We were in Kapit when May began, and our road trip continued very successfully back to Sibu, up to Bintulu, and home via Sri Aman. (For posts and pics of all that, start here, and work forwards.)



May also brought an excellent dolphin-spotting trip, organized by the Kuching branch of the Malaysian Nature Society.


All in all, it was a pretty good month: A number of interesting talks on historical topics; lots of fine food (including a steamboat foray); the inaugural meeting of an informal film group... And I finally won my battle with the UK pension authorities (believe me, it has been a long slog...).

Gawai Dayak, Sarawak's beloved Harvest Festival, gets under way tomorrow. (A propos of which, Calvin Jemarang has a really interesting article on the cultural evolution that has shaped the celebrations of one particular people-group.)


The last few days bowled us a bit of a googly, though. In brief: For various reasons, we made the decision to give up our Kuching flat when we head for Europe in September (we'll sort out a new arrangement when we return in February); and Nigel needs surgery (minor, hopefully, but any surgery is a bit disruptive).

We have no plans for June. I have more tests coming up in a few days' time, and we now also have to work around Nigel's little issue.

So the month is ending on a slight note of uncertainty one way and another.



Which might explain last night's cheese dream... I'm not sure exactly where we were, but I was walking along with Nigel and a couple of Kuching friends when this man in uniform falls into step alongside us. There's some chitchat, but it seems what he wants is to see our ID papers. I'm a little suspicious. His uniform's odd (the purple trousers are a bit of a giveaway...); and his manner is a little shifty. So I ask to see HIS papers. "You want to see my badge?" he says. "Yes," I reply. So he rummages around in his lunchbox, which turns out to contain dozens of different cheeses. Huh...? So much cheese... Surely suspicious... And after a bit more rummaging, he produces not a badge but the round, brightly labelled lid of a Camembert box... "Here you are," he says, with a flourish. And I woke up.

Moving swiftly on...



It has been another good month for reading (and listening to) books. My May star was The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright (an object lesson in how to pack a mass of raw emotion into a small space). And prominent in the "different-and-interesting" category was an audio-drama by David Henry Hwang, called Yellow Face (an amusing but thought-provoking exploration of identity).

Otherwise, there were:

-- Three on books and bookshops: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (understated and brilliant); The Stationery Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali (atmospheric, but a little overwrought); and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (interesting, but needs to be read in context).
-- One in the espionage corner: Spy Hook by Len Deighton (good, but probably better if you've read the preceding trilogy).
-- Three in the vintage crime category: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (you can see why Gertrude Stein thought he was the bee's knees); The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (the one where Sherlock dies -- or does he...?); and Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison (introducing an unflashy contemporary alternative to Holmes).
-- And four historical novels: The Capuchin Crypt by Joseph Roth (beginning in 1913, it's another moving account of changing times); The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley (started strong, but didn't quite deliver); The Passion by Jeanette Winterson (an intriguing riff on war, faith, and love in the Napoleonic era); and The Book of Salt by Monique T.D. Truong (an ingenious subaltern perspective on the Stein/Toklas household through the eyes of their Vietnamese cook).



Finally, a couple of articles that you might be interested in:

Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen ask: Is it Ethical To Be a Travel Writer? Hmmm, tough one, given all the moral issues surrounding travel these days. A good discussion, though. (Not that I'm claiming to be a travel writer, you understand. Writing about cats and noodles every week definitely doesn't qualify...) Meanwhile, James Chin, a former boss of mine, has a piece called Malaysia: The Sarawak Secession? Interesting times...

Anyway, controversy and uncertainty notwithstanding, Kuching retains its purpleness, sometimes prosaic but always powerful: