Bin Gregory Productions

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 the structures of the full grown cane are already mostly present and developed inside the rebung. They only need to expand. Rebung is the term for the bamboo shoot, and it pops up in surprising places in Malaysia.

Sarong field — Stylized rebung in the kepala sarong.

Maybe for its power, maybe for its unique conical shape, rebung has been inspiring folk art for a very long time. The beautiful batik sarongs^[0.5] worn by Malay women have two parts, the majority pattern or badan, and a contrasting band of a different pattern or color, the kepala. A very common pattern for the kepala is of two opposing rows of cones reminiscent of a backgammon board but which are in fact stylized rebung.

Rebung has been inspiring pantuns^[1] too, like this one that is not afraid to ask the hard questions in life:

Dragging a shield while shaking in fear
Holding a telescope and flashlight too
How can Moustache be big brother to Beard
Why is Rebung’s kid sister Bamboo^[2]]?

Bawa perisai terhinggut-hinggut
Bawa teropong sambil bersuluh
Kenapa misai abangkan janggut
Mengapa rebung adiknya buluh?

Rebung is edible. You might say rebung is a type of umbut^[3] (although Malay grammarians may disagree). Umbut refers to the soft, tender growing shoots of basically any plant. In that early growing stage, the meristems of many plants are edible. Coconut is the most common. Maybe we could say it is the default umbut, but pineapple, gingery-type plants like lengkuas and tepus, even banana all have edible umbut, if you are hungry enough. Umbut of lengkuas and tepus is delicious in oxtail soup, or steamed and eaten with sambal. Banana umbut I found to be watery, fibrous and without flavor, a vegetable of desperation. Maybe I just haven’t had it cooked right yet. Pineapple umbut I have never tried, but there it is for sale in the market. Someone’s eating it.

Cutting away the outer scales of the rebung reveals all the nodes and other tiny plant parts waiting to enlarge. On the authority of my mother-in-law, after the rebung has been chopped, it should be soaked in salty water for a time. The light pickling gives it a slight yellowish cast, softens and removes some of the bitterness. Some only. Rebung is a bitter vegetable, and maybe for that reason it is often cooked in santan^[4], whose creaminess can further take the edge off. On this occasion, she made rebung cooked in santan with summer squash, dried anchovies and turmeric leaf.

Leave them be to prepare rebung
where the awful tiny hairs reside^[5]
Leave those who are boastful and proud
Disaster is only a step behind pride

Biarlah orang memasang rebung
rebung itu banyak miangnya
Biarlah orang berlagak sombong
Sombong itu banyak malangnya

Notes

0.5. Sarongs are more commonly known locally as kain batik for women and kain palikat for men. More on Malay garment technology previously.
1. Original malay pantuns courtesy of Malay Civilization. Translations to English mine.

2. Bamboo comes from the Malay word bambu, but for some reason it is no longer commonly used here, having been replaced by buluh. Malay contributions to English previously.

3. Umbut kelapa previously.

4. Santan, or coconut milk, previously.

5. The base of the bamboo nodes has tiny fiberglass-like hairs that irritate the skin, called miang. Miang buluh previously, in the context of harvesting coconuts.

The Years of Rice and Salt

An alternative history where all the Europeans die in the Black Death and the great civilizations of the world are Islam and China. Such an exciting premise. We follow three kindred souls through group reincarnations era after era. The way their essential inclinations and human potentials are encouraged or limited by the circumstances fate delivers them is my favorite part of the book and leads to some poignant moments. Details of the new Earth fire the imagination from time to time, like the terraced rice paddies along the valleys of California, or the survival of an Iroquois League state in the New World.

But most vignettes fail to engross in the unique developments or alternate directions life took. Instead there is a lot, just a whole lot of awkward dialogue that are essentially lectures to the reader, the main thrusts of which appeared to be three.

1. How little history can really be changed: Africans are still enslaved and brought to work the New World, WWI is still fought in the early 20th century with trenches and mustard gas. What is different often seems different by fiat.

2. The march of scientific progress is linear, inexorable and the true calling of mankind: the Galileo-type guy drops balls of the tower in Samarqand instead of Italy, a Tamil person discovers the theory of relativity, but there is nothing significantly different about the enterprise, including an arrival at a late 20th century benevolent positivism. (Although of course there are zeppelins.)

3. And the main obstacle religion: over a span of five hundred years, Islam does not get beyond (long, tedious, superficial) discussions about the need to Reject the Hadith and Lift the Veil, and as a consequence stagnates such that they fight WWI with camels and slave battalions while women are illiterate “cattle”, this despite the Muslim world spreading from the Congo to the British Isles to Central Asia.

