Breathing Heritage in Malaysia

sustainability science and practice

2011-12-30T23:53:00.002+08:00

sharing with you our article that's just come out in Architecture Malaysia (published by the Persatuan Arkitek Malaysia).

I love this article. The pictures and diagrams are really amazing!

composing in Malaysia

2011-10-29T20:11:00.006+08:00

it's been nearly a month since I came back. I have to admit that it's been really difficult to keep up with the things going on around me...

Today I took some time to say hello to old friend, Yasmin Rasyid, at her Ecofilm fest in Universiti Malaya. It's already the fourth time that Yasmin is successfully organising this annual event (which is her brainchild).

I must also mention that I met with former student, Wong Pui May, who was 'manning' her Traffic booth. Pui May looked as bright as usual and I think she's doing a great job for the wildlife.

Lunch in Bangsar at a place that looked more like a museum than a restaurant. The food tasted like something that I would have at a friend's place. Lovely place.

Recently, I went to Miri to collect firefly specimens for my student to take to Finland (for research OK). Musa Masbah and Faisal Musa were our hosts there.

A melanau woman trying to sell ikan pari to me... just moments before the men landed the catch onto the jetty and this pasar is located right beside the jetty and the sellers were mostly women.

pictures i took on the bus ride to BOKU

2011-09-12T21:29:00.008+08:00

Bus 37A from Spitelau to BOKU.
The incinerator designed by a famous architect Hunderwasser. When I first saw it I didn't immediately recognize that it's the building that I'd seen many times before in the textbook that we used to teach EMG3001 (Man & Environment), but something about the design really piqued my interest and then (several hours later) it registered in my adled brain.

The tram right in the middle of the intersection.

Notice the climber (plant!) going up the building facade? Cool.

Traffic jam (it's everywhere). The red brick longish building is actually a bridge for the metro (subway) train. It was designed by Otto Wagner of the Secession School (Art Decor).

Cement mixer. Yes, construction is everywhere.

The bus and the passenger in front of me.

cold

2011-09-10T23:54:00.007+08:00

I caught a cold, I suspect, a few days ago when I arrived but I somehow managed to ignore it until it gets bad enough that I just have to take a rest for this weekend. Yesterday I went sight seeing with a colleague from BOKU and since she's a very knowleagable Viennese I really enjoyed her as my tour guide. Yes, the best or quickest way to get to know a place is by going around with a local (or locals). Then you should go again to see these places on your own and see if you could find new things (meaning/ interpretation/experiences) on your own.

But I digress (just blame the flu virus in my body). Actually I'd like to use this space right now to tell you that I'm in Austria as an Erasmus Mundus scholar (within the framework of Eurasia 2 program). This is a 'cool' (not cold) program that allows Asian scholars (students and faculty) to travel to European universities to study. In my case I'm based at the University of Natural Resources and Life Science (BOKU), specifically at the Institute of Landscape Planning (ILAP). At ILAP, I am sharing knowledge and learning from my Austrian supervisor and colleagues about landscape ecology/planning and gender mainstreaming. It's been really exciting because I'm doing something different from what I was doing before - but not altogether different because landscape planning is very closely related to ecology; and gender issues have always attracted my interest for as long as I can remember. In fact I took a course called Women's studies at Indiana University when I did my English program (JPA-ATU-IU circa '93) and already learned a lot about gender issues back then. I remembered being the only Malaysian in a class of perhaps 20 American university students, and I was just graduating from highschool.

Again I digress. My mobility program (that's what they call the Erasmus program) involves field trips, discussions, presentation/ formal conversation, writing papers, attending workshop and conference. The field trips really are great - I simply call them sight seeing and I tell you, Vienna was made for sight seeing.

