tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93471862024-03-07T19:41:09.349+00:00Kecek-KecekOn Trengganuspeak and the Spirit of TrengganuAwang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.comBlogger434125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-68884592899680106182013-10-15T00:11:00.003+00:002013-10-15T00:11:45.292+00:00Eid Mubarak - Eid al AdhaMay you be blessed with His bounty on this wonderful day. Selamat Hari Raya Haji to all my readers.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-57515719413022750712013-10-15T00:10:00.000+00:002013-10-16T14:15:12.126+00:00The Lord Laughs Last<b>In the deep, dark crevasse of Trengganu history</b> is a letter that got me baffled for a while. It has, in fact, baffled many people too, some of them historians, by the tone of its supplication. Or is it an assertion – of rights, of obeisance, of authority on the slide?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRFlFoVU1AwDKVoSnMDkmCvNQCUPBCwvmsMYiL-kF8zhbuDzOciCV_J3tFu0U1ZCpg_5wrlshf2DJ12yjeaO7MgwmLWdFuyE3cGG5rhcmXfb2v9Vg0REmguGv687oOWTUpsD5N/s1600/Tengku+Ali+Suit_Trengganu+Claim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRFlFoVU1AwDKVoSnMDkmCvNQCUPBCwvmsMYiL-kF8zhbuDzOciCV_J3tFu0U1ZCpg_5wrlshf2DJ12yjeaO7MgwmLWdFuyE3cGG5rhcmXfb2v9Vg0REmguGv687oOWTUpsD5N/s320/Tengku+Ali+Suit_Trengganu+Claim.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>Many people now forget that in the interim between Japanese invasion and British return was a period of administration by Siam of the four northern Malay States Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu. They were handed to Thailand in return for their cooperation in paving the way for a Japanese invasion of the peninsula. From 1943-1945 Trengganu was effectively Thai, using Thai-issued stamps for its postal service and having Thai-speaking Malay dignitaries in the day-to-day administration.
<p>That control was also asserted in other ways, using that mystical symbolism of cannons form instance. The Malays have always had attachments to these heavyweight weapons, giving them names and mystical significance. On Bukit Puteri were several, with names like Sri Jamlur, Sri Buih, Sri Johor, Laila Majnun and then there was a pair - little and large - one said to have begotten the other: the mother Che Selamah and the daughter Che Safiah. You can probably still see them on Bukit Puteri, but many were taken away to Thailand during this brief administration. The point may have been that a state deprived of its mystical symbolism had lost everything, but of course I am only guessing.
<p>In 1945, after the Japanese surrender, the British came back to reassert their claim, and for a while, Trengganu, like other states were under British Military Administration (BMA). Thai stamps were withdrawn and new ones, with the BMA overprint, were sold at the post office.
<p>In this interregnum between Thai and colonial rule as before the war, a man in the village of Ladang in Kuala Trengganu took out his typewriter and thumped out a note to D. Headley, a man he knew as the Lieutenant Commander and Chief Commander Civil Affairs, Trengganu.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rheY44_CrpSHjRSUs9BNaYK3p09LZYLpqIAvXC7Q0oj_Sa8gUz8XOBTBHHHnZuwTHOOLTRdMrdwt0UNpuogKD8esADb1GNul3JmNAGbDUH78_kpI977hs3UxFOsjOaD1ydhK/s1600/Surat+Ku+Lah+Nayar+Full+Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rheY44_CrpSHjRSUs9BNaYK3p09LZYLpqIAvXC7Q0oj_Sa8gUz8XOBTBHHHnZuwTHOOLTRdMrdwt0UNpuogKD8esADb1GNul3JmNAGbDUH78_kpI977hs3UxFOsjOaD1ydhK/s320/Surat+Ku+Lah+Nayar+Full+Image.jpg" /></a></div>
If Headley had an imposing title, the man had a higher one. He was ‘Lord of Thailand’ residing in Kuala Trengganu, in ‘Ladang School’s Vllge’, which I take to be Kampung Ladang Sekolah in ordinary parlance. I knew the place well as I went to school there, two schools in fact, one alongside the other. This Lord of Thailand revealed himself as Tengku Abdullah Osman.
<p>The purpose of this letter was baffling as I could not fathom what he was trying to convey to Mr Headley, and I suspect Mr Headley too would not have been able to make head or tail of his mission. It was polite in tone, full of Malay style salutations, too full in fact as to create a haze over the content. I even suspected that it was originally written in Malay and then translated – very literally – by someone else with a Malay-English dictionary at hand.
<p>It spoke, probably of two comrades in arms (“Brother-Army”) who died (as I gathered from the phrase “Death corpse”), and the letter writer, in all earnestness, prayed that they be despatched to “Soul-Heaven”. And he also – I think – wanted the British army to dress in mourning for two days or perhaps in “two days time” after his letter.
<p>Some people have guessed from the desperate note that this was a former Thai local dignitary seeking to ingratiate himself to the new overlords. And I thought they could well have been right for it is not unusual for old coat-hangers to seek new apparels.
<p>And then, last week in Facebook, my friend Wan M Yusoff posted about his meeting with his ‘favourite storyteller’ in Kuala Trengganu, Pak Wan Abas, a man long in the tooth but with a very clear mind still for events in the past. I asked Wan Yusoff to record his conversation(s) for future generations. And then, there was this throwaway line in his post: “I did not know that Trengganu was under Thai rule during the Japanese occupation.”
<p>Yes, Trengganu was indeed ruled by Siam, I commented, and to prove that I attached a picture of Thai-issued stamps with the ‘Trengganu’ postmark [see below]. And then, I added, there was something strange: when the British came back, a man who styled himself ‘Lord of Thailand’ wrote a letter to one Mr Headley with content that I found hard to understand. Could he ask Pak Wan Abas if he knew who this Tengku Abdullah Osman of ‘Ladang School’s Vllge’ was?
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbUi5pFvcotCxuZV95YnIfvDBAchDf22aVcfKdELuZk9hNnRkrE2LYj0wIkQnJ9yf_-O8L238sJPRVscuD-rQNcLc_ly1cv82GcH_92k1tw-Xg_uVq7DXnCGRkfCSHiLL0y6kd/s1600/Thai+Stamp_Trengganu+Mark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbUi5pFvcotCxuZV95YnIfvDBAchDf22aVcfKdELuZk9hNnRkrE2LYj0wIkQnJ9yf_-O8L238sJPRVscuD-rQNcLc_ly1cv82GcH_92k1tw-Xg_uVq7DXnCGRkfCSHiLL0y6kd/s320/Thai+Stamp_Trengganu+Mark.jpg" /></a></div>
Wan Yusoff visited the ailing Pak Wan Abas again. And what laughter it brought me on a very wet Saturday afternoon in London, and in Kuala Trengganu, in the home of the venerable story-telling gentleman as Wan Yusoff broached the question. History and a man who we had always regarded as a figure of fun was having the last laugh on us and I - like a madman – could no longer control laughter spewing from my mouth with the tea that I was enjoying by myself in the Great Court of the British Museum. We were communicating in real time through the medium of FB.
<p>Things that had been torn apart were now falling back in place. It brought us back to childhood times, to Kampung Ladang, and to a man I often wrote about in my blogs as Ku Löh Nayar, the deranged townsman. As Ku is the Trengganu dimunitive for Tengku, and Löh, the shortened Abdullah, there you have him before your eyes and in your mind, the Lord of Thailand Tengku Abdullah Osman was none other than our Ku Löh Nayar, the disturbed man who terrified us for almost our entire Trengganu schooldays, a local character and the eminently unhinged.
<p>His letter to Mr Headley is now in the safekeeping of the National Archives of Australia, indexed under the item ‘Letter of congratulations of Tengku Abdullah Osman 21 October 1945’.
<p>All this happened during the short reign of Sultan Ali who was installed Sultan when his father, Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah of the Istana Kolam died. Sultan Ali was later removed from the throne by the British perhaps because he was put on the throne by the Japanese or maybe there were other reasons that we are not yet privy to. [See his latter day attempt at recognition and recompense in the New Straits Times,Feb 28, 1995; above, right column]
<p>Thank you Pak Wan Abas, may Allah preserve you, and to Wan M Yusoff for helping to solve this long (and hilarious) mystery. Thank you to the blogger Le Minh Khai for having brought this letter to my attention.
Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-67449458915485464592012-10-24T14:26:00.002+00:002012-10-25T00:03:25.978+00:00Drawn From memory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPVQ6pH8reXqSWJ0RERKjeE6IDsNu-d3yQF9dkqSroZlTaTYQC0hyphenhyphenBJ-ZbYhHoOFE7nMAV7q6o6fMY3K2aH5F5fbpl-bgPM7gSa0l3HaxiI6ukyXYEUFmh-_SN2QGNDRTT-b5a/s1600/Lat+%2526+AG-red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="162" width="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPVQ6pH8reXqSWJ0RERKjeE6IDsNu-d3yQF9dkqSroZlTaTYQC0hyphenhyphenBJ-ZbYhHoOFE7nMAV7q6o6fMY3K2aH5F5fbpl-bgPM7gSa0l3HaxiI6ukyXYEUFmh-_SN2QGNDRTT-b5a/s320/Lat+%2526+AG-red.jpg" /></a></div>
Readers of both <i>Growing Up in Trengganu</i> and <i>A Map of Trengganu</i> will have noticed a pen drawing of the author atop his bio-data. It was drawn by my good friend Lat (Datuk Mohd Nor Khalid) from memory, and the last time I saw him before he drew that must have been years upon donkey's ears ago.<p><p>
There is this line that I always pull when Lat and I are together. We're both writing a book together where Datuk Lat will be doing the text and I'll be drawing the pictures. In reality the joke is on me for the Datuk is not only a widely read man and an able writer but also a very amusing raconteur.<p>
We had a reunion last Monday and then on Tuesday. The Monday meeting also brought Cheryl Dorall, respected fellow journalist, former Malay Mail columnist and distinguished former editor of the Sunday Star. They, my mate Kak Teh and myself made the former New Straits Times old timers' combo at the Holiday Villa in Londra. We were also joined by Mohamad Jefri, Holiday Villa's manager.<p>
The picture above shows how successful Datuk Lat was when drawing from memory. Thank you, Sir!Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-15895111673762393842012-08-17T11:00:00.003+00:002012-08-17T15:49:27.920+00:00The Good Ship Hari raya<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU8944hp-NYepgjJAIc5Ss8dtDqCFN6WaNbKatTyKwDfAYfxgkNHDItjKm39sxxXUvwh4D8AHK_w_WK8GuzGZKjkUMeYP1Bz6p18UhVhXxs1QuL3OWRE4sGtYjQGAS74OE2zO/s1600/eid-mubarak-image.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU8944hp-NYepgjJAIc5Ss8dtDqCFN6WaNbKatTyKwDfAYfxgkNHDItjKm39sxxXUvwh4D8AHK_w_WK8GuzGZKjkUMeYP1Bz6p18UhVhXxs1QuL3OWRE4sGtYjQGAS74OE2zO/s320/eid-mubarak-image.png" /></a></div><b>Ramadan sails away ever so swiftly</b>, even before the <i>nekbat</i>'s gone dry in the cupboard of neglect and the <i>hasidöh</i> pulls out in slippery tendons of rope, and we are up to our eyeballs in <i>bubor lambok</i> with its limp tendrils of <i>pucuk paku</i> and the sprinkling of <i>budu</i>.<p><p>
We are now going a-sailing, the seafaring people on the shore of Ujung Tanjong in Kuala Trengganu for it has always been in us, wind blasted souls encrusted with salt to the core, brine and brackish water in the Pantai Teluk with skeletons of abandoned boats that came back and could take the journey no more to Senggora; <i>ikang belukang</i> and tiny crabs peering out from the mud, pincer-waving to one and all.<p>
We have made this frame from thin bamboo, stolen probably from the bamboo hedge of the Sekölöh Paya Bunga, glossy paper from Indian shops, red and green and blue, and streamers entwined from crepe paper and gaps in the ship patched up - so as not to strain the budget - with old copies of the Straits Times and Utusan Melayu.<p>
They call it <i>tujuh likor</i>, a word that has long vanished from our everyday tongue. What is <i>likor</i>? And why seven of them in this lengthening month of puasa? It is time for ships standing in the front yard of our houses and bamboo cannons blasting away carbide fumes and deafening the cries of mothers and excited children and the voice of Pök Lèh from the <i>surau</i>.<p>
Ramadan has been a-sailing so quickly but never too quickly for a child. The night is flickering with lights and shadows and paraffin and whiffs of carbide in the air. Rushed is the <i>iftar</i>, rushed is the prayers of children of prayerful people for this is the night of the beginning of the month of Shawwal.<p>
The day after this is Hari Raya, oh the day after that perhaps, it all depends on the moon in the sky but oh joy is the night and food on plates, and <i>ketupat</i> and <i>kuah kacang</i> and <i>beleda</i>, the dry, sugar-coated coloured jewels.<p>
Would Hari Raya come every day, would all those past Rayas that have gone lost in the mists of years, would they all come back now, for now is the time for forgiving, for visits to past people all lying in the solace of their earthly beds marked with stones, time for children everywhere to feel a little rich, for a while.<p>
Dear Readers: Selamat Hari Raya. I have been away on a ship and have just come back to shore.<p><p>
<i>Raya image courtesy of <a href="http://ethnic-minority.libdems.org/en/article/2012/602765/eid-message-from-chair-of-emld">Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats.</a></i>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-6981443547126607132012-06-30T13:45:00.001+00:002012-06-30T14:36:39.855+00:00Letter From AmericaThis very kind letter arrived from America -
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Dear and esteemed Awang Goneng,<p><p>
I am hopeful that you are blessed with good health as much as you have blessed your readers with your prose. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYFmv8Vonx8cUiFW4QibkR7GKMptsuFwm0H0B1nttaT3v5iKEPqMJ80hRX95NgIn8n8q1vthd-lXflX2A6wDC3VYTe_uQNO0wp56iF0aXpSsk6K4gNvNfN9wURjKCL5yxUiFg/s1600/A+Map+of+Trengganu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="224" width="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYFmv8Vonx8cUiFW4QibkR7GKMptsuFwm0H0B1nttaT3v5iKEPqMJ80hRX95NgIn8n8q1vthd-lXflX2A6wDC3VYTe_uQNO0wp56iF0aXpSsk6K4gNvNfN9wURjKCL5yxUiFg/s320/A+Map+of+Trengganu.jpg" /></a></div> I have not written in a while, but learned you had published your second book a while ago. I purchased it "A Map of Trengganu" and wanted to express my deepest thanks to you. I began the reading and within a few pages already knew that this latest work would bring me moments of happiness as well as melancholy, because as conscious beings, the past will always bring happiness as well as sadness. Sadness in the way that one yearns to relive or go back to a time of innocence as well as a time of remembrance of days past, memories of loved ones who have past one's way - it is the circle of life, so to say. But, I was totally surprised to see your thanks to me about the incense burner! I felt that I was now part of your book and it made me so appreciative of life and sharing with others, like you have shared with your readers.<p><p>
I hope that God blesses you with a long and healthy life so that I can "selfishly" live from your future works; you are so gifted with words and your story is so transitive, it crosses over into all walks of life. Reading your stories allows me to relive mine. I hope you do well in what ever you do. You are an incredible soul.<p>
Sincerely,<br>
Louis Crespo<br>
New York <br>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Thank you, Sir, may God bless you too.
<i>A Map of Trengganu</i> is still available from online retailers and from Foyles in London and good bookshops in Malaysia and Singapore. Or from the Pizzaman at large in Malaysia: SMS, 019-3199788 (Karim); email, akarimomarATyahoo.comAwang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-66345979571755006532012-05-10T15:26:00.002+00:002012-05-10T15:40:31.978+00:00Every Day Rainy Beats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx08GVrXOoHyeqkhFWzbAH3YIf1beRvVF4i21WXAccFRuveZLEvaqbLVWqa9ov8IHfqNo1yHNYrSzzhqQeJwREseVWxQPZx0Zmzt2fnXt3gYOL9m0Ya7SmkhZ7A2QcOsOsgpK-/s1600/FlyByKite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx08GVrXOoHyeqkhFWzbAH3YIf1beRvVF4i21WXAccFRuveZLEvaqbLVWqa9ov8IHfqNo1yHNYrSzzhqQeJwREseVWxQPZx0Zmzt2fnXt3gYOL9m0Ya7SmkhZ7A2QcOsOsgpK-/s320/FlyByKite.jpg" /></a></div>
<b>In Kuala Trengganu the monsoon sings a tune</b> that rattles on corrugated roofs that lulls cats to sleep. Fishermen home from the sea for a long snooze on the veranda, awaiting the wife's return with tapioca and stuff. But stuff is for the night, it's the <i>ubi</i> that now lifts the spirit, hissing out warm air in clouds as root turns translucent white. Tapioca and shaved coconut with salt from the sea now roaring mad, once the fisherman's ground, now his dread.
Sounds of distant thunder beneath clouds rolling dark. Pedicab pushers sitting under tarpaulins rat-a-tatting with sudden drops, window panes shielding the constant patter, travellers curled in trishaws, sitting behind waterproof sheets, listening to rubber dipping into bumps in the road, sprays of rain squelching beneath lorry tires, and the chatter of rain-soaked trishawman drenched beneath his hat. The patter and the squelch and the bumps and the drones; the jabber and the damp. In a milieu of patter and beats.
These are everyday parts, assembled in rhythm and sounds...<p><p>
Budök budök mmaing wa<br>
Atah jambatang<br>
Lang kangök, lang kangök<br>
dok terbang<br><br>
Anök-anök dok nnöcak<br>
Ssèmbak rötang<br>
Jatoh ddebök, jatoh ddebök<br>
ddalang lökang<br><br>
Cik Mbong makang kerepok<br>
ikang tambang<br>
cicöh cuka, cicöh cuka<br>
Awang Hitang<br><br>
Cik Kalèh göhék tèksi<br>
Ddalang hujang<br>
Lapu lik-lak, lapu lik-lak<br>
Ddalang pikirang<br><br>
Ddölöh Hasang mamöh daging<br>
Kena tulang<br>
Ggögèh gigi, ggögèh gigi<br>
Dök setarang<br><br>
Kucing bapök masok dapor<br>
Bahang ikang<br>
Pacör-kecing, pacör kecing<br>
Ddalang ppayang.<br><br>
<i>Illustration: <a href="http://www.etsy.com/listing/62047718/flight-by-kite-5x7-print?ref=v1_other_1">Fly by Kite</a> by Jayme McGowan. With thanks</i>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-84998157465784505802012-01-25T14:20:00.035+00:002012-01-26T00:19:04.275+00:00Stamping Around the World<b>Father collected stamps.</b> He put them in a leather valise,<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD3tLCMNu2Ne49elW_g7hydqGK2eQjbDzcKYR2E-0SK3JLPuNNC5y2KLtUUL6SjGZEIKFs3vUf2g7yRIfwxaNB7Ikt1-Xu-54h5bAzKGhfHsjWbTHPC6zdi87sW1yX4IPgEBIQ/s1600/FMS+Tiger+stamp_red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="116" width="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD3tLCMNu2Ne49elW_g7hydqGK2eQjbDzcKYR2E-0SK3JLPuNNC5y2KLtUUL6SjGZEIKFs3vUf2g7yRIfwxaNB7Ikt1-Xu-54h5bAzKGhfHsjWbTHPC6zdi87sW1yX4IPgEBIQ/s200/FMS+Tiger+stamp_red.jpg" /></a></div>and that was his album. He kept his entire collection in there, stamps still stuck to shreds of envelope paper, used stamps with glueless backs, waiting to be assigned to country pages in an album that he never bought, clusters of mint stamps still clinging to neighbours by their perforated edges, and commemorative envelopes, Queen Elizabeth's coronation, Merdeka day, and some other dates that I don't now remember.<br />
<br />
He wasn't a serious collector like his neighbour Wang Nawang, who lived three houses away from us, in the same row that looked into the market, but further down to the shore. Wang Nawang stuck his stamps with hinges, in pages of an album that probably bore the Stanley Gibbons insignia. We often saw him sit by his window, looking into his stamp collection, in a cloak of sweet smoke emanating from his pipe tobacco. There he sat, pondering over Monaco triangles, and Ifni birds with smug and quizzical looks perched on long necks, and exotic goats and native people. Where in the world is Ifni now?<br />
<br />
