Stories from Malaysia
For the past six months I've been working on developing a Virtual Reality(VR) multimedia project titled "Elders of Our Forest". The project uses photographs, film, text, sound, and interactivity to create an immersive experience of being deep within the Malaysian tropical rainforest. The first two components focused on the Royal Belum State Park and the …
At a recent live storytelling event, I shared a story about three boys I met on Jalan Ampang, and how that encounter changed my life. I won’t repeat the story here but it ended with a salam and the boys walking away. But wait, what does Ampang have to do with Malacca? I had spent …
Strive not to live with nature, but to be embrace our place within it. A recent assignment brought me to Kampung Pinggan Jaya, Kuching to look at the community ran gula apong industry. For Pak Mahli, work is a daily ritual of slipping into his yellow gum boots and strapping a can of burning mosquito …
Quite happy with my recent purchase of a small booklet of prints from the weekend flea market. I was only interested in the first 7 or so photographs but there was no way to purchase them without tearing the booklet. The negatives were unfortunately nowhere to be found. One booth had a small box of empty …
Another routine visit to the weekend flea market in search of old photographic material. One of the sellers had a small plastic box filled with old photographs. Most of them were vacation snapshots, group photographs at schools, a series with a Chinese master demonstrating some sort of martial arts movement, photographs of a plywood company …
The Indian-Muslim masters of cendol A bowl of cendol pulut is a must. Rojak is optional. Time to head home and take a nap, I asked him for the total in Malay. He replies in Tamil. I start fishing for coins from my wallet. Haven't see you in awhile. How's your mother? he asks. She's …
Brilliant colours of blue, light grey, pastel pink, golden yellow smeared across the sky, shifting as quickly as the wind hurries the clouds. One frame morphing into another, no two moments are alike. I share the birthing morning with coconut trees, boulders and sand, moist from last night's high tide. Unfamiliar, nameless faces cross my …
A bus stop is the worst place to ponder on the purpose of life and existence. In fact it's the worst place for any thought at all. Lengthy ones are usually interrupted by the arrival of the bus and short ones only make the wait increasingly unbearable. It is best to simply exist, as if …
Earlier this afternoon, I sat on the RapidKL bus from the city back to Ampang. As I was walking back to my car, parked quite a distance away from the bus stand, I bumped into three schoolboys. They must have been brothers, with the eldest maybe 9 or 10 years old and the youngest maybe …