This whole thing would not have been possible without the help of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)/Erasmus Mundus Eurasia 2 program. I'm thankful to so many people (the people at the International Office UPM; the international Office at BOKU; and the Institute of Landscape Planning BOKU) who've worked hard to ensure that people like myself have the opportunity to explore a different experience. My colleagues at ILAP really take good care of myself - the lunches are great so don't stop cooking! *I deliberately don't mention names but you know who you are*

more pictures of Vienna

2011-09-08T03:37:00.009+08:00

I'm sharing with you the pictures that I took ealier today when I went sight seeing on my own again (yes I sort of skipped school today). But I have tell my story in a reverse chronological order because that's how blogspot intends it to be!
This a picture of the signboard of the Coptic Orthodox church in front of the United Nations building in the International Centre. The whole place (or plaza) is located on an 'artificial' island (I need to check my facts later) in the middle of the Danube river.

This is the ramp in front of the United Nations building.

The United Nations building. I don't know who designed it or the story behind the design. All I know is that it's tall and many business-like people wearing suits work there.

My lunch at the U4 station "Heiligenstadt". They gave me a good luck cookie but the piece of paper in it is written in my new third language, i.e. german. If and when I finally get it translated (google translator can do this in seconds) I may share it with you. Anyway, the last time I had a good luck cookie was years ago when I was an undergrad at Duke...I don't remember if I ever got one in Cambridge... Anyway, the lunch was quite spicy so I couldn't finish it all. So much for being a Minangkabau from Negeri Sembilan.

psssttt *I probably need to rename my blog*

pictures of vienna

2011-09-05T06:27:00.006+08:00

This picture was taken in a brand-new building at the university of natural resources and life sciences (BOKU) where I'm based at for the month. The story of the building is an interesting one especially for heritage conservationists but you have to email me for details. In the far distance you could actually see the United Nations tower. Most buildings in Vienna are low but there a few skyscapers, like the tower.

This is a picture of the street that I live on - Spengergasse (you must pronounce it right). Just a week ago I was still trying to picture in my mind how it looked like and voila! here I am.

No idea what this building is but I suspect it's a church. It's located near the Krantzplatz metro station, just by the Technical University of Vienna. Yesterdays there were so many university kids parading about in costumes. I guess they were having some kind 'orientation' week.

This picture was taken on the third day I was here and it shows the street along the canal / metro line. Pilgramgasse station can be seen here. This is where I take the metro (subway train) to get to BOKU. Getting around the city is really easy using the public transportation, especially if you're used to taking trains/buses like me (because I use them in Malaysia). I bought a monthly ticket which cost me Euro49,50 (notice the comma?).

trying hard to lose myself....

2011-09-04T16:25:00.006+08:00

so that I have every reason in this world to find it back....

I'm blogging from Vienna. Today is my fourth day here. Just now it took me quite awhile to get to this page because unlike it normally did back in Malaysia, all of a sudden the language was in German instead of English, my beloved second language.

I speak no German except for one or two words and I have the bad habit mispronouncing words (even in Malay and English) so communication (hence understanding) can be very difficult. Worse, I am a shy sort of person so when I make mistakes I get really embarrassed and feel that I shouldn't even try next time. *bad*

In case you're wondering what took me to this part of the world, I'll tell you that I'm here to do research! Nothing else. Only to learn and study and gain knowledge that I can share with my students (especially) and colleagues (maybe) and friends and family (of course).

People here speak plenty of English (thank heavens) but write little English. I mean you only see German on the back of buses or water bottles. Two days ago I had to ask the girl at the counter if what I'd picked up was really a facial cleanser and she confirmed that it was indeed used as 'make up remover'. Yes the phrase 'make up' is on the label.

This being-lost-in-german experience has been really wonderful. This is my first time ever on continental Europe and thank heavens it's Vienna and not some other place (can't name names).

I took this picture of the fastfood-restaurant where I ate rice for three consecutive days (maybe today as well). Notice the Marilyn Monroe figure on the Coke can? I have been drinking well.

putting down roots in Petaling Jaya

2011-06-23T12:54:00.005+08:00

I am now putting down roots in Petaling Jaya - Section 17 to be exact. Apparently I'm not the only one from the Jempol-Kuala Pilah area to be doing so in this part of Selangor.
The owners of the Hailam Kopitiam also thought S17 was a good place to open shop. I don't go there especially for the food or the tea, but for this photo of an old building that I really liked in Kuala Pilah.
S17 town reminds me of old Kuala Pilah or Bahau (that is before people started putting up traffic lights and tearing down old buildings and expanding the roads).

heritable friendships

2011-06-20T13:01:00.003+08:00

we have been friends since that time of our lives when we had near-photographic memories, i.e. when we were young.

now we are both aging. Ha ha ha.

friendships like legacies are heritable I bet.