Looking into Father's bag of philately I found the name S.A.Latif,<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDVUvbWomk0dZ9R49O20MHhek-Ssv88AJh-LvTLWpsxzVqcyTtd9EPrSeO_Mv14u8IKp0K7E8l6BkxytqpMPmrfVvIn8ohhOz6n6s7TMT9CHFCpEVqtQdZKaKC0ng7rN3kshK/s1600/Ruanda+Urundi+stamp_red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="92" width="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDVUvbWomk0dZ9R49O20MHhek-Ssv88AJh-LvTLWpsxzVqcyTtd9EPrSeO_Mv14u8IKp0K7E8l6BkxytqpMPmrfVvIn8ohhOz6n6s7TMT9CHFCpEVqtQdZKaKC0ng7rN3kshK/s320/Ruanda+Urundi+stamp_red.jpg" /></a></div>stamped in blue ink on the back of an envelope that came from Durban, Natal, in South Africa. Latif must have swapped many stamps with Father as he had many Suid-Afrika issues in his bag, but Father had postcards too from lands that stood beyond the further reaches of my imagination, and a medal issued during the coronation of Queen Elizabth II in 1953, and here and there were delightful snippets of life in San Marino and Nyasaland and Ruanda-Urundi, thumb-nailed into postage stamps that carried in them more than a faint glimmer of sunshine in a foreign country. Ruanda-Urundi, a land with people I imagined to be constantly dancing in unfettered joy, what calamity touched it much, much later.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdc8vJ6uk_iODaa-OUY1Ij5nsY_dSVMPuY9EDe5OX0NTOw661AGvL8ueSSt4RbGyXle0HIVPMiVD6R49AFgAxJt3fIP4bxjyf1UxEXcjcfH7emM20SvcLQyznIUUEWYs3LBhB7/s1600/1943_japanese_rice_stamp_red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="160" width="119" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdc8vJ6uk_iODaa-OUY1Ij5nsY_dSVMPuY9EDe5OX0NTOw661AGvL8ueSSt4RbGyXle0HIVPMiVD6R49AFgAxJt3fIP4bxjyf1UxEXcjcfH7emM20SvcLQyznIUUEWYs3LBhB7/s200/1943_japanese_rice_stamp_red.jpg" /></a></div>But for all those sounds conjured in vivid mental pictures and the alliterative lure of foreign lands,Father's interest was basically local. His bag was filled with Federated Malay State issues, tigers confined in serrated edges, aroused from jungle slumber; FMS stamps with the BMA overprint, and Trengganu stamps with overprints of Japanese characters and the occupying power's own issues showing a farmer ploughing the Malayan land as rays of the Japanese sun shone behind his field.<br />
When I too started to collect stamps, I wrote to S.A.Latif in Natal asking if he was ready for further swaps, but Father must have given more than he had pages in his album. “Please do not send me any more stamps as I have more than I need from Malaya,” he wrote back, but he also very kindly enclosed some South Africa stamps, and then I heard form him no more. My collection expanded very slowly with occasional replenishments from Father's promiscuous pile, but occasionally I bought stamps from a dealer named Lee Cheng Puan in Duku Road, Singapore. Lee sent us stamps in little booklets from which we picked and then we sent back the rest with cash for the purchase that amounted to no more than a few dollars. <br />
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Emboldened by that <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIzW6PqB1jUk86qqzfcj5Xbmcy_IfmNxZPgCDFs4BmODu7RT7t_j9a0OdSlIM005A7vKLktp0aVH2ypdZvtr0C9_7526U0NqrZxkAkiF1dbp9-bvwov4hPbYtpNRxlSDgsDWSM/s1600/charles_atlas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="133" width="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIzW6PqB1jUk86qqzfcj5Xbmcy_IfmNxZPgCDFs4BmODu7RT7t_j9a0OdSlIM005A7vKLktp0aVH2ypdZvtr0C9_7526U0NqrZxkAkiF1dbp9-bvwov4hPbYtpNRxlSDgsDWSM/s320/charles_atlas.jpg" /></a></div>I looked to further shores and found one as I was scouring through TitBits, a magazine that Father occasionally brought home from the Chee Seek store in Kampung China. There were snippets in there of human interest stories, laughter from my favourite cartoonist Clew, Charles Atlas in his leopard skin underwear urging you not to have sand kicked in your eyes by beach bullies. And then, in one corner, were the good people from the London company of Broadway Approvals.<br />
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Broadway said they sent stamps out on approval, so I wrote to them, and – to my surprise - they did: in a little booklet came Ifni and Monaco and San Marino and Helvetica and more places you could hurry to by turning the pages. They were all sent for your approval, for you to take your pick, and to send back whatever you didn't want to Broadway Approvals plus a postal order for your purchase. I took what I wanted and sold the rest to my classmates, and the whole collection, as I recall, cost $15.00 which was probably about £1 15s 3d in old money.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBLKtYoN0qLdToDA2oz2MCdRzyRZiQ1-DTAs1lcCo7GbrN8d8SsEWVqAyszanEGxohWKmhU9zaqwwpWVE2z50wwnE5D2P-jbx4NVpZm9WNg93nmODIS68dBp4LPhMhM3BUd51/s1600/Broadway+Approvals_cut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="144" width="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBLKtYoN0qLdToDA2oz2MCdRzyRZiQ1-DTAs1lcCo7GbrN8d8SsEWVqAyszanEGxohWKmhU9zaqwwpWVE2z50wwnE5D2P-jbx4NVpZm9WNg93nmODIS68dBp4LPhMhM3BUd51/s320/Broadway+Approvals_cut.jpg" /></a></div>The world spun on a different axis in those days when trust was truly global. Which trader would think it wise now to send a collection of stamps halfway around the world to a child in primary school? I found a Broadway Approvals advertisement recently that was almost similar to the one I saw in TitBits and was touched by this tagline in their copy, “But please tell your parents you are answering this advertisement.”<br />
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Broadway Approvals, I have a confession to make after all these years: my parents didn't know.<br />
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*I have done further research into Broadway Approvals. They were in South London, at 50 Denmark Hill. In 1956 they brought the Micromodel Company, a company credited with the origination of cut-out models of historic buildings and castles. The man behind Broadway Approvals was George Santo. Thank you Mr Santo!Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-79415445830043976392012-01-21T14:18:00.008+00:002012-01-26T10:17:20.254+00:00Chinese New Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbaJTGqxLfzMlf6XuosW_zpyAYOl9JpoS_fvbTXR5yP5XXTctSM5717TfblA0LLZukiaG9Buiv0m0239TsL_jRu2D6fJQh5GSKIrJ2VhEBvK4FGWxJkavP3Ni8BAFihiJKtpEo/s1600/CNY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="179" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbaJTGqxLfzMlf6XuosW_zpyAYOl9JpoS_fvbTXR5yP5XXTctSM5717TfblA0LLZukiaG9Buiv0m0239TsL_jRu2D6fJQh5GSKIrJ2VhEBvK4FGWxJkavP3Ni8BAFihiJKtpEo/s320/CNY.jpg" /></a></div><center>To all my Chinese readers, a very happy new year from me and from Pök Téng and Mat Spröng too.</CENTER><br />
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<center>Selamat Tahong Baru!</CENTER><br />
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<center>[Image courtesy of http://1800sunstar.com]</CENTER>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-779979124694065782012-01-05T14:58:00.019+00:002012-01-06T00:14:29.618+00:00A Book In A Quiet Corner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZfgR6D483c_OtxH1PcdJr2I5hl-Sf0rp7-nhdHtXBoMChIB2cdhvU8J4E7zYyUQSft51HJ3Hb_pHH2wAupxdq5KnaOXw2xG6_bUXVF2-XYyNewX2cbfjC1R-d2ZII2nw3Ub0/s1600/Foyles+Receipt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="194" width="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZfgR6D483c_OtxH1PcdJr2I5hl-Sf0rp7-nhdHtXBoMChIB2cdhvU8J4E7zYyUQSft51HJ3Hb_pHH2wAupxdq5KnaOXw2xG6_bUXVF2-XYyNewX2cbfjC1R-d2ZII2nw3Ub0/s320/Foyles+Receipt.jpg" /></a></div><b>It has been almost a year now</b> since we launched <i>A Map of Trengganu</i> at RA Fine Arts in a place called Solaris Hartamas.The band Diwangga Sakti played, Andre Goh sang, Jimmy Choo wowed shoe lovers, old friends and new inter-mingled, my sister baked cakes for us - old <i>kuihs</i> and new - and a really, really wonderful time was had by all.<br />
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Now the book is still selling well and I want to thank you all.<br />
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Yesterday I saw that Foyles of London had a few copies still on their shelves. So if you happen to be in London and would like to read about Trengganu (er, you would like to read that sentence again?) do make your way to Charing Cross. Even if the books are no longer there you'll still enjoy Foyles which, at one time, was the most famous bookshop in the world. Marks & Co (more widely known as 84 Charing Cross Road) made it to the stage, but Foyles fought the war and was both loved and hated for its eccentricities. But it is much better now.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHqzni1vw2LOPZQ_tvof87f3Ds1YqNrrelUODOCTiUVNO607o8d-gDbgvHlCqGrwDW65O3iHBU6HC1ieAOpq6H-phvRON8HEcxCrvLIPuOTW42ZR2zlyRdHAHmNba_54D2qAC5/s1600/Foyles_red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="202" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHqzni1vw2LOPZQ_tvof87f3Ds1YqNrrelUODOCTiUVNO607o8d-gDbgvHlCqGrwDW65O3iHBU6HC1ieAOpq6H-phvRON8HEcxCrvLIPuOTW42ZR2zlyRdHAHmNba_54D2qAC5/s320/Foyles_red.jpg" /></a></div>In the second half of my secondary school years, in a school called Victoria Institution (yes, you heard it right, I was once in an institution), our English teacher told us about Foyles, what a big place it was and how he'd spent his days there reading books he couldn't afford to buy. Foyles was - and still is - like that; it leaves you alone amid its chaos and it holds no grudge for your taking your fill of its bibliopolity.<br />
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I used to spend hours in its occult and philosophy wing wondering about Aleister Crowley, reading about Greeks in a barrel and many other things too weird and wonderful.<br />
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In leaner days the building that housed the wing was sold to Waterstones, and then Waterstones grew slimmer and the shop across the road is now taken over by people who divide its ground floor between respectability and semi-pornography, and its basement entirely for the serious study of the scatological.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivEPa_voTIgvaax2aEhq7zZv5NolptH1hP1k3-ZouC3PqkXmPtcH4zdSXljJF_zM4GxEntspLKpxYIP5Lzn4EsaVWZ2IbVU3HFWb93927AA1quhsuU44X4NRZ4pumvFO2t93LO/s1600/A+Map+of+Trengganu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="195" width="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivEPa_voTIgvaax2aEhq7zZv5NolptH1hP1k3-ZouC3PqkXmPtcH4zdSXljJF_zM4GxEntspLKpxYIP5Lzn4EsaVWZ2IbVU3HFWb93927AA1quhsuU44X4NRZ4pumvFO2t93LO/s320/A+Map+of+Trengganu.jpg" /></a></div>It warms the cockles of my heart of course to know that today, the Foyles that gave comfort to my English teacher in his hours of need, that gave me things to read on dozy afternoons, that is visited by many of the great and good of this metropolis, also stocks <i>A Map of Trengganu</i>.<br />
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So, if you're tired of London, as Dr Johnson meant to say, do take yourself there and buy the book, or just read it if you please, and place a discreet bookmark in it for you to return to another day.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-81639205775648106092011-12-31T18:36:00.010+00:002012-01-01T23:29:00.809+00:00Green Umbrellas and New Books & Old Wind on the New<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h1HT6TeZBk4/TPYWDiuvnsI/AAAAAAAACWY/ZOcFYgh4RNI/s320/002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h1HT6TeZBk4/TPYWDiuvnsI/AAAAAAAACWY/ZOcFYgh4RNI/s320/002.JPG" /></a></div><center><b>Rainy Day Cycling in Merchang</b></CENTER><br />
<center><i>I have borrowed this photo from my friend Zaharan Razak's blogpage. Read the story behind it at Zaharan's blog, <a href="http://zveloyak.blogspot.com/2010/12/global-cyclists-david-joan-wooldridge.html">'I' of the Hornbill</a>, and its sad postscript <a href="http://www.davidjoan.me.uk/">here</a>.</i></CENTER><br />
<b>Not a lot happened on New Year's day in Kuala Trengganu:</b> the winds blew stronger than ever, what Mother called <i>anging tahong baru</i>. Days have slipped past and months and years do concatenate looking at them from here now, but it could be that it was the Chinese New Year later in January that she was talking about, not the advent of the new one in the Gregorian calendar.<br />
