Ok, now here’s a film that’s guaranteed to flop in the West.
That’s right, it’s called “Colic”, and it’s playing here in Kuala Lumpur.
Would you go to a movie that is advertised by a pix of a naked screaming very young infant and the question: “Ever wondered why a baby won’t stop crying?” and then: “When he cries, someone dies…”
Apparently it’s a Thai film. That’s one I won’t bother going to see.
The trouble with banning books is that, if you do it, you end up looking like a prize idiot.
And that is what has happened to Che Din Yusoh, who is the “secretary of the publications and Quranic texts control division” at the Internal Security Ministry here. After all, the moment you are quoted in a newspaper (see here) as saying “As the country’s moral guardian, we cannot let these books in” and you are talking about books ranging from Spongebob to “Breastfeeding Your Baby: Revised Edition” to a book on collecting Chinese teapots, how can you not look a moron?
Che Din said most of these titles were offensive because of their sexual or violent content. Worse, he also said that some classics also had to be banned because they contained liberal Western ideas that were “not conducive” to Malaysian society. Huh. Just which liberal Western ideas is he thinking of? The one that says we should learn to think for ourselves?
I am still trying to work out if breastfeeding is a liberal Western idea, or has sexual content (breasts, you know), or maybe it’s violent. (Babies can bite. Ask any breastfeeding Mum.)
Spongebob has been finally been outed – his long-term relationship with a starfish called Patrick (obviously a lapsed Catholic of Irish origins) has finally been revealed…
You mean you didn’t know? You should have asked the Ministry of Internal Security here in Malaysia. They could have told you. After all, they banned a Spongebob book. Apparently they haven’t actually got around to banning him from TV yet – tut, tut. What about the moral safety of our kids, watching dangerous stuff like that? After all, everyone knows that not only is being gay immoral, but it’s also contagious. Especially for four-year-olds.
I would love to tell you I am kidding. But I am not sure I can.
Read the comments section over on the Bibliobibuli blog. The question of Spongebob’s sexuality is the serious concern of some church groups in Malaysia. And we already knew that Spongebob has aroused the ire of the “our moral guardians” (the Ministry’s words, not mine). At least one Spongebob book was refused import at the border.
Oh, and the interesting thing is this : the Ministry suggests that any distributor who wants to appeal the banning of a book at the border can send a copy to the Ministry for reconsideration. See a news report here. Huh? Just how does one send to the Ministry a copy of book that you are not permitted to import in the first place?
I shudder to think that this is the Ministry bestowed with our security. This country is beset with problems like illegal logging, poaching, drug addiction, bag-snatching, cable theft, loan sharks, terrorist cells, global warming, diminishing fish stocks, stealing of metal from public and private property, violence against women, white slavery, child prostitution, illegal immigration, apostasy (there are actually people trying to CHANGE their religion, for crying out loud!) ….and they are devoting their resources to banning Spongebob?
P.S. the Ministry is incorrect anyway. Sponges aren’t gay, they are hermaphodite and terribly promiscuous. In public too. And kids actually swim in the sea, you know! Worse, sponges start being sexual around three years of age. Disgusting, really. They should all be banned from the ocean and confined to our bathtubs.
Down with sponges!
(Expedisi Kulamba, Universiti Malaysia Sabah)
A week ago, we packed everything up and headed back to Sandakan from Kulamba, dreaming of hot showers and a toilet with a seat…
But six hours or more on board a fishing boat can be terrible boring when you’re on your way home. I work as long as the laptop battery lasts. Which is never long enough. Others sleep.
At the police base en route, they fish, so maybe with the lack of pirate attacks, they get bored too. This guy has caught an eel.
And then Sandakan finally appears – and we have to unload the boat. And wait for transport. Lavernita decides the wok is just the place to get comfortable while she guards the bags…
(Expedisi Kulamba, Universiti Malaysia Sabah)
Beautiful, isn’t it? And remember, you can click on these photos if you want a better look.
The third photo shows the kind of village you will see in this area. And the photo after that shows the local shop in one village. The only shop.
When I first came to Malaysia, Borneo was forested from coast to coast. Now much of it is eroded wasteland, self-seeded with those rampant weeds, Australian acacias. It seems incredible that we have swapped the unique biodiversity granted us for imported rubbish!
And has Borneo benefitted from all that cutting down of forest? Not nearly as much as it should have. Spend a week with a boatman on the rivers of the Lower Kinabatangan and find out. The average family income is 250 MYR. That’s about $USD 70. A month. Plus all the fish they can eat.