Ecofilming - environmental advocacy

2011-06-12T12:15:00.003+08:00

While tidying up the house, I found this old book in one of the old cupboards. whose book was it? It is mine now.

When I first saw it the title just leaped out at me because I used to teach a course called by the same name, "man and environment", at the university, but we used different textbooks. This one is much older and so it interests me in a "historical" kind of way. It consists of mostly words and this copy was published by Penguin in 1973. Almost as old as me!

Quickly I flipped through it (as I would normally do with any book I just come across). In this book, there are several supplements and one in particular is interesting - "Films and the environment". I need to share it with my friend Yasmin (founder & president of Ecoknights.org) who in 2008 organized, what is perhaps, the first environmentally-themed film festival in Malaysia. Below I share with you an excerpt:

"Film can inform people in an entertaining and dramatic way about the realities of the physical world. It can help us to understand and to respond to natural processes and the rhythm of the seasons and to appreciate the primitive drives and instincts which man has inherited but which now need to be set within our cultural environment..."

urban agriculture

2011-03-19T15:20:00.001+08:00

I suppose my fingers aren't only pretty, they are also pretty green. Still I have no idea my lado bosar plants (two of them growing in one small pot) can only give me two fruits per plant!

wild life in the city

2011-03-02T13:40:00.006+08:00

I took my students (EKOLOGI SUMBER ASLI) to check out the wild life in Kuala Lumpur. So I am sharing some photos with you all:

sharing

2010-12-29T18:10:00.005+08:00

our efforts .....

age of destruction

2010-04-17T12:55:00.006+08:00

They came in a yellow pick-up truck. Four men, three were youngish and their leader was probably in his forties with longish hair. They brought with them familiar tools: a total station, parangs and a map. The head was constantly yelling at his young charge to move the station a little further this way or that way or to cut some foliage that obstructed his view.

Boy: Akak boleh potong ka ini pokok?
Me (Akak?): Pesal apa? Ini pokok sudah lama tau, you tak boleh potong, kalau nak potong kena bayar.
Boy: Sikit saja, susah mau nampak la nak ukur...
Me: Tak boleh. Ini pokok dalam saya punya tanah la...
Boy: Tak tau lagi..belum ukur.
Me: Kita sudah ukur la...
Boy: Tapi kena ukur 200 meter.
Me: You ukur dari belakang sana sampai sini, kemudian you ukur dari sini sampai depan sana la.
Boy: OK, nanti saya bincang sama boss.

I suspect the boss said CUT because when I came back later I found cut several slashed twigs on the ground outside our fence. The tree will no doubt grow back but the fiasco signaled a beginning of a much bigger destruction: soon the entire belukar (see previous blog entry) that I grew up with will be destroyed to make way for houses. My sister told me about this when I went inside the house to tell her about the stuck-inside-fence tree. My heart just sank.

So many questions needing answers:
1. Why sell an 18-acre multiple ownership Malay reserved land to a couple of non-Malays to build as many as 100 houses?
2. Where would the animals go?

tea drinking commoners

2010-03-18T18:39:00.003+08:00

As far as I know everyone in the family loves a cup of tea - with or without milk, but probably only one of us likes it unsweetened. Mother taught us how to drink tea mixed with condensed milk or with sugar since we were very young. In the family tea is always black not green or any other colour!

Minum tea is at around 5pm in the household unless mother is ill or out. In which case we go to Kedai mamak to have teh tarik!

I grew up with a forest!

2010-03-06T13:59:00.006+08:00

what do you normally see and hear when you wake up?..

Do you see this?

Or this?