The last chapter introduces some viewpoints on history that allow the book to be read a few other ways, but I found it muddled. In the end, I don’t see what this genre of alternative history accomplishes that isn’t accomplished by good history writing on the one hand (historical fiction, narrative histories, subaltern histories teach me more) or the unrestricted imaginary realms of hard sci-fi on the other. The Years of Rice and Salt didn’t really do it for me on either score.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson on GoodReads.

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[Inspired by a premise similar to the book, Nikolaj Cyon produced a GORGEOUS map of an uncolonized 19th century Africa that holds far more wonder and curiosity than the book delivered.]

Alkebu-Lan by Nikolaj Cyon. Visit his website for hi-res versions and more.

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 of struggle
slogans, banners or observations
and it is not the place
for a degree in agriculture
stuffed and mounted like a corpse
on a mahogany cabinet
in an air-conditioned office

the city is no longer my home
long have I left the air-conditioned office

in front of me today
farm-folk and fisher-people
awaiting their stories
to be scrawled upon pages and pages
to become a single poem of advocacy

this far corner of the world is my home now
a banana packing shed for an office building

I have left the city
to liberate farm folk
from the control of the greedy
who freeze their subsidies
and replace them with GST

[/two_first][two_second]

(untuk Lia)

Kota itu bukan lagi tempatnya
untuk aku merakamkan puisi perlawanan
slogan-slogan, sepanduk serta tangkapan
seperti juga bukan tempatnya
sekeping ijazah pertanian
dibingkaikan dan dipamer
atas kabinet mahogani
bilik pejabat berhawa dingin

kota itu tidak lagi menjadi rumahku
bilik pejabat sudah lama aku tinggalkan

di hadapanku hari ini
kaum tani dan nelayan
menantikan cerita mereka
dicoret pada helaian-helaian
menjadi sebuah puisi pembelaan

ceruk perdesaan ini adalah rumahku kini
pondok pisang sesikat sebagai bangunan pejabat
aku tinggalkan kota
untuk memandiri kaum tani
ketika penguasa rakus
menghentikan subsidi
diganti dengan GST

[/two_second]

Hari Raya 2015

Selamat Hari Raya Maaf Zahir Dan Batin Eid Mubarak from Sarawak. May your fasting and ours be received by the Most High in His Mercy rather than by our merits, amin. It’s a special one for us this year since my eldest is in his last year of high school. Who knows when we’ll all be able to gather again for another Raya? We were doubly fortunate to have my mother-in-law with us for the month of fasting. It appears she has enjoyed herself as well; she plans to stay till the next Eid, Hari Raya Haji.

Abang Chu

Kak Chik

Kak Andak

Kak Uda

Kak Yang

Kak Ngah

Abang Long

Hajjah Maznah

Wife and I

MRE: Botok and Pulut Udang

As Ramadan winds down, I race to give credit to local foods that got me through the month. These MREs, Malaysia Ramadan Essentials, are practically complete meals in one package. Add rice as needed.

Pulut Panggang Udang

Wrapped in banana leaves held in place by bamboo pins, pulut panggang udang is beras pulut, sticky or glutinous rice, cooked with a bit of santan, stuffed with a spicy shredded coconut filling cooked with tiny dried shrimp. The whole package is grilled on a skillet to impart the banana leaf flavor to the rice. The size of a large cigar and selling for a ringgit a piece, one unit is equivalent to a light meal.

Botok

Botok is a huge favorite of the adults of the household. It is a Sarawakian favorite not well known in other parts of the country, and it is basically unavailable outside of bulan puasa, the month of fasting. The package looks fairly unappealing: a moist black leafy lump of organic matter.

Open it up though, and you find a piece of tenggiri fish surrounded by a shredded coconut preparation. It is said the best botok is made with fish past their expiration date. The fish has absorbed the nutty oils, the coconut is pungent and fishy and the whole shebang is given a fresh, bitter taste by the leaf it is wrapped in, something akin to mustard greens or collards.

That leaf comes from the Mengkudu tree, Morinda citrafolia. Westerners may recall it as the source for Tahitian Noni Juice, an MLM miracle food craze big around the turn of the century. Mengkudu is a weedy tree in the mulberry family, popping up in cracks in the pavement just like mulberries do back home. The fruit gives a hint of the relationship, but mengkudu fruit tastes utterly vile and smells nearly as bad as it rots on the ground. The juice is strictly for medicinal purposes, whatever those may be. Consult your bomoh. But in our house, we eat the leaf wrapper along with the fish, just the sort of veggie dish to keep you regular through the fasting month.

[two_first]
Morinda growing beside the river
Fruits ruined by a fox in hunger
Wait til I collapse in death my lover
Fallen into the hands of another
[/two_first][two_second]
Batang mengkudu di tepi sungai
Putiknya musnah dimakan musang
Abang menunggu mati terkulai
Adik lah pindah ke tangan orang
[/two_second]

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Malay pantun sourced from Malay Civilization. Translation mine.