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The streets were gusty, I remember, in the build-up to January, and the surf rebounding from the breaker jutting out into the rivermouth swirled above the milky water. It was the <i>air ulu</i> coming down from the interior, root, branches and all. What deep forests it meandered through, what hefty trees stood on the swelling banks to bid it goodbye as it dashed and washed its way through carrying <i>buöh rengas</i> and tendrils and sometimes a dead cow to desposit on our shore, far away.<br />
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This was the month when I would go to Mök Möh when the clouds had emptied its all into puddles on the roadside, and rain drenched the clothes of market people. Green umbrellas unfurled and plastic raincoats of schoolboys bicycling in the rain, oh what joy. Mök Möh, when time was opportune, would open a gap in the fence around her compound and she'd light the fire and fill the steamer with well-water and there was light and warmth in her little corner as she steamed <i>putus</i> in a row. Yellow <i>putus</i> with fenugreek, glistening white ones of tapioca, and plain brittle ones from rice flour. <br />
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There was something exhilarating about this recess in the rain, when a slight gleam of light peeked from the sky and people poured out from their cover, from houses, from under trees, and boys and girls - and adults too - waded in the water just flowing above the road surface in Kedai Payang. In this overflow from the monsoon drains, as they were called, came dead rats and specks of dirt that stuck to feet and left watermarks on surrounding walls. This moment of joy was called <i>mmaing air</i>, playing in the water, when nubile lasses raised their sarongs to show comely legs, when young lads' thoughts turned to the fanciful, when market traders muttered beneath their breaths at the lack of assistance from their sons or daughters when they were desperately rescuing fruits and vegetables and basketry from the sweep of the flow. <br />
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Mök Möh's <i>putu</i>, in all its variety, was comfort food for the weather. Hot and crumbly, dipped in sugar, or taken just as they came between a newspaper page lined with banana leaf until the chewing came to its <i>putu</i> core of coconut sugar. The sticky tapioca <i>putu</i> filled the gap in the belly until dinner time of <i>bubur</i> (broth) and salted fish, or, as we sometimes did in our house - the children I mean - we took rice piping hot and folded ghee into it and then, for the kick, we mixed in bits of red chilli pounded with grainy sea salt in the mortar. <br />
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We were sitting now in the dining quarter, the bucolic side of our house as opposed to the front that looked down into the urban market. From here we could look out into the <i>kampung</i> and Pök Wè's <i>mminja</i> trees and those other houses on stilts. The mother hens were not clucking now, nor goats bleated, but from narrow gaps in the floor of our tall house we heard the movements of domestic animals seeking comfort and warmth down below. <br />
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The calender was still untouched, the daily one that gave the working days in black and the Sundays in red numbers. On the top sheet, as yet untorn, was the greeting, Happy New Year. And Lin Dai, the Hong Kong film star, was smiling enticingly on the stiff backing card that also bore the name of the shop that gave the calendar to Father.<br />
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On his writing desk Father kept the monthly calendar given to him by the Pejabak Ugama (Religious Department), days of the month in little boxes and the festivals and significant days of the were inscribed where they belonged, in Jawi.<br />
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There was a bigger version of this monthly record of passing days, also with days in little boxes, that marked Racing days in Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur as well as high days and holy days that we arrived at at specific times of the year - Wesak Day and Thaipusam and the two Hari Rayas and Christmas at the end of the year.<br />
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The New Year meant a new school term, new second-hand books in the satchel, new faces perhaps in class and most certainly a new teacher. We had the book-list at the end of the last school year, we ticked at names of books that we could cadge or buy at half the original price from friends, and then, at the beginning of the new school term - in the new year - Father give us a few dollars to buy unticked ones brand new from the school bookshop, pages untouched and pristine since the day the printers put them between covers. <br />
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The cocks crowed as usual at dawn and the sun peeked occasionaly from between covers as the new old wind blew uncertainly with the light that shone through the crack of the first day of the new-born year.<br />
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God rest ye merry everyone, may nothing you dismay for three-hundred days and a bit more.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-79290084408294926232011-12-24T23:17:00.016+00:002011-12-30T00:19:52.811+00:00Pök Téng Rises to the Occasion<b>Diary of Pök Téng II (as faithfully recorded by Tuang Wingsteak)</b><br />
<center><b>24th December, 1951</b></CENTER><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXnuJKjhkaLjEUK_E6K80wGm7sC7sD7iUF_-07e_86wTX3LZToT31UICiezYH33NbAtgC6cp69u0VO97yOmDq64vu957SCKgrRfR13a6jREpDA15mtJkhWcYsAzZh8rY058IzB/s320/Monsoon_Trengganu.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="213" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXnuJKjhkaLjEUK_E6K80wGm7sC7sD7iUF_-07e_86wTX3LZToT31UICiezYH33NbAtgC6cp69u0VO97yOmDq64vu957SCKgrRfR13a6jREpDA15mtJkhWcYsAzZh8rY058IzB/s320/Monsoon_Trengganu.JPG" /></a></div><center><i>Photo of monsoonal coast courtesy of Ajidul.</i></CENTER><br />
<b>Kalu tèngök ggining bumi Teganung ning buléh tahang jugök luahnya.</b> Dari Tanjong ke aröh Ladang tu napök pohong ppisang tinggi lönjöng, pohong mminja dok nnari ddalang anging. Napök sura Tok Sheikh, Sura Besör, Sura Haji Mat Litör, rumöh cikgu Khalid dekat jambang ija.<br />
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Tanjong ning lèpèr rupanya, bila seperöng betol-betol baru napök Bukit Besör jaoh sayuk, sebelöh sana Masjid Putéh. Napök Kapong Ttani sebelöh Kölang, kubor luah sapa ke Sekölöh Paya Bunga. Pah tu sebelöh ning sekali lagi ada napök Tanjong Kapor, Tanjong Batu Satu, Tanjong Paya - besör jugök Tanjong ning - barulah napök Ladang sikik lepah könar batu satu.<br />
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Sebelöh Keda Payang napök pasör, pah tu balék sana nung ada Kapong China. Tu töh Mat Ppala Kerah dok jjalang kèdèk-kedek nujju ke aröh panggong Mak Ming. Banyök sunggoh pohong, banyök sunggoh orang dok jjalang gi mari. Ppala kita mmusing sikik, kelabu mata, tapi kena wak mmölèk ning sebab kalu jatoh gölök ning bbawöh nyanyelah sape-sape hök kena ddamör ppala.<br />
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Kita serabuk perok sunggoh hari ning, kalu kira ggitu dök buat setarang kerja ggining. Awang kite tu takdök kerija setarang habok tapi dok agah nök bbining. Kita dok wak dök je, tapi napök nye macang galök pulök sari dua ning, nye dok nnèwö keliling rumöh Mèk Jènak tu, macang kucing jatoh anök, nye hungga ssana hungga ssining, nök keléh jugok budök ttina garék tu. Hör, tu dia dok ddiri ccacang ddepang sasör rumöh mèk tu, kerising kerinyih dok ccakak apa dök taulah, suka gelèkèk dua-dua orang, takdök aröh nök kata. Awang kita pong dok wak jangöklah sökmö, bböjèng rambok apa serba, sapa kkelik macang lapu nye buboh minyök. Baju tu dök söh nök katalah, dok gösök siang malang, said naik ccadöng nye buboh kanji. Tapi pitih takdök sekèpèng harang, nök bbining guane?<br />
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Kita le ning serung kalu panjak tinggi-tinggi ggining. Tapi muséng anging nniup ning örang dok mitök tulong sangak takot buöh nyör jatoh ddebök atah rabong. Kemarèng Mök Song tu nasib baik dök kena pelepöh nyör atah ppala, kalu kena tu nök geröh sunggohlah, bicuk nnötöng. Tapi kalu döh tahu kita dok tinggi sayuk ning dök söhlah dok gi masok bbilik air tu kerèk sangak sebab kita dök larak nök ppaling kelaing döh, bukang sengaja nök tèngök, tapi kalu ssilak napök buléh jadi ttimbér mata!<br />
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Susöh nök cari pitih wak beli pape muséng ggining. Minggu lepah dapak jugök samah dua ambék upöh gi ppasör, tapi tu pong habih takdök sekèpèng döh sebab kemarèng habih sakör, hari ning berah pulök tingga dua butér je. Berah hancor pong maha ddö'öh le ning, döh nök wak guane, beli dua tiga cètöng pong tahang jugok dekat seria.<br />
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Mamak tu pulök dok mitök kita sapa bbuéh mulok, tulonglah catah pohong nyör tu takut ttipa atah rabong malang nnari. Tulah ambe dok atah pohong nyör ning denge gölök ning, kita asöh takdi di batu ttepi sura. Kita pong ada bawök badik jugök selék ddalang kilah ning takot jjupe ulör ccelöh daung ni. Kalu dia keluör sèkör ambe kena catah selalu, dök léh tunggu-tunggu. Kalu tidök aku dok tèngök mung, mung dok tèngök aku, göbör jugök tu.<br />
<br />
Bukang nye kita panda sangak tebang pohong nyor ni, tapi kita dok tèngök Bachök dok buak tu napök mudöh je. Tapi dök léh serunglah, kena buak hanelang, tapi kena tèngök bbawöh jugök sekali sekala. Tadi nök naik tu bismillah bbaik döh, selawak dua tiga kali. Satu lagi bila kerabak tinggi-tinggi ning kena paka seluör pèndèk, pah tu paka kaing ssahang lluör ikat kemah keming, ppala pong kena barot semutar macang orang Barat dok mari jjua ppasör. Nasib baik jugök teringak nök pinjang seluör kecik Awang kita tu takdi, takot orang lengök tèngök kang napök kötèng-kotèng malu je.<br />
<br />
Bila naik tinggi ggining baru napök pe'el budök-budök lari cerida ddalang kapong dok ngusék örang ppuang gila tidor atah sura. Nye petöng batulah, nye dok tönyèrlah kat örang ppuang tu, ssiang ke dia. Dia pong dok layang budök-budök tu ba'ape? Tapi dia örang gila kang, kita dök léh dok ikut èrè dia sangak, dia jjalang atah anging, kita hök dok jjalang atah tanöh ning lah patut nye dök layang dia. Betol jugök lah kita ning pong dök ppijök ttanöh le ning, tapi kita dok panjak pohong nyör, bukang dok ssaje.<br />
<br />
Lama sunggoh kita dök makang umbok nyör, orang rumöh mesti keponang kalu kita dök wak balék ke dia. Pah tu pucok nyör ni buléh wak bukuh ttupak, pelepöh dia kalu jemör buléh wak bakör akök. Lama sunggoh kita dök makang akök, masa nniköh anök Kelesong dululah gamöknye. Tulah kita dok ingak, kalu Awang kita tu jadilah nniköh takdirnya, guanelah kita nök cari akök banyök-banyök. Kalu anök orang laing adelah jugök rasa nök cari kerija, göhék tèksi ke, ambék upöh angkat berah ke, nök gipong pitis buléh nniköh derah sikik. Takdök setarang niak nök wak ggitu, dok harap ke mök pök die je. Tu dia dok kerising kerinyih macang kera kena belacang ddepang rumöh mèk dia.<br />
<br />
Bila napök dia dari sining rasa macang nök gi sèkèh ppala dia, tapi dökkanglah kita nök tingga kerija ning, dok tinggi langgok ccelöh buöh nyör. <br />
<br />
Parök jugök tebang nyör ni, tèngök tangang kita ning habih bbèce, betih habis nnelah sebab dok ggatong ke batang nyör tu. Kita tèngök Bacök wak ggitulah, dia ppaok ke batang nyör denge dua belöh kaki kemah kkeming, pah tu dia ggatong ke batang nyör sebelöh tangang, sebelöh tangang lagi dok tetök batang nyör lepah sekaki, sekaki, dia tohok bbawöh satu satu. Pah tu dia gelösör turong, catah lagi, sapalah habih dia turong bbawöh pohong, tinggal akör je.<br />