For at least 5 years of my life I would wake up in the morning to the sounds of the forest because my bed was only a few meters away from it. It's not like the forest was always outside my bedroom window because about 30 years ago it was actually a watermelon farm. For whatever reason, the farm was abandoned and the forest came back (because it was forest before the farm). So I can claim that I grew up with a forest! (that sounds so dramatic).

Since the house is very close to the forest, some of the forest denizens do come to visit, some like the long-tailed macaques do so more regularly than others like this scarab beetle.

Roses are smelly - where are they from?

2010-02-05T14:49:00.002+08:00

Several weekends ago I went back to visit the family in kampung. It was already near maghrib time when mother and me decided to smell the roses just outside the living room downstairs. I asked mother about roses-sniffing-men.

Mother said,
Apo salah eii.... asalkan bungo tu haghum
Kalau bungo busuk, sapo pun tak hingin nak cium...

I ventured,
Tapi omak ponah nampak oghang lolaki cium rose?

Mother replied,
Ontah lah...itu tak ponah topikir dek sei nak poghati...

Mother is so complicated (read: infuriating) sometimes.

peasantry

2009-12-16T12:07:00.005+08:00

Old houses and their compounds are good grounds for hunting ghosts! I have limited memories of this old house that I have renovated (and am still renovating) so I have few ghosts to capture but the house and the land on which it is standing has given me so much to learn from the past. For example, just two weeks ago while taking a student around the house I suddenly saw a small round object on the ground. Instinctively I knew it was an old coin – but my student said it was an old mirror. Of course the teacher was right. The reason why it was easy for me to know what it was is because that wasn’t the first time I’d found an old coin half-buried or fully exposed on the ground. Before this I’d found 2-3 old coins at the same house. Based on a better “specimen” this coin was from the Straits Settlement “period” and it’s made of copper and had a value 1 cent.

I’m sure one cent then was a lot so my forebears must have really been careless with their money to lose it like that. Maybe they had holes in their pockets? Poor peasants with holey pockets!!!

architected space

2009-08-17T20:50:00.003+08:00

I asked an architect what architects do and she said, "sculpting space".

I think my house is changing space and time.

In Memoriam

2009-07-30T18:04:00.005+08:00

Kak Mon (2007-2009)

cats have a way to get really close to us. Just last night when I was out exercising at the Taman in front of the house, a teenage cat just simply joined me and then followed me back until to the front gate. At home in kampung, Kak Mon had until earlier today, been keeping father company. Her presence will be sorely missed by him.

My first pet-cat was Bob. We had him a long time ago but he left me a scar, literally, and it's still visible on the back of my right hand. Our family never keeps a dog because mother is religiously allergic to them. But some day when I have to manage a large farm/ homegarden I may need to enlist the help of a rotweiler. god willing.

What I did today at work

2009-07-28T15:59:00.002+08:00

I presented a poster just now at the university's annual research exhibition.

rumahku

2009-07-10T16:59:00.007+08:00

For the past few months I have been spending time (and lotsa money) to "rehabilitate" the house that I never grew up in. It belonged to my mother and her mother and the mother before her.... but my mother has recently decided to pass it on to me. RUMAHKU. Actually I'm just a "guardian" as any rumah pusaka actually belongs to a paruik. The project manager is my sister, Nor Haslinda Hashim. Thank god she seems to know what she's doing (albeit at my expense) since she has architectural training from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Dr. Naziaty of Universiti Malaya has been very encouraging too. There's no ramp to get into the house yet but the new staircase is quite accessible and safe for some people. There's an accessible toilet on the ground level...yeay.

The view from the frontyard overlooking sawah padi. Just beyond the bamboo grove is Sungai Muar.

magical realism

2009-03-16T13:45:00.003+08:00

I did it again - I bought a book by Italo Calvino last night.

Books

2009-02-25T14:13:00.001+08:00

I learned the Arabic alphabets before I did any other. I started learning it even before I attended primary school, and unlike most other kids my age at the time I skipped the sekolah makan TADIKA (kindergarten). Instead I attended mengaji at night and during class, I’d recite the Quran using a copy that was available at the surau.

