Four days after moving into my home in Kuching, I met my first biawak, lounging on my front porch. Over the last 12 years, they have been a constant presence, stalking kittens and slaughtering chickens
Category Archives: Land
Kuching Modern: A Windshield Survey
over the last ten years, there have been dramatic changes in the style and appearance of the new housing stock toward a more Modern look, all the more noticeable since the city is booming
Mengapa rebung adiknya buluh
Bamboo thrusts dramatically out of the soil, clean, symmetrical, very sharp. The shoots grow fast, shooting over my head within a matter of days. Only once they have reached their final height, long slender swaying canes 25 feet tall, will they leaf out and send stiff woody side branches out from the nodes. They can grow so fast because all […]
Menjelang 1 Mei
A rousing poem in Bahasa Malaysia from student of agriculture Chairil Aswad, on twitter as @schwarzenmann. First published in E-Sastera Sajak Facebook group, 30 April 2015. Translation into Inggeris mine. Views expressed are not etc etc. Celebrating May 1 [two_first] (For Lia) The city is no longer the place for me to record my poems […]
Bonsai four years on
I started messing around with bonsais four years ago. At the time, I guessed it would take me four or five years to have something decent to show. Four years later, I see that I was wildly optimistic. Still, the progress has been encouraging in places. Like children, you need to take pictures every so […]
Crocodocious
Sometimes you don’t realize what you have in your own backyard. I realized I have crocodiles. Jong’s Crocodile Farm is only a short drive out of town but in 12 years I had never been. Time for a field trip! The Crocodile Farm is a bit like a petting zoo in concept, less grand than […]
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 […]
Man Papaya
“As large as papaya, as small as keranji,
Break a branch and the fruit falls down
A face so lovely with manners so ugly
Is like rain falling murky and brown”
Growing papaya, or betik, 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…