<br />
Nnelah jugök betih kita wak ggining, dök apalah sebab kita bese sökmö döh wak kerja ggining, sapa keluör orak merèh, dok akat sasök Wang Ngöh ttepi pata tu. Kerija kita ggininglah, kena buléh buak serema, bukang macang orang kerija pejabak, dok ccökoh je atah kerusi, nnuleh ddalang bok.<br />
<br />
Nasib baik jugöklah kita paka seluör katök Awang kita takdi sebab ada dua tiga èkör kerengga masuk ddalang seluör, kita dang kerènyèk dulu, kalu tidök terok mbènglah, bukangnya buléh lömör minyök rima!<br />
<br />
<b>[For translation, go <a href="http://ptomputeh.blogspot.com/2011/12/pok-teng-rises-to-occasion.html">here.</a>]</b>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-49937285944437846112011-12-20T17:42:00.013+00:002011-12-30T00:09:50.353+00:00Diary of Pök Téng<center><i>We have found the diary of Pök Téng, as faithfully recorded by Tuan Wingsteak, an Englishman who left the colonial service to go native in Kuala Trengganu's Ujong Tanjong in the 1950s. He spent his life among the fishermen and enjoyed especially his conversations with Pök Téng, a local odd job man and native sage. We are fortunate that Tuang Wingsteak recorded some of his conversations with Pök Téng in a notebook, found in the glove compartment of his Austin Riley that was donated to the Trengganu Museum (yet to be built) by his next of kin in England when his pen ran out of Quink and he himself finally deceased. Tuang Winsteak, as he was known in Kuala Trengganu, wrote in Jawi in his notebook,<br />
in Pökténgspeak:</i><br />
<br />
<b>December, 20th 1951.</b></CENTER><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/Awanggoneng/Landscape_in_Kuala_Tengganu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="308" width="365" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/Awanggoneng/Landscape_in_Kuala_Tengganu.jpg" /></a></div><center><i>Monsoon in Kuala Terengganu courtesy of Malaysian artist <a href="http://www.artmajeur.com/anuardan/">Anuar Dan</a></i></CENTER><br />
<b>Bila dengör ömbök dderu tu</b> naik kemarok pulök, nök makang ikang sarök. Tapi le ning, muséng tutop kuala, ömbök kasör, orang dök kelauk. Napök nye kena dok derumöh je lah, dok makang ubi török. Kalu nök makang pisang tu kena jaga lah sikit, kalu kena pisang dök mölèk tu naik mmulah perok, betang demang. Orang rumöh ambe kata pisang bakorang tu baik kalu beri orang baik demang. Dia tohok sebutir ddalang bara api takdi, pah tu kita makang masa tengöh panas berasap, hilanglah rasa luga, rasa macang nök mmaing rödak pulök.<br />
<br />
Muséng turong air ulu ning laok mengaung siang malang, macang bbunyi rima je ssepék ccelöh batang buloh. Kemarèng ada budök pasör tu jereloh ddalang pasir rebih ttepi pata, nasib baik dang ppaok ke dahang pohong bbaru. Kalu dök habislah dia hanyuk ke Pula Rèdang, dudok denge Tuang Puteri, dok dengör Mökyonglah tiap-tiap malang. Tapi ssiang jugök ke dia habih nnelah peha sapa ke lutut. Dia dok nnönènglah di dahang pohong tu takdi sapa orang gi ambek denge perahu jalor buat naik ddarak.<br />
<br />
Nök gi dok ttepi pata pong gerung le ning sebab anging kuat bawök masok macang-macang benda atah tebing. Kalu ssilap dok ccakong ttepi pata tu kena buöh rengas, ssiaplah sariyang pulök dok ggaru punggong. Le ning napök nye kenalah gi buang air ddalang rök sebab takut tèngök tebing dok rebih. Lagi pong anging nniuk kuak sangak, ssilap buak, kaing ssahang pulök kena tiup di anging, ssèlok lah napok seluör kkatök.<br />
<br />
Kerepok lèkör pong takdok setarang muséng ggining, maklong sajalah muséng ömbök kasör ning örang dök gi kelaut, Mök Song pong dök gètèl kerepok.. Hök ada kerepok kering je, tapi nök görèng minyök nyor takdök setitik hharang, habis Sèmèk tu nye buat minyök rambot. Napök nye kena gi ppatalah ambik pasir halus dua tiga cètöng nök buboh ddalang kuali, bila panah tu mölèk jugök buleh görèng kerepok. Natilah dulu, hujang dok turong ning, pasir pong tengöh basöh jjerok.<br />
<br />
Mölèklah dok derumöh petang ggining, kalu ada rizki dapak makang ubi kayu denge nyör parok. Lepah kena air kawa segelah gök jatoh ddebing selalu lah, tidor sapa ggarék .<br />
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<center>* * *</CENTER><br />
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Kita ssètök sapa jatoh ppale dari nyör kömèng, ingaknye guroh bbunying dari lauk. Bila buka mata baru napök bumi gelak gelemak, api lak dari atah Bukit Tteri nnyala lik-lik dari jaoh, bunyi dari Sura Haji Mat Kerici tulah yang jadi ambe ssètök. Budök-budök pasör le ning takdök kereja serema sebab ikang dök naik, nye dok kkupol ddalang sura, pah tu nye beratang pukol geduk. Habih rèng nye pepöh kulit lembu tu, dengör sapa ddarak.<br />
<br />
Dalang dok jjalang balik tu jeremböng denge Mèk Munöh dok tengöh kutip kayu api ttepi pata. Kita teringat nök kkabör kerepok hok ambe beli dari dia dulu tu dök mölèk. Kita kata ikang tu gatal tapi sebab anging kuat dia silap dengör, nye bedal ppale kita denge peranyöh.<br />
<br />
"Bukang ambe kata mung Mèk, tapi kerepok tu yang gata." Tapi bila muka dia masang ccatung tu dia wak dök je apa hok ambe cakak.<br />
<br />
Bila balik nök cerita guane ke orang rumöh, döhlah ppale mèröh mmerang, nye ddenyuk pulök macang kena sengak ikang ddukang. "Ba'pe yang muka mung bekök nnötöng, tu Yaténg?" orang rumöh kita tanye sambil tangang dia dok ayök tepong nök wak kuih bèke. <br />
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"Döh nök wak guane," kita jawak. "Bila jjalang ttepi pata ta'di kita ssèmbak tali sauh Wang Mang. Jatoh gguling bating, teratok ppala bbira wakaf."<br />
<br />
"Tulah mung dök semayang ggarék," dia jawak. "Orang gi semayang mung dok nnètèr ttepi laok!"<br />
<br />
[For translation, go <a href="http://ptomputeh.blogspot.com/2011/12/diary-of-pok-teng.html">here</a>]Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-45083654711653420422011-10-26T23:36:00.003+00:002011-10-27T10:17:08.804+00:00Before You Grow Old<b>We are all gulity, sometimes, of bungling around</b> without knowing where the head is or where hangs the tail. <i>Dök tahu ppala èkör</i> is normally used to describe such caper, when a person goes on blabbing out of their depth, or when a person intrudes in the middle of an argument and takes the wrong end of the stick, so to speak. Cats sometimes do this when they chase their own tail, but perhaps they are not all that clueless, perhaps they are having fun, it's hard to say. We'll have to think about Wittgenstein and his lion here.<br />
<br />
The head (<i>ppala</i>) and the tail (<i>èkör</i>) are chosen here because they indicate direction, the head being on top in a person and in the front in an animal. If a person had a tail it would no doubt be placed in a part generally described as his back, but in an animal the tail is definitely its rear. So a person who does not know the head from the tail, <i>dök tahu ppala èkör,</i> does not really know the flow.<br />
<br />
But you could do worse than chase your own tail. Take the kid who kicks the bin and pelts the dog and runs the stick on the picket fence at the bewitching hour. <i>Dök jjuruh haröh</i>, which is several grades below the clueless, for here is a deficiency in the department of <i>pe'el</i>. Now <i>pe'el</i> is from the Middle Eastern area, فعل (fe'el), which means behaviour. <br />
<br />
<i>“Tengok pe'el tu!”</i> are words of warning, “Look at that behaviour!” and the <i>pe'el</i> could run a gamut of things - <i>söngör</i> for one, goes beyond funny. A <i>söngör</i> boy is funny beyond the bounds of acceptability. He pulls faces at Pök Su, the village elder, he laughs and jumps over Mèk Som's basket of <i>kerepok lèkör</i>, he giggles as he taunts all and sundry. A <i>söngör</i> person is never an adult and is almost always a boy. Then there's the headless chicken of a behaviour, <i>nanör</i> that is, a runner here and there sans direction or purpose, incorrigible behaviour beyond <i>naka</i>, beyond <i>söngör</i> and eventually heading for the Henry Gurney School.<br />
<br />
<i>"Dök jjuruh haröh sunggoh budök tu,</i>” lacking in decorum (<i>jjuruh</i>) is he, lacking in direction (<i>haröh</i>) is that boy, and really, really so. <br />
<br />
<i>“Lekat pah ttua, kö'ör!” </i> <i>Kö'ör</i> is an anxiety word, a fear that something will be so. Until adulthood that is – <i>lekat pah ttua</i>, when – God forbid – they become part of <i>kaki hanyar</i>, the flotsam and jetsam of our ordered society.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-57461892206598863312011-08-28T17:04:00.009+00:002011-08-29T14:16:34.953+00:00Selamat Hari Raya<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0EdMiIteAjt8wsEzYActbj8gVYdXX3qp4nlMvFnA2S8nxQFnzkh9MfelqaIr2y7VwTkkjfjFocUbL3EUlK1ICstT6Xl-idIgk0rlMJSathe_Nt_xA1ztNLo67brLsOrys5ox8/s1600/Haji+%2526+Family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0EdMiIteAjt8wsEzYActbj8gVYdXX3qp4nlMvFnA2S8nxQFnzkh9MfelqaIr2y7VwTkkjfjFocUbL3EUlK1ICstT6Xl-idIgk0rlMJSathe_Nt_xA1ztNLo67brLsOrys5ox8/s320/Haji+%2526+Family.jpg" /></a></div><center><i>How nasi himpit is made.</i></CENTER><br />
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<b>Come Raya morning</b>, chaos rules. It is the same today in our household: time is flying fast and there is no sign of that button for the <i>baju</i>, and the shirt's unironed, oh woe is me.<br />
<br />
And then I hear the <i>genta</i>, long clanging sounds from far away, atop the hill, and Raya resonates down to us down below, through closed shops and houses in Kuala Trengganu. Children half awake from a full night of weaving and running in the dark and looking at faces lit up in the yellow light of Chinese lanterns that fold up like bellows but are now stretched to their full length by the weight of candles. <br />
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There are ships among houses, no, not sailing ones, but close, too close to the stairs of the house of Pok Wè or Wang Semail, and other people who have money to take to the shops for crepe paper and glossy sheets in bright colours. Bamboos split into uprights and longer ones, joined together in horizontals, curved in the bow and papered over to be ship shape. We have seen them coming in, navigating the narrow neck of Ujung Tanjung and Seberang Takir across the water, the Hong Ho and the Rawang full of goods from Singapore. Now we have them made up from bright paper made bright by the lights of flickering kerosene lamps, in the front yard of some houses, trailing from mast to stern with twirled crepe of pastel colours, and perhaps a flag up there, no, not of Trengganu, but an unwashed <i>kain lepas</i> – a long sheet of workman's shoulder rag – to flutter into the winds the news that it is the night of Hari Raya.<br />
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We are tired now but the day's fresh as the dew, and hearken now to the sounds of Bilal Deramang and his companion Bilal Sa'id in two voices, one sonorous the other gruff, oh how beautiful and sad, the tugging in the heart sounds of the Takbir! And <i>klaaang!</i> and <i>klaang!</i> go the <i>genta</i>, an old bell on Bukit Puteri. The maidens living up there in the mist of legends must have been <i>klaaang</i>ed from their slumber.<br />
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Now Father's looking smart with the apex of his handkerchief sticking out from the little pocket on the left breast of his <i>baju</i>, a place where the folded handkerchief with the <i>bunga rampai</i> potpourri sticks out in full aroma on wedding days, but Hari Raya isn't a potpourri day. Today it reeks of attar that came back with pilgrims from Makkah; his middle is wrapped in not quite the finest, but a good enough <i>songket</i> of Trengganu, bought from the shop of his friend Ustaz Su. And he wears his well-creased trousers to match the shirt, and that is the signal for us all. We are now ready to go.<br />
