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Author: Norqhaiziq Maharuf

Poetry in the Sarawak Kampong

For a change of pace, I present poetry from the kampongs along the Sarawak River. They are usually recited at gatherings of Malay people, where the men and women are seated separately. The ending of the first and third verse and the second and fourth verse must rhyme. The first

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April 24, 2025 No Comments

HeadHunting: A Rationale

Headhunting Among these spectacles, I was arrested by the ghastly appearance of a once human head. In mere derision it had been boiled, stripped of the skin and hair, and put on a post with a raw kumara [sweet potato] placed in the mouth. (John Alexander, nineteenth century New Zealand

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April 19, 2025 No Comments

Astronomy and the Ma’anyan People of Borneo

Astronomy of the Ma’anyan of central Borneo When I was about 10, a youngster, I learned about constellations. An assistant scoutmaster used a light pointer to show us the various stars and constellations. He tried to show me the constellation of Cassiopeia but I did not see a chair, I saw

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April 16, 2025 No Comments

Circumcision

Circumcision We were riding a bus in the eighth month of pregnancy from Kuching to Sibu. The ride was uneventful and we arrived at our hotel ready for a shower and sleep. The next day we would go exploring. At about 8 p.m. my wife went into labour. I called

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September 15, 2024 No Comments

Portuguese Borneo

Durate Barbosa This small essay describes Borneo before 1518 from the point of view of the Portuguese. This was after the Brunei incursion into Santubong in ~1512. The Isles of Borneo “Further on towards China, from the Island of Solor (Sulu) there is another island as well furnished with victuals,

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September 2, 2024 No Comments

All Creatures Great and Small #61

Irrawaddy Dolphins Our results indicated that the Irrawaddy dolphin lineage split from the Australian Snubfin dolphin lineage (Orcaella heinsohni) in the Late Miocene ( 6.82 million years ago) The Australian Snubfin dolphin inhabits the coast of southern New Guinea and northern Australia and is separated from the Irrawaddy dolphin by

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August 25, 2024 No Comments

The Children of the Mission

Children of the Missions 1862 Polly Polly is the eldest and a Kanowit Dyak orphan. She is between 15 and 16 and has lived with us since she was a baby. She was brought to Sarawak by English sailors who were engaged in the Sanskrit and Sakarran pirates in 1849.

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August 18, 2024 No Comments

Borneo Ghost Story

People who have Died Have Ghosts Once there was a longhouse. There was someone who had just died in that longhouse. After four days a young man went out hunting. He called his dogs to follow him. They did not meet any wild pigs that day. Then he looked up

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August 14, 2024 No Comments

The Hakka of Borneo

This article was extracted from The Hakkas of Malaysia to 1970 by Phin-Keong Voon from Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies 2024 (13)137-59. © 2024 Reprinted with permission. The entire article may be found at http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202406_13(1).0003 The Hakka of Borneo The ancestral homeland of the Hakkas was the uplands of the

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August 11, 2024 No Comments

All Creatures Great and Small # 60

New Species A new species of blind cave crab has been made known to science from Sarawak. 10.11646/ZOOTAXA.5476.1.13 New Species A new species of intertidal barnacle has been made known to science from the waters off of Sarawak. 10.11646/ZOOTAXA.5476.1.6 Orangutan Extinct orangutans of the Pleistocene(2.58 million years to 11,000 years

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August 7, 2024 No Comments
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