Fan Zhang Zhang من عند 15121 A Ponte do Porto, A Coruña, إسبانيا
Cute story, funny. If you like dogs you'll like this story. Set in the 50's, a boy named Don and his dogFrank. Santa spoiler
The first Hardy Boys book I read. Got it from Richard Baker.
I spent close six years in primary school growing up under a Malay teacher who kept emphasising to us how Malays are inherently born with the tendency to be indolent, lazy and generally unproductive. Along the way, she introduced us to texts such as “The Malay Dilemma” by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, detailing how inbreeding amongst the Malay community have given birth to a civilisation that is genetically inferior, inherently stupid and should not be expected to be on par with their peers that descended from East Asia. This is the justification, according to her, why Malays must make the effort to work even harder than other races to avoid this genetic anomaly that we have been cursed with. It suffices to say that “The Myth of the Lazy Native” is a book that I should have picked up much earlier on in life. The construct of Malays as being a lazy community has sadly saddled itself deep into the crevices of our subconscious. Even amongst Malays, there is ample evidence in popular literature to show that we have largely taken on the belief that we are an inherently backward community. But Syed Hussein Alatas shows us in this critique that here was upon of time in history where the Malays were admired for our economic finesse. Malays built the largest ships, were excellent merchants and spread our influence, culture and literature far and wide beyond this region. In 1518, Duarte Barbossa described the city of Malacca as “the richest sea port with the greatest number of wholesale merchants and abundance of shipping and trade in the whole word”. In a report dated 1637 to Holland on the situation in Makassar, Dutch merchant Hendrik Kerckringh described the Malays as people held in high-esteem and of great means who developed properties in the area. But progressive colonial invasions by the Portuguese, Dutch and British marked the start of the decline in Malay economic activity. Crippled by forced monopolies and relocations, the Malay merchant class receded away from town centres into the rural areas taking on subsistence agriculture as a primary form of sustenance. In preferring rural agriculture over colonial industries and the colonial brand of capitalism Malays are branded as lazy, indolent and unproductive – especially when compared with indentured labourers from China and India. These constructs endured and evolved over the centuries to the form it comes in today – a general acceptance that Malays are lazy in comparison to other races. This book constitutes in the author’s own words, “an effort to correct a one-sided colonial view of the Asian native and his society”. Scholars of colonialism, post-colonialism and sociology will find this book to be of immense interest.
I am a huge HUGE fan of Julia Child. Oh lord...those shows of hers. Throwing the spun sugar over a broom handle. Half-raw omelets with chicken livers. It all seems so absurd. The author of this book is unemployed and "lost" and in a soul-searching moment decides to tackle all of Julia Child's Art of French Cooking recipes. This is one brave woman. The story was cute and provided an escape into a life I would like to have. The apartment, New York, the husband - it's all so cute.