<br />
Hari Raya is always a problem for me as I have trouble keeping the <i>sampin</i> tightly wrapped in the middle. It slides down the slippery trousers of some silky material, bought from the shop of our Tamil friend Abdul Hameed, and when the middle wrap starts to slide down, it needs to be readjusted and re-folded, and then twirled into a holding belt in the middle. It will be a great embarrassment if it comes down to rest on the floor around the shimmering trouser legs in the Masjid Abidin in the middle of prayers.<br />
<br />
Around the Masjid, under the henna tree and the entrances towards Kampung Daik and another near the row of taps opposite the Lay Sing photo Studio are already teeming with people. Ku Haji Ambak and his sons in Middle Eastern garb, the paterfamilias with a round hat that seems to have been woven from some exotic straw, and their long robes brushing against other people in more familiar <i>bajus</i> tucked into the middle <i>songkets</i> glinting in the morning air. What a merry feast of Trengganu colours.<br />
<br />
I always have my eyes at this time on the magnificent house that stands outside the mosque for that's our stop after prayers. There will be men handing out coins to children at the gate of the mosque and we'll be handed ten cents if we're lucky, but in the house of our uncle Ayah Pa and his wife Che Da (it's her family house actually) there'll be <i>beleda</i> with a crusty coat of sugar in the plate and <i>ketupat</i> to dip in peanut sauce and probably a cake laid out on a tray, made by a company called Big Sister, and there'll be <i>buah ulu</i> and <i>laksam</i> and maybe some <i>nasi dagang</i> too with the coconuty meat of the <i>ikang aya</i> (tuna).<br />
<br />
The shops are closed but the mood is high. Adults exchange greetings and pleas for forgiveness for transgressions during the year, and the day's just about to start and it will end with us all bloated in the chair. There is a good view of the mosque from our uncle's upraised house, into the compound where the <i>bilal</i> will probably be seen in conversation with the <i>imam</i>, where people who are mosque regulars are still walking here and there. And there, outside the front <i>mihrab</i> tip of the mosque are the long stone pillars standing in rows, memorials to the royal family's deceased members. <br />
<br />
The middle wrap of some fancy cloth is abandoned now and hands are dipping into the lower pockets of the Malay <i>baju</i> now jangling with coins and rustling perhaps with a dollar note or two. The lights are now fading into <i>asar</i>, time for the afternoon prayer, and we will soon be imbued in deep melancholy – of songs that endlessly sing the Hari Raya, of sounds that are gone but still droning from afar, lilting back and forth in memory, and lights and colours here and there. <br />
<br />
As I sit here now thinking of that I see Mother now after her days of preparation in the kitchen, her face smiling, not basking in the joy of herself, but in vicarious pleasure from the enjoyment of seeing her children on Hari Raya.<br />
<br />
Our beloved and departed family members, may Allah bless them all.<br />
<br />
And I wish you all, my dear readers, a happy and blessed Eid ul Fitri. Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-79346157584717281262011-08-14T00:22:00.010+00:002011-08-15T17:27:47.020+00:00Passing of A FriendI have to record with great sadness the passing of my dear friend Tengku Ismail Tengku Su at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London at approximately 4.30 pm London time yesterday, Saturday 13th August.<br />
<br />
Tengku Ismail was in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital for more than a month after suffering two heart attacks. He was here on a mission for his beloved Terengganu, to exhibit some of his songket collection at the Royal Weave exhibition at the Prince's School of Traditional Arts in July and for a presentation at Asia House.<br />
<br />
He was given an emergency angioplasty procedure and stenting at the Royal Brompton to clear a clogged artery but recovery eluded him. For much of his time in hospital he was under induced sleep and even another angioplasty done later gave only minimal help to the damaged left ventricle of his heart. <br />
<br />
His brother Tengku Yusof was by his bedside at the time of his passing.<br />
<br />
I shall always remember Tengku Ismail as a very pleasant and cheerful man with much love for Terengganu handicraft, especially the weaving arts. He was responsible for the preservation of many Terengganu traditional houses which he brought together to his Pura Tanjung Sabtu resort in Kuala Terengganu.<br />
<br />
He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the genealogy of the Terengganu royal house and was responsible for a beautiful facsimile reproduction of the Trengganu edition of the Tuhfat An Nafis, the original copy of which was kept by his family. He brought a copy of the Tuhfat to present to Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. In a rare moment when he was awake in his hospital bed, Tengku Ismail asked me to write a dedication in the book he brought for the Prince, but the Terengganu Duke of Songket - as he styled himself - never recovered from his illness to make the presentation.<br />
<br />
His leaving us in this blessed month of Ramadhan is especially poignant for me as I remember in my childhood days that it was in this month that my mother would rush to the Tengku's parents' house in the precinct of the Istana Maziah to order for each of us a hand-stitched suit of Malay baju for Hari Raya. His late father, Tengku Su, was known for his tailoring skills and it was from him that Tengku Ismail inherited his interest in handicraft, design and weaving.<br />
<br />
He was a student here in the early 1970s and coming back here gave him special joy as he was keen to revisit his old haunts. His legacy will be his works of design for the Terengganu royal regalia. He had friends throughout the world and his mild eccentricity made him an especially endearing man.<br />
<br />
He turned 60 in hospital surrounded by friends. The Yang di Pertuan Agong DYMM Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin and the Raja Permaisuri Agong Tuanku Nor Zahirah visited Tengku Ismail in his hospital bed earlier this month.<br />
<br />
Tengku Ismail's funeral service will take place at the East London Mosque on Monday 15th August before burial at the Garden of Peace in Ilford. May Allah grant him jannah and place him among the righteous. <i>Alfatihah.</><br />
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NOTE 15 Aug.: Bureaucracy took time to process documents needed by Tengku Ismail in his to final journey home. His funeral will now take place on Tuesday 16th August at the place stated above.<br />
<br />
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Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-4046653542230431742011-07-18T15:10:00.007+00:002011-07-21T13:12:17.058+00:00Tengku Ismail Tengku Su<b>My dear friend Tengku Ismail Tengku Su</b> is still in hospital here in London after undergoing an emergency angioplasty last week.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim2lTmSoxGCf5HvQQfGzhbiDwTpx4o1HSLy21yuF0xCFnxEguBLcRFSevL6teGVdgzWmNml_QPx7uwBz9w8gxZUZXDMgwbgr9Uww0aqBMNGOXvzR6xvH1WgQ3DdOba1AuEX88q/s1600/Tg+Ismail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="1" height="320" width="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim2lTmSoxGCf5HvQQfGzhbiDwTpx4o1HSLy21yuF0xCFnxEguBLcRFSevL6teGVdgzWmNml_QPx7uwBz9w8gxZUZXDMgwbgr9Uww0aqBMNGOXvzR6xvH1WgQ3DdOba1AuEX88q/s320/Tg+Ismail.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
He was here on an invitation to the Prince's School of Traditional Arts and the Asia House, to give a presentation on the Royal Weave - the Trengganu songket - a subject close to his heart. This is a trip he has been working on very hard and the result was a stunning display here in London of this weaving heritage that Trengganu so excels in. Indeed, Tengku Ismail has often referred to himself jocularly as the Duke of Trengganu songket.<br />
<br />
He was taken ill very suddenly after his return from a trip to Istanbul and was immediately admitted to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital. He suffered a heart attack soon after he was admitted to the Royal Brompton Hospital awaiting further medical intervention.<br />
<br />
He is now on an induced sleep to give his body adequate rest after a chest infection last week. Please remember him in your prayers.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE</b><br />
<br />
My Dear Friends:<br />
<br />
Thank you for your prayers and to those who have emailed asking about his condition, this is the latest [21/7]:<br />
<br />
Our dear Tengku is still in a very serious condition and has been induced back to sleep to conserve his energy for the fight. He is now back on the ventilator as his heart is causing some concern. Please do continue your prayers for him.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-28789812113145086122011-05-14T10:46:00.002+00:002011-05-15T10:49:32.023+00:00Three Weeks to Now<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6FK84VEw__r_kPu0xgXCWp3SuogU2GoUndgyt01o7j-FJe-l44L1GA8RkvA-r4QzROhecqv_8EZdAOo_u_evigQl4C-4sEc8_9Uqfe6m5zx2VYZhQJGYUilj2F1TOdU6EQEYG/s1600/AG+at+Borders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="101" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6FK84VEw__r_kPu0xgXCWp3SuogU2GoUndgyt01o7j-FJe-l44L1GA8RkvA-r4QzROhecqv_8EZdAOo_u_evigQl4C-4sEc8_9Uqfe6m5zx2VYZhQJGYUilj2F1TOdU6EQEYG/s320/AG+at+Borders.jpg" /></a></CENTER><center><i>My last book-signing appearance,<br />
Sunday 8th May, at Borders, the Gardens.</i></CENTER><b>Three weeks have gone and I'm back here,</b> at base, and it has been very exhilarating and very tiring too. And I'd like to thank all you people who braved the traffic, impossible parking arrangements and impetuous cab drivers and impossible horrendous shopping malls to be at the book-signings. Thank you MPH and thank you Borders who hosted the last book-signing at their Gardens outlet, and they brought in some delicious East Coast <i>kuih</i> from Wau Penyu!<br />
<br />
Needless to say the experience has been something special for me to meet all you good people who have been kind, generous and a great change from all that shortbread that I have been nibbling while sitting before the flickering screen of an old steam-powered PC. Good-hearted people are less damaging to the waistline and more nutritious for the soul. I love you all.<br />
<br />
I met some heart-breaking people too in my travels but I shall not write about them here. They shall be consigned to a place less merry. They shall be <a href="http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/21supp/Article/#ixzz1MPFzsFdr">Elsewhere</a>.<br />
<br />
When a man in Dungun, or in Marang or in Besut says <i>“Aku nök gi Teganung sekejak,”</i> where is he gallivanting to? How could that be when he or she is already in Trengganu? Well, the place they are going to and the direction their SatNavs are set for is Kuala Trengganu. I hope that answers a question I have been asked: why do you give your book the title <i>A Map of Trengganu</i> when all it speaks about is Kuala Trengganu?<br />
<br />
That's the simple answer. The more difficult one needs some reading because, in the Introduction to AMoT I did express the hope that <i>Growing Up in Trengganu</i> and this present one will together shape a map of Trengganu. So the two books are complementary. <br />
<br />
So my thanks to all of you too numerous to mention, but I must mention two persons I am deeply indebted to: Raja Ahmad of RA Fine Arts who very kindly provided the venue for our Celebration of AMoT on Sunday 1st May and to Fazli Ibrahim who organised the do. It was a wonderful day for me and I hope you enjoyed it too.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-46698680994570471012011-05-05T02:42:00.000+00:002011-05-05T02:42:43.758+00:00Thank you My Dear Friends......And good reading people.<br />