36 hours in KL

Time for my semi-annual ritual humiliation at the Immigration Department. After 12 years here married to a Malaysian, I ought to be well on my way to Permanent Resident status. But permanent residency is predicated on holding a Spouse Visa, and I have as yet been able to get one. Kuching says I’m married to a West Malaysian, and therefore a foreigner in Sarawak, so I must apply in Ipoh. Ipoh says we live in Sarawak so we can only apply in Kuching. And Putrajaya, seeing that I am caught in a catch-22 between two state governments, be like

Yet hope springs eternal and every six months or so the wife and I conceive another gambit that just might work and we’re off to Putrajaya again. We planned for an overnight stay. Mana tau, they might need something notarized, or the photos need a blue background instead of white or the other way around. Maybe they’d like me to drop urine! Or give a blood sample. But in the event it took a mere 30 minutes for a mid-ranking official to come up with a reason to say no this time around. That left me with nearly 36 hours to kill in KL! Yay!

Coming in from the provinces as I do, riding the trains and hitting the pavement in the great metropolis is excitement enough. I took a train to Masjid Jamek and decided to strike out for Chow Kit, where I might be able to break my fast on some durian. KL was not so hot as Kuching has been this Ramadan, and with breeze and clouds I was able to walk at a steady pace without needing to stop and cool down. The streets were busy with foot traffic although the cafes were empty. Most of my trek was a straight shot down Jalan Raja Chulan, a part of town I hadn’t seen before. I reached the Chow Kit market and finally plonked down in the Masjid Jamek Pakistan as worshippers assembled for a second round of Asr prayers.

After berbuka I headed out for a spot in the market I had noted on the way in. Everything was very different by night! Big trucks belonging to veggie wholesalers had pulled in and were unloading industrial quantities of produce. Great hills of petai! Fields of lemongrass! It reminded me more of Eastern Market in Detroit than Pasar Satok, the large central wet market of Kuching.

Mounds of Petai — Petai, or Stinkbean in English

Interesting, but I was after Durian. The seasons are different between the Peninsula and the Island, and so the Sarawakians have had no durian as we endure a particularly hot and dusty Ramadan this year. In Sarawak also the durians are all unnamed varieties – durian kampung. Which I like just fine, don’t get me wrong, but when in KL I do enjoy trying all the fancy cultivars that are on offer: Musang King, Udang Kunyit, D2, D101. Finally I made it to the durian stalls and settled in to my reward. Little plastic chairs at a folding plastic table, but the drinking water was freeflowing and the view of KLCC in the distance was magnificent. Magnificent? Well pleasant, certainly. It was pleasant.

The next day took me toward the view I had been admiring the night before. The wife had business to attend to in the gently swaying twin towers, leaving me with a few hours to kill in the ultra-opulent shopping extravaganza that makes up the bottom of KLCC. With food off the menu, there was really only one destination for me: Kinokuniya. As far as this out-of-towner knows, there is no better bookstore to be found in the city. Leaving was harder than walking away from the durian stand, because you can count on your belly to tell you when to stop eating but your credit card lies lies lies.

Books from Kinokuniya in descending order of seriousness.

Looking up from the shelves, who should I see but A. Samad Said, sasterawan negara, browsing the shelf next to me. I was starstruck! I would have, I should have taken a picture, but… he looked exactly the way he does in every picture I’ve ever seen of him: long white hair flowing into long white beard falling over white cotton clothing, wizened, squinting behind thick round glasses, shy beneficent smile ennobling his countenance. When we married, my wife had an old copy of Hujan Pagi in her collection and I told myself I would be able to read it one day. Reader, I still can’t get off the first page. But I’m sure it is brilliant! And one fine day when I have read the whole thing from cover to cover and understood every blessed word, I will march down to Putrajaya, slam it on the counter, and, Pacino-in-Scarface style, demand my Permanent Residence.

MRE: Ikan Masin

Sweets and savoury dishes of every sort fill the special neighbourhood markets set up for Ramadan. While our kids binge on the colorful kuih and sugary drinks that they rarely get other times of the year, the wife and I are more likely to turn to a few basic dishes for the “few morsels needed to support our being”^[1], as it were: our Malaysia Ramadan Essentials. One of these MREs is Ikan Masin, salted fish. There are more kinds of salted fish in the market than I have been able to identify, much less try, in 12 years of living here. Shark, mackerel, ikan gelama, many many more. They aren’t just salted, but somehow fermented during the process, so that they take on a flavor that is reminiscent of an aged sharp cheddar cheese: tangy, salty, crumbly and creamy-oily. The house favorite is ikan tenggiri, some kind of mackerel. I could tell you which kind but come on – how many kinds of mackerel can you identify anyway? We Americans don’t know from fish. Ok, Narrow-banded Spanish Mackerel. Doesn’t help, does it? So anyway, imagine a fishy version of old cheddar, crumbled and sauteed in tiny bit of oil with sliced garlic, onions, and dried chili peppers. Serve with fresh hot rice.