Our family did not have a copy of the Quran at home until some time in the 1980s. The first Quran that my parents brought home was a brand new copy that they’d gotten for free from the village masjid, if memory serves me right. But it was not the family’s first book.

I can vaguely remember that around puberty I usually spent the afternoons sprawled on the couch reading HAMKA. It was one of my father’s few books. Some time later I found all of his books scattered under their bed at home while … I can’t really recall why I was looking there. But a couple of the authors’ that I can still remember were HAMKA and Agus Salim, both of whom were Indonesian [Minangkabau] progressive thinkers in the first half of the 20th century. Father read those books while he was still in the army for goodness knows why. Agus Salim’s book was written in two languages – Indonesian and Dutch. I don’t remember much else about those books, but there was a line in HAMKA’s that stayed with me for awhile. It was the part where he thought that something beautiful could never be sinful.

So puberty was a time when I actively looked for books. It was around this curious time that I got hold of a sibling’s book, THE READER'S DIGEST BOOK OF THE HUMAN BODY, which somebody said years later was a seminal book on sex, hippie-style (because it contains drawings of unshaven men and women!).

I can’t recall the first book that I bought with my own money. But I can remember very well the most recent book that I bought_a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. I’d read his novels before but when I was at the bookstore suddenly it occurred to me that I needed to have a copy at home. Come to think of it right now maybe it’s time I stop buying books and save the money for something else.

Something beautiful can never be sinful

9 november 1972

2008-11-09T18:03:00.002+08:00

I found out a while ago that my REAL birthday was today in 1972.

Merdeka Ennui

2008-09-20T14:43:00.003+08:00

As of late, I'm getting more and more confused about the meaning and usefulness of heritage. Wait, what do I mean by "heritage" here, you may wonder. I'm talking about a general sense of belonging. HOME.

Am I on my way to joining so many disaffected people all over the world? Or is age fast catching up with me. Or is it because I lack history?

Historical GIS of Penarikan

2008-08-16T15:29:00.003+08:00

Let me share with you a little bit about my current preoccupation called historical GIS.

Historical GIS can be defined as using geographical information systems to map and understand past landscape changes.

In the US, UK and Europe, integrating geography and history in GIS is now commonly done in this brand new field, which is about 10 years old.

In Malaysia, land use/ land cover studies using GIS are plenty but specific case studies on historical sites are still lacking.

As a geographer who has a keen interest in history, I figure I can contribute to this endeavour to enhance our Malaysian heritage knowledge.

My current research is on the Penarikan in Jempol. Visit this site for more information:
http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/1207/malaysia_land-use.html

2008-08-15T16:56:00.006+08:00

I was looking for an old edition of Collins-Longman's atlas when I found it at a small bookstore in PJ last weekend. And so I bought it for a mere RM10.

a tool for conjuring feelings

2008-06-10T10:00:00.003+08:00

Photographs are definitely one of the wonderful tools that humans have invented. This one I took some time in 2003 of an irrigation dam in Negeri Sembilan. Notice the photo date in the lower right corner. That's technology for us.

I can't remember much about the day that I took this photo, but maybe if I spend a bit more time looking at it I may be able to recall more: the sounds, smell and feelings I had at the time.

yes it's slowly coming to me: I was admiring a tree species near the dam... the grass was still dewy so I gingerly walked on it not wanting to attract any hungry leeches .... and it was as sunny morning...

termites

2008-04-22T19:20:00.003+08:00

If you drive around in the villages in Negeri Sembilan, you'll notice that the number of "heritage" houses overgrown by semak belukar (bushes for the lack of a better term) is not small. The reasons for the abandonment are numerous but often it's because nobody bothers about the house or the kampung (household compound).

If you're the adventurous type, I encourage you to check out these houses. Yes check them out. Get out of your car and get close and personal with the houses. You'd be surprised that despite the years of abuse from the weather, the weight of lianas on the walls, roofs and floors, these houses can remain standing.

And maybe you'll notice the bee hives hanging on the beams or the trails of termites on the woods.

Speaking of termites, in Australia these white ants cause more damage to homes than storms and fire combined and this problem is a major concern for the country's Department of Housing.