<br />
News just in shows that <i>A Map of Trengganu</i> is Number 2 on MPH's non-fiction list (Number 1 is Tun Mahathir's recently published memoirs, A Doctor in the House); and <i>Growing Up in Trengganu</i> is at Number 12.<br />
<br />
From what I've heard from APD, our distributors, Monsoon Books in Singapore no longer holds stocks of GUiT, meaning another print order, the 4th, will have to be done very soon as it is also becoming rare in the shops.<br />
<br />
Last week I ordered 90 extra copies of AMoT for the Celebration at RA Fine Arts: The Gallery. APD telephoned me to ask if they could have them back as they are also running low of AMoT and Singapore has none left in their warehouse.<br />
<br />
I am very, very grateful to you people out there, my friends all.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-71190614388329231152011-05-02T03:48:00.007+00:002011-05-02T16:07:20.256+00:00A Map of My TravelsWe had a lovely time, then the band played on.<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfAzsf-6kXQkbea9bA4HSZ8TOHlZ2BLxQV7FABA512M3JYTbIFsY84dYY7BVp7TJ7fspR09pGm97CRs22IGq02IZyNh7rRXGpOb29-mQTpS_6q0axzn3A9opPAGwmkGv7pQ8Tz/s1600/Dato+Andre+Goh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="214" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfAzsf-6kXQkbea9bA4HSZ8TOHlZ2BLxQV7FABA512M3JYTbIFsY84dYY7BVp7TJ7fspR09pGm97CRs22IGq02IZyNh7rRXGpOb29-mQTpS_6q0axzn3A9opPAGwmkGv7pQ8Tz/s320/Dato+Andre+Goh.jpg" /></a></CENTER><br />
<center><i>Dato Andre Goh, accompanied by Dewangga Sakti,<br />
singing my favourite Tudung Periuk.</i></CENTER>The celebration that we had for A Map of Trengganu was a raving, raging success. Thanks to everyone who helped: Fazli, Kak Teh, Ishak Nengah, the Dewangga Sakti group and everyone at RA Fine Arts: The Gallery that agreed to work on May Day. And a big thank you especially for Raja Ahmad for lending us the venue.<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqXk43aCnZCowcrAvYW9k-gTFlI5_9H0A9udVLk8JNCgSxdlSaeOs3CjIRP9a6kqAXQAudlGYMgn3NTAnVLDEO0WhBqzGK2UEbE9QxFigclBpHeKD9d7n7iKWeXCVaSuwImoRD/s1600/The+Old+BBC+Duo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="214" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqXk43aCnZCowcrAvYW9k-gTFlI5_9H0A9udVLk8JNCgSxdlSaeOs3CjIRP9a6kqAXQAudlGYMgn3NTAnVLDEO0WhBqzGK2UEbE9QxFigclBpHeKD9d7n7iKWeXCVaSuwImoRD/s320/The+Old+BBC+Duo.jpg" /></a></CENTER><center><i>The Old BBC Duo.</i></CENTER>I thought I had strayed into someone else’s party, there were so many great people. Dato’ Jimmy Choo was there and Dato’ Andre Goh who sang my favourite Tudung Periuk. And then Trengganu’s favourite Adnang Osmang sang his ditty and Dodi delivered a most amazing rendition of the Syair Awang Goneng, accompanied by the Dewangga Sakti people. It took me by surprise, and I just stood there in the background, speechless. Somewhere among the crowd was Dato Raja Baharin, the man who designed the splendid floating mosque in Kuala Terengganu, and Tengku Ismail Su, the Duke of Trengganu songket was there too.<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhpILshisl5Q4Cr1Nyd-4vUCwEMJs-ywNbQHTRMaNuJtFzSYqiY5QVpPPgqN6SJ2F_vlJ7KnSJol-qijfLNKh06faf_cvn8K7x1BRL-RMFEY3e37lG8Shyphenhyphens_k2bv9jGoinsXq4/s1600/Syair+Dodi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="214" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhpILshisl5Q4Cr1Nyd-4vUCwEMJs-ywNbQHTRMaNuJtFzSYqiY5QVpPPgqN6SJ2F_vlJ7KnSJol-qijfLNKh06faf_cvn8K7x1BRL-RMFEY3e37lG8Shyphenhyphens_k2bv9jGoinsXq4/s320/Syair+Dodi.jpg" /></a></CENTER><br />
<center><i>The Amazing Dodi reciting the Syaer Awang Goneng.</i></CENTER>What was conceived as a little celebration with family and friends became a roaring success. I saw so many old friends in the crowd, so many former colleagues in the New Straits Times, many friends that I had made from the blogs, and many-many more people I wish I had known and met, and they were all there: Dato' Rejal Arbee, Dr Lee Soo Kim, Leung Thong Ping, Dr Sean Foley, Sharon Bakar, Adnan Osman, Pokku...just in one corner.<br />
<br />
Pak Daud, the man I mentioned in AMoT, p. 197, was there too. He made this special trip with his wife from Kuala Terengganu. Thank you, thank you. You were celebrities too, like Jimmy Choo.<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPcCbxj93HBte8c0im3w3nf1qU2YXxhpE4Z5XemNRHE9MvpYN5yasIlF1OgMNrVxxOWjgDBPRD0wuqnRHKEGbbZ8qConQFpVpdWZ4FixH3jvGVO1t-3RoxW46T5XcMiSNaBb-/s1600/Faces.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="214" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPcCbxj93HBte8c0im3w3nf1qU2YXxhpE4Z5XemNRHE9MvpYN5yasIlF1OgMNrVxxOWjgDBPRD0wuqnRHKEGbbZ8qConQFpVpdWZ4FixH3jvGVO1t-3RoxW46T5XcMiSNaBb-/s320/Faces.jpg" /></a></CENTER><center><i>Faces in the Crowd.</i></CENTER>A big thank you too to my sister Wan Asma who baked all the Trengganu cakes: jala mas, ropa, akok, Trengganu curry puffs, and she had time still after that to fry some mee.<br />
<br />
Many more were lost in their travels. This Solaris Dutamas place proved to be such a needle in a haystack of modern high rise towers that some just gave up and went home. Others were taken to another Solaris, just a stone’s throw away. A very old friend I’d not seen for many, many years – since our student days in London in fact, came on a wheel chair pushed by his son. They were seen wandering in an adjoining building, and then, somehow, arrived at the right building. Only to be driven back by the lack of amenities for disabled people in this ultra modern development. He just bade me farewell at ground floor level, promising to make contact another day.<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFiIHeHV7yHP3g0ZG1HGvWMxIaZp305cU6yVWPZw-sphhVFosys1o5uhLdgBeGZSWV8jz66DbK0oIpD2bZfrMziGPAxOktFpT3GjGFynJZHSgzQBhPFNEkTdCW4m0ggQeSvuqM/s1600/At+MPH_Am.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="214" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFiIHeHV7yHP3g0ZG1HGvWMxIaZp305cU6yVWPZw-sphhVFosys1o5uhLdgBeGZSWV8jz66DbK0oIpD2bZfrMziGPAxOktFpT3GjGFynJZHSgzQBhPFNEkTdCW4m0ggQeSvuqM/s320/At+MPH_Am.jpg" /></a></CENTER><center><i>Reading at MPH Mid Valley</i></CENTER><br />
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3NoW5uAPb_vHOAIkys8x5s5U3DMEHHTU5ncYGZXS9llrFeX02ovrjhyphenhyphenpxiaqH0yUZKoiGV2sEnf8jLJnEVJBR5twycOrqRuBsnMpABI-rtMCL0vzh-R7FPONWyT3dIJPBnRCV/s1600/At+MPH+Mid+Valley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3NoW5uAPb_vHOAIkys8x5s5U3DMEHHTU5ncYGZXS9llrFeX02ovrjhyphenhyphenpxiaqH0yUZKoiGV2sEnf8jLJnEVJBR5twycOrqRuBsnMpABI-rtMCL0vzh-R7FPONWyT3dIJPBnRCV/s320/At+MPH+Mid+Valley.jpg" /></a></CENTER>The previous day I did a book signing at MPH bookstore in Mid Valley. I was overwhelmed by so many wonderful people there too.<br />
<br />
My final appearance here (promise)will be at Borders at the Gardens, 8th May, 3 -5 pm. Borders tell me they are making this a Terengganu afternoon, with Terengganu cakes and A Map of Trengganu. Hope to see you there.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-33744220728634373112011-03-26T06:49:00.018+00:002011-03-26T14:37:22.709+00:00AMoT at MPH<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://monsoonbooks.com.sg/bookstore/images/front_0854317.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="219" width="143" src="http://monsoonbooks.com.sg/bookstore/images/front_0854317.jpg" /></a></div><b><i>A Map of Trengganu</i></b> will make its debut at the Kuala Lumpur Bookfair 20th to 23rd April though I am not sure if I shall be making an author appearance there as it is almost impossible to get a response from the organisers. It will be nice to hear from them yea or nay but that's not how things work in Malaysia.<br />
<br />
However, I shall be signing copies of AMoT at MPH Mid Valley on Saturday afternoon 30th April, <i>insha Allah</i>. It will be good to see you there.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Read the first 27 pages <a href="http://www.monsoonbooks.com.sg/downloads/ch1-0854317.pdf">HERE</a>.</b> Go to Monsoon's <a href="http://www.monsoonbooks.com.sg/">Catalogue</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Monsoon's cover blurb for AMoT:</b><br />
<br />
<blockquote>Following the runaway success of Growing Up in Trengganu, Awang Goneng now takes his journey further to map out the town where he was born. This book looks at the terrain of Trengganu, the landmarks that are still standing and those that have fallen to rubble at the hands of developers, the winds that bring chill and change to the inhabitants of his coastal town, and people – the important and the ordinary – who walked the streets and breathed the air that is laced with more than a whiff of dried shrimps, the sweat of toil, the aroma of röjök in Pök Déh’s plate, and salt coming in with the spray from the South China Sea.<br />
<br />
A Map of Trengganu gives a vibrant and extraordinary topography of the land and its people for the uninitiated and for those who are familiar with the terrain and territory. Time does not stand still in Kuala Trengganu as Awang Goneng notes, but it moves at a different pace in every fascia, and then it is gone forever. So who moved the clock tower from the roundabout in the town centre? You’ll soon be pondering this important question and many more things that you never knew about Trengganu</blockquote>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-56983317282295810352011-03-11T20:36:00.002+00:002011-03-11T20:43:19.103+00:00A Map of Trengganu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIAmnpUpParX1Xom7vC74L8xtC0bu-t7gsW4jEapxz5rcu94mQuU0HTTAODU_qWIyJMQK4YOMiwMjT8VosFrkJtXj5VTDz4wK7nFc8FBrlH5fsHyvk-M-1YwYtVAG3o__jBtH9/s1600/AMoT+Poster-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="1" height="400" width="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIAmnpUpParX1Xom7vC74L8xtC0bu-t7gsW4jEapxz5rcu94mQuU0HTTAODU_qWIyJMQK4YOMiwMjT8VosFrkJtXj5VTDz4wK7nFc8FBrlH5fsHyvk-M-1YwYtVAG3o__jBtH9/s400/AMoT+Poster-small.jpg" /></a></div><CENTER><i>Click on image to enlarge</i></CENTER><br />
<br />
This is your sneak preview of Monsoon's poster announcing a new arrival to its stable, <i>A Map of Trengganu</i>. This is the book that you have helped to make, and I thank you all, from the cat meowing in Australia to all you good people who have been coming here to read, skim through or to add your comments. And of course to that little dog in Brazil too, that has benefitted from GUiT's solution for keeping quadrupeds from going astray. See <a href="http://kecek-kecek.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html#3905670981948822058">here</a> and <a href="http://kecek-kecek.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html#1278045127610539940">here</a>.<br />
<br />
AMoT will make its debut at the KL Bookfair 23rd April - 1st May.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-6893060457014159812011-03-10T12:32:00.005+00:002011-03-12T07:09:23.904+00:00A Map is Not the Territory<b>At long last, with a sigh of relief</b> I can say that I have just put the finishing touches to my next book, <i>A Map of Trengganu</i> (AMoT), and it is now at the printers to be printed, covered, bound and dressed up for somewhere to go: the Kuala Lumpur Bookfair 23rd April - 1st May.<br />
<br />
Already I'm all nervous and draped in cold sweat thinking how it will fare when exposed to the sunlight of this mad, wide world. But it will be another one for my slim shelf of modest scribblings anyway, and good luck to the publisher and distributor with the two-thousand or so copies lying idle in their warehouse. I have already said to myself and those who have asked that AMoT shall be my last book about Trengganu.<br />
<br />