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1. “No human ever filled a container more evil than his belly. The few morsels needed to support his being shall suffice the son of Adam. But if there is no recourse then one third for his food, one third for his drink and one third for his breath.” – Nabi Muhammad, peace be upon him

America Bombs Indonesia over Drug Deal Gone Bad … in 1832

American troops attacking Kota Batu, Aceh

American troops bombed and invaded Aceh in 1832, becoming the USA’s first military intervention in Asia. The affair began with the Friendship, a trading vessel flying American colors, coming to port in Kuala Batu, Aceh on the 7th of February 1831. This was not unusual as American merchant ships had been trading regularly on the western shore of Sumatra since the beginning of the 19th century. For the crew of the Friendship, however, what should have been a routine transaction ended in disaster.

The Friendship had set voyage from Salem, Massachusetts, a major port of trade for the USA in those days. The Friendship was led by Captain Charles M. Endicott on a mission to buy pepper, opium and sundry other goods from the Far East. When the Friendship dropped anchor at Kuala Batu, Endicott and a number of his crew went ashore to conduct negotiations on the price and quantity of goods to be bought. Things took a sudden turn when three wooden boats – perahus – pulled alongside the Friendship. They were full of locals armed to the teeth who proceeded to board.

In the struggle that followed, the crew of the Friendship was defeated, with three American lives lost. The Friendship was captured. Seeing the attack unfold from the shore, Endicott and his small delegation fled in their dinghy to the neighbouring town of Muki to seek aid from captains of three Salem ships there in recovering the Friendship.

The Friendship was recovered, absent its cargo of pepper and opium valued at US$50,000. Strong protests were lodged with the local rulers, the uleebalang, but to no avail. The plunder of the Friendship became a sensation in America. Andrew Jackson, the American president at the time, responded by sending a punitive military expedition against the people of Kuala Batu, or “Quallah Battoo” as it was spelled in the American press. On the 28th of August 1831, Commodore John Downes set off in the frigate Potomac with more than 300 soldiers, in what became the first military intervention in Asia in American history.

Kuala Batu, in the Southwest Aceh Regency

The Potomac arrived in Kuala Batu on the 5th of February 1832 disguised as a Danish merchant ship. The people of Kuala Batu were unaware of the deception. Downes and 282 of his soldiers attacked without warning. After sinking the boats at anchor in the bay and destroying the seaside forts with cannon fire, the shore was taken in fierce fighting that included hand to hand combat. Despite stiff resistance from the people of Kuala Batu, their matchlock rifles were no match against superior American military technology. The remaining Acehnese soldiers fell back to a fort further inland.

Rather than take the inland fort, Downes instructed his men to loot and pillage the town instead. Only after the town was thoroughly plundered did Downes shell the town and inland fort with heavier cannonades from the Potomac. By the time the uleebalang surrendered, more than 450 residents of Kuala Batu had perished, including women and children, and Kuala Batu was in flames. The Americans suffered two dead and eleven wounded.

The Potomac returned home after delivering a stern warning to the leadership of Kuala Batu never to attack American vessels again. In the end, although there was some degree of criticism from the general public of the harsh measures taken, President Jackson himself [heartless genocidal murderer that he was] felt Downes took appropriate action.

Why did the people of Kuala Batu attack the Friendship?

One reason for the attack was that the locals were fed up with American traders, who were felt to cheat and tamper with the scales. Endicott spoke at length with Po Adam, a friendly uleebalang who had enabled Endicott’s escape from Kuala Batu. According to Po Adam, the local royalty were upset with the drop in the price of pepper and the arrogance of the American merchant captains who often did not pay in full.

Following the incident, trade between Salem and Aceh intensified. In 1839, the rulers of Salem resolved to fashion a city seal bearing an image of an Acehnese in formal attire with the Latin motto, “Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum“, or “To the rich East Indies until the last lap.”

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The article above is a more or less a direct translation of an article in Bahasa Indonesia written by Rahadian Rundjan for the magazine Historia. Rahadian Rundjan’s article includes direct quotes from Gold Braid and Foreign Relations: Diplomatic Activities of U.S. Naval Officers 1798-1883 by David Foster Long, Death of an Empire: The Rise and Murderous Fall of Salem, America’s Richest City by Robert Booth, and Global Trade and Visual Arts in Federal New England edited by Patricia Johnston and Caroline Rank, which are unmarked here. A small amount of supporting material has been added from the Wikipedia entries on the First Sumatran Expedition and the town of Salem.

The original article by Rahadian Rundjan: Ketika Amerika Menginvasi Aceh