Sibu Tales : SUDC

 1958 - 1959

 History Of Sibu Urban District Council  

Council Chairman :		Ting Lik Hung
Councillor :	1.	Abang Haji Abdul Razak
2.		Alhaji Abang Kiprawi
3.		Chang Ta Kang
4.		Chew Geok Lin
5.		Chieng Hie Kwong
6.		D. C. Walker (District Officer)
7.		Kong Chung Siew
8.		Lau Hieng Ing
9.		Lee Yu Yong
10.		Ngu Thian Eng
11.		Peter Jong Kuet Siong
12.		Teng Kah Eng
13.		Tieu Sung Seng
14.		Wong Ngi Chang
15.		Yao Kheng Sui

Miri : Story of Geese

 It is always a joy to have some chickens and geese in the backyard.

but living in an urban area, we have to abide by the urban council rules and regulations.

Once in a while we try to rear a few animals. Over the years, the most expensive but the cutest ones we rear are the geese.

They make a lot of noise but they are a comfort to our lives.

We know a geese farmer who raised lots of geese from his first batch of 4. Today after many generations of geese his farm has almost a hundred at any one time. And he is selling one pair at RM 350 from 2022 onwards. His price goes up at all times.

When I first came to Miri, it was 20 ringgit per bird.

Geese are actually very affectionate birds and when you have a pairm they stay close to each other at all times.

We rear geese to keep away snakes actually. But it does not really work.

Hemingway's Cats

Tumi Ngae my Sibu friend likes cats.
Kuching is probably the only "Cat City" in the world by name and by historical development.

The famed six-toed cats at Ernest Hemingway's island home aren't going anywhere.

Those who love Ernest Hemingway's books would have read that there is a special museum for Cats!!


The Story of His Cats : 
The cats descend from a cat named Snowball given to the novelist in 1935 and freely wander the grounds of the Spanish Colonial house. All the cats carry the gene for six toes, but not all show the trait.

The home is where the Nobel Prize-winning author wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "To Have and Have Not" and is one of the most popular visitor attractions in the Florida Keys.


I used to toy with the idea of bringing a cat into my English Literature class if I had a chance to teach books by Hemingway and fire the imagination of my students. But sometimes good intentions are often not so readily acceptable.

Then I remember this story. A foreign, enthusiastic teacher started a fire in front of his students to get his students to write about the dangers of fire. He was immediately hauled to the Principal's room and reprimanded.

(All photos from Google)

Cats in Our Lives

Hornbill Support Groups

Sarawak is called the Land of the Hornbills. But how many support groups are there to help conserve these magnificient birds?

Piasau Nature Reserve (PNR) in Miri The existence of many totally protected wildlife species like the Oriental Pied Hornbill is said to be one of the agents of change for the conversion of the former Piasau Camp into a nature reserve. 2016

Hornbill Conservation Project

The Oriental Pied Hornbill that has re-established itself in Singapore.

The National Biodiversity Centre, in partnership with Wildlife Reserves Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and researchers Marc Cremades and Ng Soon Chye, implemented the Hornbill Conservation Project to aid in the breeding and recovery of the Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) which had previously went extinct in Singapore but has since started to re-establish itself in places like Pulau Ubin and Changi.^[5][6]

Hornbills require tree cavities to nest in. However, tree cavities of sufficient size to accommodate the female hornbill and her young are not common in Singapore. The implementation of artificial nest boxes at Pulau Ubin and Changi have been successful and video cameras are even installed within the nest boxes to provide a better understanding of the behavioural and feeding patterns of these birds.

Hornbill Trivia

The School Magazine of the Methodist Secondary School is called The Hornbill.

We also have a road in Sibu called Hornbill Road.

There are five major types of Hornbills in Sarawak.

Sarawak is known as the Land of the Hornbills.

Two books have the word hornbill in their titles :
a) The Year of the Hornbill
b) Where Hornbills Fly

Red Faced Ducks @ Tamu Kedayan (Miri)

In December every year my mother would start worrying about getting a duck for the winter solstice festival or Turn Chek. Duck soup with mee sua was a special treat for all of us. And we really looked forward to the festival.

She could have a duck from our own back yard if she had been successful in rearing some during the year or she could buy a duck from the wet market which would be so much easier then. However she would save the $1.00 fee for feather plucking and all of us girls would gather together to pluck the feathers and use tweezers to pluck out the finer feathers..Ducks were really hard to dress!!

We had renegades in the family mind you....

But then the duck meat soup and the mee sua would be so memorable that we would forget the hardwork we put in. Today we call this social fun as "bonding". In the old days it was just sibling chores and perhaps just obedience.... But sometimes my mother would just shoo us off because we were doing a very bad job...she would say.."Go and study...let me do...can do faster...keli kelak (Foochow for talkativeness or chattiness)..nothing gets done....!!" But in retrospection kitchen work was so much more fun than work!!