I wonder if anybody is worried about termites eating up our heritage homes.

Citizen Science

2008-03-10T17:10:00.001+08:00

That's a phrase that I just learned today, although it was coined many decades ago (just “wikipedia” it to find out more about its history).

If citizen science allows people with no formal scientific training for that particular project to participate effectively, e.g. conducting bird counts in some remote site (notice that a physicist is a scientist but she’s not trained as an ornitologist), how can we do the same for heritage conservation? That is, how do we involve “ordinary folks” to be interested and thus participate in heritage project?

citizen heritage, anyone?

ownership of heritage

2008-02-21T13:56:00.003+08:00

going green

2008-02-04T18:35:00.000+08:00

different places, same t-shirt.

village shop

2008-01-10T17:43:00.000+08:00

My BC

2008-01-03T12:59:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year 2008!

I was born, and it's stated in my birth certificate, in 1973. So that means I'll be 35 years old this year.

My birth certificate is a work of art. By that I mean the "facts" contained in it can be beautiful, but not necessarily correct.

For example, it's stated in the BC that at the time of my birth my father was earning a living as a rubber tapper. I asked my father about this and he said at that time he'd just retired from the Askar Melayu Diraja (makes a lot of sense to me) and was not tapping rubber. He added that he wasn't all that sure that I was born in 1973 because they, for reasons still unknown to me, decided to report my birth to the authority several months after I was born!

At any rate, I love my BC.

our struggle

2007-12-03T20:38:00.000+08:00

Kuala Pilah – Seremban route

2007-11-19T14:45:00.000+08:00

I OVERHEARD A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO MEN ON A BUS YESTERDAY...

The two men were actually sitting on the rear steps of the bus, and I was seated about a meter away from them so I could hear them well. It was late in the evening but the bus was full with people wanting to go back to the city. Most people decided to remain quiet, perhaps still thinking of the weekend’s fun at home, but these two men decided to make friends:

Duduk sini saja uncle
Sini boleh ka? Oklah
Uncle kerja mana?
Saya kerja kontrak KL, you?
Saya kerja Nilai
Apa buat Kuala Pilah?
Saya ada kawan sini. Uncle kerja apa?
Saya kerja kontrak bina rumah. Renovation.
Saya pun bina rumah
You buat apa? Sapu cat ka?
Macam-macam, uncle sudah lama kerja?
Sudah lama, syarikat kecik saja dalam 8 orang, lu kerja company besar ka?
Besar juga ada dalam 20 orang
Ooo itu besar punya
Lu orang mana? Indonesia ka?
Saya orang Sarawak, Kuching
Sana banyak balak, bukan?
Ya, getah pun ada juga
So, you tau banyak pasal kayu, itu jati, setang
….
Setang, orang panggil setang
….
Akasia
Akasia, itu boleh buat kertas
Baik buat kertas, kayu banyak lembut, jati orang tanam banyak jugak, kawan saya tanam 80 hektar Kuala Pilah, senang hidup
Tapi kena baja kalau sudah banyak ekar, uncle
Ya, tanah pun kena baik
Ya, mesti sejuk

This conversation continued for a while until we neared Bukit Putus and the “Kuching” man decided to stand up, perhaps he was getting dizzy from the meandering bus ride.

What's in a name? [I am not an arab]

2007-11-06T19:30:00.001+08:00

The flora of Malaya has fascinated many people, including some of the world's greatest naturalists. The colonial botanists/ foresters' attitudes toward vernacular names of our forest-related resources were originally positive, and words such as belukar, lopak, utan and countless native plant names were used alongside the scientific (or international to borrow E.J.H Corner's term) names. It is difficult to find the exact date when the hindi-derived 'jungle' became disused, and the french-derived term 'forest' became more 'correct' but one person, Corner, did retain the use of 'jungle' in his third edition of the Wayside trees of Malaya, published in 1988.

Back then 'ethno-botany' was not even a recognised (or created) research field, but the early colonial botanists/foresters were doing it! Someone recently suggested that an ethno-botanist is a non-native person studying a locality's flora--so by his definition I am not an ethno-botanist when I study the plants in my kampung even though I'm employing the techniques of 'ethnobotany' or 'western scientific botany'.

