Check out the latest installment in the continuing adventures of Anak Alam! Now, if Anak Alam is not the first Malaysian to visit Macedonia, Albania, and Bulgaria, he must be among very select company. He describes his travels in beautiful detail, as he stops at mosques, tombs and tekkes along the way. It is interspersed […]
Tag Archives: malaysia
Catching up
I’ve been neglecting my website of late. Two entries in 2 months? I won’t be winning any blogging awards that way. Well, in fact I did manage to split the win for Macvaysia‘s Best Malaysian Weblog by a Mat Salleh Award. (Mat Salleh?) That could only be because it wouldn’t be fair for the more […]
Naming conventions pt. 3
One last thing about names here is the “bin”. Bin is Arabic for “son of”. Binti is “daughter of”. Although it does not appear on the birth cert itself, it is inserted between the first and last names of muslims, or more accurately, between the child’s name and the father’s name. (So in case you […]
Happy New Year x3
It’s been months since I last wrote, but it seems like years. Maybe that’s because we’ve entered 2004 AD, the Chinese Year of the Monkey, and, today, the year 1425 of the islamic calendar, all within two months. The first of Muharram is a public holiday in many states in Malaysia, including Sarawak, so I’m […]
Petai
Some pictures of petai, a green bean used in Malay home cooking. It grows in long pods on a very large tree of the Legume family, Parkia speciosa. The beans are very pungent. I’ve most often seen it cooked in sambal tumis ikan bilis, a fried chili paste with dried anchovies. It is also eaten […]
Eid amidst the coconuts
The kids had a great time for Eid. We all flew back to West Malaysia to my wife’s village, just got back last night.. It was the first time my wife had been there for Eid in 8 years, and my first time ever. The kids got along great with all their cousins and second […]
Biawak!
Yesterday, the fourth day in my new home, I opened my front door and found an enormous monitor lizard, or biawak. I had my camera in hand but by the time I exclaimed and pulled it out of the pouch, the creature had sped off around the house. Its long nails clacked and clattered on […]
Ramadan Mubarak
Sunday night was the first night of Tarawih prayers here in Malaysia. By the grace of God, I was able to move into our new house Sunday afternoon, in time to walk to the surau, small mosque, in our new neighborhood for prayers. Now I’ve successfully survived a day of fasting in the tropics. The […]