“I had always thought of English literature as the richest in the world ….” – Jorge Luis Borges, An Autobiographical Essay, The Aleph & Other Stories
He thought wrong.
English as language is taught out of the mainstream English novel and from those that come readily to mind are Austen, Powell, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy. Thus English as [...]
Archive for September, 2007
Ways of Thinking: Skip English Lit
Posted in Culture & Politics, Snippets on September 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The People’s Dharma Marches
Posted in Snippets on September 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
When monks march…
The tools of dharma protest: bare foot and a robe.
First, the Chant.
Then, the March:
Tuesday, Sep 18, 2007
Wednesday, Sep 19, 2007
Saturday, Sep 22, 2007
Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007
Economist: Myanmar (Burma) on the brink.
The Bar: Our Man in the Judiciary
Posted in Malaysia: Dialogue, Malaysia: New Deal on September 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This essay argues why, for the judiciary to have any independence or integrity, it needs power. It is not apolitical. But how and from where is its power to be derived?
The man in the VK Lingam video was an individual who, perhaps without realising it, became a public officer. And, better than that, a public officer [...]
The People’s Lawyers March
Posted in Snippets on September 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
(Apologies to The People’s Cube)
Overheard:
Psst… Lingam phoned.
Oh ya? Where is he?
Somewhere… He has a message.
Which is…
He has spoken to M
Mahathir?!
Not so loud!
But M is in ICU
You know he’s well connected. He can get anywhere. Speak even to the dead.
What’s the message?
There is going to be a new CJ?
Oh?
He says we march, throw out that ArF. [...]
Malaysia, a House on Fire
Posted in Malaysia: Dialogue on September 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
From Lu Xun (魯迅 or Lu Hsun, 1881-1936) in Na Han (呐 喊 Call to Arms, Preface)
Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now [...]
The Last Lecture & the Heidegger Life
Posted in Snippets on September 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Very Confucian: “Life is not about how to achieve your dreams. It is about how to live your life.” Words spoken in the last lecture (news article and video) by computer science professor Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon.
Related: The Path taken by Martin Heidegger. True story of Heidegger the fox:
There was once a fox who [...]
In Malaysia, an Offer of Deliverance
Posted in Malaysia: Dialogue on September 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Malaysia is in trouble. The political class is inept and it is probably plundering the national wealth. The police is an instrument of the class and is served by it. Everywhere both are hated and feared simultaneously. Other national institutions are in the same state of decay, only the stages of the decay are different.
Consequently, [...]
Malaysia: A Wounded Nation
Posted in Lina Joy Writings on September 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This, below, is worth recalling seventeen years later, both on the eve of Sep 11 and in the post Taliban-Korean hostage crisis.
VS Naipual in 1990 on “Our Universal Civilization“:
Eleven years ago, when I was traveling in Java, I met a young man who wanted above everything else to be a poet and to live the life [...]
Hans Andersen: Common Decency vs The Law
Posted in Lina Joy Writings, Snippets on September 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
After the Bible and Shakespeare, the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, total 156, is the most widely translated body of literary work in the world. One story has been translated into 120 languages such as Basque, Estonian and Khmer. The Nightingale in the Chinese is read in Chinese elementary schools today. Why has this storyteller [...]
Merdeka + 1: Who is Afraid of…
Posted in Snippets on September 1, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
… Bolehistan
That was Bolehistan, the real world known to every other person except, among some, Malaysiakini’s Steven Gan who lives in his own nobody cares for. He speaks of a man in love with himself, his own words and world, and he is ten years and two months behind. If he wants to [...]
