terap, according to the guy who sold to me. My Malay dictionary doesn’t have it, Google doesn’t have it, SR […]
Path of the Paddle
Ikram Saeed from Canada keeps a blog called Path of the Paddle. If you’ve got the war on your mind, but you can’t take anymore news, check out his peice on war poetry. He’s pulled together a lot of good stuff, including poetic Rumsfeld declamations. He asks, Why isn’t there famous modern English language war […]