Sometime during the previous century it became unfashionable to use vernacular names of plants when studying or classifying them! This happened (and still does) in the scientific fields of plant ecology and botany. The rationale for this seemingly 'reverse-xenophobic' decision is that local people classify plants differently from ecologists/botanists--the former may focus more on the uses of plants, therefore those plants that have uses are given specific names, sometimes more than one name per plant. For instance, the enau palm; its sap, which can be made into sugar or toddy, is known as nigho anau, whereas its fruits are called buah belulok in the villages of Negeri Sembilan. The plants that do not have local uses are, otherwise, lumped into a 'category' of lifeforms, such as aka or ghumput.

The ecologists/botanists, on the other hand, divide plants based on their physical appearance--the shape of fruits, flowers, the many parts of fruits and flowers, the shapes of leaves...and so each plant is named accordingly, although some stupid/sychophantic/self-important individuals have chosen to name plants after some humans. These names are given in latin, the language of the learned europe once upon a time but is now effectively restricted to the Vatican and the field of organismal systematics!

Actually the villagers of Negeri Sembilan (and in other places) do use 'appearance' as a basis of naming. For example, pokok buah kotolir kambing, is a name given to a tree that has fruits resembling the penis of a goat! In a sense, these local people are more in tune with their plants than the foreign botanists/ecologists ........

And guess what the folks in Negeri Sembilan call the cute-looking passiflora.....

The contributions made by the Japanese during WWII

2007-10-25T16:19:00.000+08:00

In 2003 I interviewed many elderly people in Negeri Sembilan to find out what happened during World War 2, i.e. the Japanese Occupation Period of Malaysia. They told me that,

.....in the villages, the Japanese army undertook some measures to continue rice production by installing irrigation and drainage for the sawah to ensure continuous supply of their staple food, rice. They introduced a variety of rice, which the villagers aptly called padi Jopun (Japanese rice), for the villagers to plant.

The Japanese rice variety had shorter stalks than the local varieties, therefore the villagers had to adopt the long-handle sickle (sabit). Before the Japanese, the villagers used the traditional hand-sickle (tuai) to harvest the local rice varieties....

my grandfather was an anglophile

2007-10-19T18:52:00.000+08:00

Well he had to be.

I never got to know him because he died many years before I was born. In fact he died when my father, his son, was only three years old.

Unlike my father who attended a sekolah melayu, my grandfather went to a sekolah inggeris back when malaysia meant Malesia. Then he became a rubber superitendent in Muar, working for the English planters there.

He had to be an anglophile to be a rubber man in those days.

NON-INDIGENOUS PLANTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

2007-10-18T16:21:00.000+08:00

An excerpt from a paper I wrote recently:

"In a recent study on the uses of non-native plants by Malay villagers in Negeri Sembilan, the author found that these villagers, who were living close to secondary forests, had been for several generations using non-native plant species for ‘traditional’ medicine and foodstuffs. While some of these plants were planted around the homegardens for household use, many non-native plants were common in the secondary forests and had long acquired local names. On the one hand, this incorporation of non-native species in the local traditional knowledge is anthropologically interesting because it demonstrates the resilience of indigenous peoples. On the other hand, it raises concern that the challenge to stop the spread of non-native species may be very difficult."

And, a poster that I submitted for a competition at the university last year (it won a bronze medal):

Heritage Matters!

2007-10-18T14:29:00.000+08:00

Heritage Matters!

In Malaysia, heritage is now in serious contention.

A case in point is the demolition of a leprosia recently to make way for a medical school . The supporters of the demolition work claimed that the destroyed buildings had no heritage or historical value (as reported in a local daily). They also thought out loud that building a medical school was more important than preserving a leprosia.

The built environment is one thing, the natural environment is quite another. There have been for many decades campaigns against deforestation in this country. But if you look up at the hills above you, you'd see signs of deforestation.

So in the spirit of Malaysia boleh, Heritage Matters!

So much more so now than ever!