Malaysia has a very large Chinese population, about 1/3 of the country, and the New Year (year of the Ram, apparently) is a big holiday. The town is lit up with those pretty red lanterns. Downtown, the main drag is strung with lights and lanterns from the spreading canopy trees in the boulevard to the […]
Author Archives: bingregory
rain vs. RAIN
It’s Tuesday the 21st now, and I was just getting ready to upload a little note I wrote two days ago about how pleasant the daily rains have been and how good the drainage system is here. As I began to get online, the sky broke open and dropped great torrents of rain, completely flooding […]
Salams from Sarawak
Hello everyone. Life is still very hectic here in Kuching. I’m riding around town in a rented Proton Wira trying to set our household in order. No phone, no internet connection yet, so I’ve had to steal an hour here and there just to check email at cyber cafes ($.50 US/hour!). But I am alive […]
Embrace Our Lifestyle
Introducing: Three Roods Farm! Those of you in greater Southeast Michigan now have a single source for a subscription garden, raw unpasteurized wildflower honey, organic free-range chicken eggs, chickens, ducks and lamb. O Muslims! Accommodations can be made for halal slaughter on-site for aqiqa or qurban. The subscription garden is based on the concept of […]
Hijrah
I keep promising to go away, and yet here I still am, blogging as before. How can I miss you if you won’t go away, you may be saying to yourself. Well, this time I mean it. I’m waiting for the shipping company to arrive as I type this who will pick up our 27 […]
Erewhon, Utopia, Khilafa
Sheauga, that news carnivore, points to a great article by Muqtedar Khan in Salon.com. Sheauga has some good comments accompanying it that are worth reading, but I can’t figure out how to link directly to his posts! In any case, he picks out the key points which I’ve reproduced here: It is time the leaders […]
Different Ethnic Enclave, Same Creeping Wahhabism
Cinderella Bloggerfeller has just translated from the French [a scholar lives!] a newspaper article about the muslim Chams of Cambodia. What a fascinating group of people; I never knew they existed. The bad news is wahhabis are already there, apparently, up to their same tricks. Read all about it here. Cindy hit two interests of […]
Libraries Are Changing
I won’t embarass myself by saying how long it’s been since I went to a municipal library, but I’m in one today. My, how they’ve changed. Here I am updating my blog and catching up on correspondence on a blazing fast internet connection and a sleek flat-panel monitor in the Ford Centennial Library. Thank you, […]