Most of the logged forest – perhaps more than 90% of the biomass, was burned or otherwise wasted in the grabbing of the commercial timber. We gave up clean water and clean air and pristine oceans for that. I guess the timber taukehs and others who grabbed their cut think it was a good deal.
I think it was a short-sighted waste of one of the world’s most valuable resources that could have benefitted the population for untold generations. Instead it made a handful rich in one generation and left behind a wasteland suitable only for monoculture –with no thought given to protecting water resources, connectivity of habitat, wildlife, medicinal plants, or in fact any kind of overall planning. Sure, oil palm plantations have there place. But this wasn’t the way to do it. We squandered the future of our children.
Mangroves are full of mud and mosquitoes and other mucky stuff, right?
Wrong. Mangroves are beautiful. Here are mangrove photos from Kulamba River, off the Kinabatangan, Sabah.
Recent warning say that the world’s fish stocks will be depleted in 40 years.
One contributing reason is that so many species have part of their life cycle in the mangroves.
Yet various state governments in this part of the world ignore the federal government’s rulings and persist in cutting down the mangroves to “develop” the state.
Sadly, they make money and our grandchildren will be faced by a world without fish. And beautiful places like this could all have vanished.
Why do so few people care?
I have no idea.
I spent 6 months working on a mangrove project in Peninsular Malaysia, and what I saw – the wanton destruction of our coastline for selfish reasons that ignored the future- broke my heart.
I am writing this on the plane to Kuala Lumpur. I feel as if I have just emerged from a refugee camp…the low cost airline terminal In Kota Kinabalu is being rebuilt from the ground up, and it is pure bedlam. Dusty, noisy, and the usable part has been reduced in size to something akin to an emergency shelter, with walls of striped canvas.
The KL flight was full and the check-in counters too few and the queues had to wend their way around the baggage x-ray machines and the waiting area and the queue for the departure “lounge”. Part of the floor was taken up with a heap of Indonesian workers who looked as if they had slept there all night and were camped for the rest of the week. And in the middle of the queuing area there was a pile of unattended “baggage” blocking the way, most of it in gunny sacks. (Remember all those signs about unattended luggage? Well, this would be enough to make any USA airport staff member have a heart attack. No one showed the slightest interest in any of it for the hour that I queued. At least it didn’t blow up either.) One of the sacks appeared to be a sack of rice. Ok, tell me who would take a gunny sack of rice on board a plane that has a 15 kilo baggage allowance and charges you $US 4.00 for every kilo overweight?
And , of course, there were the usual uncooperative passengers who seem to remain convinced that they will not get on the very same plane that every else is queuing for unless they push their way to the front of the queue and argue with the check-in counter staff. Gotta love this place.
Just to add salt in the wound, husband is already on the mainland. He flew business class from the main terminal on the normal MAS flight to Kuantan, where he was met by a limo and taken to a fancy hotel for a meeting. He then rang me to say that he is staying in a suite – all alone – that is bigger than our whole Kota Kinabalu apartment.
No justice in this world…
I will be back on the mainland for over a month, working on the avitourism project and being visited by my daughter and her son. Expect lots of grandmotherly gushing and photos from me soon.
Another shot from the Kulamba. This is Nipah palm…
Thought I would give you all a rest from swampy photos (for a bit) and show this instead. Isn’t it lovely?
The best, most special moment in an author’s life is to hold in their hand the first copy of their latest book. To feel it, smell it and realise that yep, it really does exist and it’s yours. All those sweat and tears paid off.
[And do we then sit down and read it? You’ve got to be kidding. I loathe re-reading a book once it’s published and won’t do it until I really, really have to – like when I have to remind myself what’s inside because I am writing the next book of the trilogy!]
Anyway, here’s the cover of Shadow of Tyr, Australian edition, slated for January publication, but it will probably be in many Oz bookshops by 11th December, and all you have to do is sweet talk your harrassed, pre-Christmas rushed-off-their-feet bookseller into finding the right HarperCollins box in an overflowing store room and opening it for you… Chocolates work wonders, I believe.
Many thanks for the artwork, Shane Parker…
Oh, and need I remind you all to buy books for Christmas presents? For all the kids in your family, all the way up to grandma – fiction especially. If stories in book form are going to remain as part of our culture, people have to keep the industry alive, and it’s the retail sales that do that.