AMoT will be different from GUiT in some small ways. It will have more original writing than GUiT which came to this world as a garden of Kecek-Kecek gleaned from the years. I have written many long pieces and re-written many of those that were picked from here to put between AMoT's covers. And our wonderful designer Sinead in Ireland has done a beautiful cover for AMoT that I am sure will delight all you bookshop browsers who delight in looking at a book in a bookshop and replacing it onto the shelf once you've read page 99 while the impoverished author struggles to keep warm at home on a diet of stale bread and cold water. (Who was it who recommended testing a book this way anyway?)<br />
<br />
I hope some of you will buy the book even if it isn't big enough to stop your door. I hope too that all those people who did me the honour with GUiT will do the same come April. Meantime, here's a snippet from a page of <i>A Map of Trengganu</i>, not page 99, but another:<br />
<br />
<center><b>Unhinged By Thought</b></CENTER><b>A message in the head transferred to paper</b>; he’d insert it into the crack in the lamp post, sometimes he’d pin it to the lumber. Thoughts from his troubled past, written in Jawi, always in Jawi, the Arabic script adapted for Malay sounds, pencilled in the adept hand of an experienced scribe onto scraps of white school exercise-book paper and left there to flap in the gust of passing vehicles.<br />
<br />
No one took any notice of Haji Chik’s notes, the rants of this dishevelled man, hair uncombed, greying at the temples and wisps of curls, his batik sarung pulled knee-high, reeking with the dirt and dust of Tanjong. Distant thoughts, the angst of now, put into the squiggles of a lead pencil in disgruntled bits fallen on rocks of despair. In daytime he produced his handiwork, impervious to the people who’d pay him no mind anyhow, he’d walk into Pök Löh’s café to give a vigorous stir in his teacup as he soliloquised. <br />
<br />
There were signs in Kuala Trengganu and writings on the wall, some painted large in the hands of Che Omar, a gangly shadow of what he once had been, with never a shirt on his back, his sinewy legs protruding from dark khaki shorts, never weary from daily travel, always a bucket in hand and a paint brush. He walked with purpose, never fast, his bucket of whitewash connected to his head, expressing thoughts that he’d paintbrush onto the walls of Trengganu. Lofty Omarian thoughts gleaming on Trengganu walls in whitewash, some outside the old building that later became a Catholic church where he and his companion lived.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-41840165470583917782011-02-17T23:07:00.004+00:002011-02-18T07:03:16.870+00:00Head Noises and Ferry Tales<i><b>A Map of Trengganu</b> will be out in April. Here's a sneak preview from one of the places on the map, where a prehistoric monster ruled the water: </i><br />
<br />
<b>Everything stopped at Bukit Datu:</b> lorries, cars and motorcyclists and pedestrians, bicycles and the red and yellow buses of Kuala Trengganu. Suddenly the head-banging noises of the snarling engine, whining and roaring at every gear-change, the desultory talk of people trying to get over the maddening whirr, and then everything came to a standstill.<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5-UoXJgOEtwA7fD3_iaX4821TAcMvlyZsv3h517dFjA4z2nwBVA-VxnZfyquoA_9UVD9p5LZpE7phvC7F9MArsxF209T70RNP9w9gXlE81MQa0eewExmGzsxfUyLOgnuthLAf/s1600/feri++Trengganu_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5-UoXJgOEtwA7fD3_iaX4821TAcMvlyZsv3h517dFjA4z2nwBVA-VxnZfyquoA_9UVD9p5LZpE7phvC7F9MArsxF209T70RNP9w9gXlE81MQa0eewExmGzsxfUyLOgnuthLAf/s1600/feri++Trengganu_small.jpg" /></a></CENTER>Everyone got off the bus, now on brakes and tilting dangerously with the incline towards the river. Travellers had sounds in their heads that defined their journey, children slept as soon as the bus pulled out of the terminal, but even in their sleep they heard the roar and the chatter and when the monster ground to a halt, the silence became even louder.<br />
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I have walked many unsteady times down to the water's edge, head emptying of discordant noises and bleary eyed after the sleep when the road meandered through padi fields and the bus drove past country houses on stilts, huddling close to each other. People, there were always people moving about, around and in the middle of nowhere: women with baskets on their heads, men scything grass in open fields, children and their mothers with <i>timba</i> for bailing water from the wells. They were crossing the road and walking towards the trees beyond the padi fields to their homes among the hills and the <i>belukar</i>. When the bus moved it whisked you into somnolence's revolving door, coming in and out between sleep and wakefulness, taking you into dark places and bringing you back into broad daylight. And then the noises of your dreams became intermingled with voices raised in conversation, the grind of metal, the fumes of diesel. <br />
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Bukit Datu was the farewell to Kuala Trengganu, even if there was Kuala Trengganu still on the other side of the river. Disorientation took its grip very quickly when you woke up in the bus and saw that everything was standing still and there were birds flying as birds do when there's a body of water, sometimes a cawing sound, a kite maybe, high in the air, and cutting across the flow was the river ferry.Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-8459464495687777462010-12-31T12:02:00.008+00:002011-01-01T15:11:57.102+00:00Here's To Another<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://thestar.com.my/archives/2009/12/4/nation/n_20goat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" height="200" src="http://thestar.com.my/archives/2009/12/4/nation/n_20goat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Anging töpang kecang sunggoh<br />
Air böh nèllèh pah Balék Bukit<br />
Tahong lama ning nök gi döh<br />
Bulang pong gerhana atah langit<br />
Di negeri sejok kabörnya sejok ddö'öh<br />
Di negeri panah pong hujang belambök<br />
Setahong nök gi, habihlah kèsöh <br />
Jangang susöh nati ada se lagi èsök.<br />
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The winds whirl and blow ever so strongly<br />
The flood rises to the hill of Balék Bukit<br />
The old year's now leaving so wearily<br />
The moon in the sky's now eclipsed<br />
'Tis freezing they say now in the north<br />
The hot zones pour with rain 'n' shower<br />
A year passes by, so the tale endeth<br />
Courage, for tomorrow there'll be another.<br />
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We at Kecek-Kecek wish you our readers a happy and meaningful new year 2011.<br />
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Awang Goneng, Mat Sprong and all who sail in here.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo credit: Starpic </span>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9347186.post-42814402827940888472010-12-17T11:51:00.011+00:002011-01-01T07:41:01.381+00:00Urbi et Ubi<b>To be called <i>ubi török</i> is to be consigned to the bottom of the heap</b> because <i>ubi török</i> is Trengganu rhyming slang for <i>cörök</i>, bottom of the class, a dunce with a double 'd'. Of the things that are taken into account, <i>cörök</i> is the last of all.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-mxykZOsD-18XvhDU2PLV9M8hil0l5L4F7I5X34GkIO9VYwTChCqB6ZGmevowBuHbYG54aSKohyphenhyphenjHa7P5Qm7D_Hp3q0EqT4qYp0n9H_el6gyZEJmrHounnP0fSbgLe33nqG6L/s1600/Keladi.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-mxykZOsD-18XvhDU2PLV9M8hil0l5L4F7I5X34GkIO9VYwTChCqB6ZGmevowBuHbYG54aSKohyphenhyphenjHa7P5Qm7D_Hp3q0EqT4qYp0n9H_el6gyZEJmrHounnP0fSbgLe33nqG6L/s320/Keladi.jpeg" width="320" /></a>This is a good time to be talking about <i>ubi</i>, in this <i>piang böh</i>, the season of the floods. <i>Piang</i> is an almost forgotten Trengganu word (and perhaps Kelantanese too; <i>piyæ</i>?). It began most certainly from <i>piantan</i>, which Winstedt in his unabridged Malay-English defines as 'auspicious', but it is also used euphemistically to mean 'usual time'. So <i>piantang böh</i>, the usual time for floods, would have come to Trengganu in a very convoluted way, from <i>piangtang</i> to <i>piang</i>, and so on to <i>piang buöh, piang duku</i> and <i>piang piala muséng jo'ong...</i>the fruit season, the duku season, and the Monsoon Cup and a heigh nonnie-no.<br />
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And there's something there that we may have forgotten too. The fruit season wasn't just known as <i>piang buöh</i> but as <i>piang buöh kayu</i>, season of the fruit of the trees. Rainy day women with rainy day fruits, in baskets that are carried from boats to markets on the river-banks or at the intersection of roads in Chabang Tiga, or in the bay area in Tanjong in Kuala Trengganu.<br />
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Although the <i>ubi</i> is not, strictly speaking a fruit, it comes with the monsoon crop from the forest trees, and it holds a special place in wet weather. There is something comforting about the tapioca arriving steaming hot on a plate while the day rages with the monsoonal shower, or the large tubers that rise from beneath the earth and sitting oven-ready on the newsprint laid out in the <i>pasar</i>. One theory about the <i>ubi</i>'s rise with the downpour is that in this season of wind and floods, the <i>ubi</i> have to be dug out before they are damaged by the water.<br />
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Chuck a tapioca into the fire, roll a sweet potato in there too - <i>ubi kayu</i> and <i>ubi setela</i> - but some of the bigger <i>ubi</i> are meant to stew in the water, muttering incessantly and spitting in the air as the liquid boils and pushes the salt through the <i>ubi's</i> pores. There was the <i>ubi ppayang</i> that got its name probably from its girth, bulging beneath its skin like the earthen jar or the <i>ppayang</i> as we call it in Trengganu. Tenderised by the heat and moistened in the boil, a slice of this <i>ubi</i> takes the look and feel of your <i>nasi kapit</i> or compressed rice that travels well into the peanut sauce with the <i>satay</i>. I'm not sure if this is the same <i>ubi</i> that some folk call the <i>ubi nasi</i>.<br />
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The are many more <i>ubi</i> than rise above the soil, little dark ones like <i>ubi kemili</i> whose name in the local lingo is too rude to mention now. Then there's the hefty <i>ubi gajah</i>, the elephant in the room of the <i>ubi</i> world. The <i>keladi</i> is an <i>ubi</i> too, mushier in its outer layer when taken fresh from the boil and fuller in taste on a gloomy day when cats drop and dogs hurl from the sky. <i>Ubi</i> is the primordial food, a basic comforter, and a crop always in deep storage whenever the hunter gatherer goes out on the prowl.<br />
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That probably explains the <i>ubi's</i> lure. What better to embrace on a cold day than the steaming carbohydrate, dipped in sugar. For the mellower taste, the preferred dip is <i>nyiur</i>, the pristine coconut, shredded and salted. But there are others who prefer to dip it into <i>nnisang</i>, our coconut sugar. <i>Ubi</i> and its accompaniment, on the <i>selasör</i>, the rain can pour for weeks on end and the wind may blow, but the yam and the sweet potato, the tapioca and those myriad others, this is seasonal food, much like turkey on Christmas day.<br />
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Photo credit: I have stolen the picture of keladi (yam) [above] from <a href="http://mohdzawi.blogspot.com/">Pak Zawi's</a> wonderful blog. Thank you Pak Zawi!<p><p>Awang Gonenghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893937987435850954noreply@blogger.com18