Perhaps I was really learning about "effective habits from the kitchen". Do work quietly and efficiently and quickly...in record breaking time...

The red faced duck or Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata) is a large duck native to Mexico and Central and South America. But it has really found favour with the Foochows of Sibu. I am wondering whether the other races like this duck as much as we do. The Ibans are beginning to raise them in their villages.

I was this age when we moved from Pulau Kerto to live in Sibu Town..and my mother's herd of ducks  disappeared from our lives. Her ducks would swim in the high tide and we would fear the snakes coming in the evenings..and at low tide the ducks would be so happy foraging in the mud! We would watch all these from the stair case! These white ducks with yellow beaks are called Pekin Ducks or Chuong Nguang and they love to dip themselves beak down in the water to look for food. (Hence dabbing ducks). The scientific name for this kind of duck is Mallard. And they are found all over the world and in Sarawak.

We buy ducks like this in the towns of Sarawak...all wrapped up..Wrapped Cash and Carry!!

Three Happy ducks..posing for me..."How are you? How's your mother?"

This is one awesome male Muscovy duck...red faced duck which is handsome and is top of the peck!! This is easily 4 kg. If you cannot speak Iban (the lady duck farmer is Iban) you can see for yourself that 4.0 kg is written on the newspaper and all you have to do is RM16x 4= RM62.00 !! Pay up or try to bargain..and get it a round figure of RM60.00...Some foochows love to eat the red comb of the duck and find it exotic and gelatiny....Do you think that it will really give one longevity?

So whenever I see sights or scenes of ducks in the market at the end of the year...it is a sign that the Winter Solstice is here...and mums would be getting their longevity noodles ready for dads to come home to....
Winter Solstice Festival is another reunion for families....for fathers to come home from work away from home or from Imperial Examinations in the olden days....and Tang Yuen would be boiled to sweeten the mouths of the children.....

Happy Winter Solstice Festival!!

The Winking Owl

Ancient Greek Urn with Owl image

Owls have always fascinated me. But I have never seen a life owl sitting on a branch any where ....may be I am not such a night bird myself after all. But the topic of owls in literature and social history has be touched on so often by writers that I would like to discuss it too here today.....


The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom. And as usual we find ourselves reading about the Western world's owls right up to references from Ancient Greece. Athens' patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol.

The English Professional football club known as Sheffield Wednesday F.C. are nicknamed the Owls having an Owl on their club Badge and a mascot known as Ozzie the Owl.

Owls were considered funerary birds among the Romans.

Many urban centres in Sarawak are full of rats and I wonder if this bird has been studied as a potential solution to a long aged problem! Since the owl os a natural predator to control rodent population is a natural form of pest control, along with excluding food sources for rodents. Placing a new box for owls on a property can help control rodent populations (one family of hungry barn owls can consume more than 3,000 rodents in a nesting season) while maintaining the naturally balanced food chain.

But insteading of using the owl as a form of pest control some interesting stories about the owl have emerged. Malaysia has reported some interesting stories about owl meat eating. Athough owls have long been hunted, a 2008 news story  indicates that the magnitude of owl poaching may be on the rise. In November 2008, TRAFFIC reported the seizure of 900 plucked and "oven-ready" owls in Peninsular Malaysia. Said Chris Shepherd, Senior Programme Officer for TRAFFIC's Southeast Asia office, "This is the first time we know of where 'ready-prepared' owls have been seized in Malaysia, and it may mark the start of a new trend in wild meat from the region. We will be monitoring developments closely." Traffic commended the Department of Wildlife and National Parks in Malaysia for the raid that exposed the huge haul of owls. Included in the seizure were dead and plucked Barn Owls, Spotted Wood Owls, Crested Serpent Eagles, Barred Eagles, and Brown Wood Owls, as well as 7,000 live lizards.

Well that is the situation in Malaysia.

In China an interesting story about The Winking Owl created some social dissatisfaction some years ago.

Spring 2000
Volume 26, Number 3

Excerpt from
The Winking Owl: Visual Effect and Its Art Historical Thick Description
by Eugene Y. Wang

---

Can a painting such as the one shown here (fig. 1) say anything at all? In Western academic settings questions like this either appear to be worn-out commonplaces that induce yawns or are suspected to be quibbles, equivocation and play on the different senses of the word say. In a different institutional universe, however, these same questions may carry frightening implications. In March 1974 a group of painters in China, specializing mostly in traditional ink painting, were charged by the Ministry of Culture with blaspheming "the Socialist system"--meaning the state.1 Their paintings were put on public display in China's National Art Gallery in Beijing, as the so-called Black Painting Exhibition. The organizers' captions constituted a de facto indictment of the artists' subversive political intent. Among the paintings showcased, the centerpiece was Huang Yongyu's Owl (fig. 1),2 which shows a squat owl perched on a sparsely budded tree branch, facing the viewer head on, with an enigmatic expression that can be seen either as a wink or as a one-eye-open stare. Its exhibition caption read: "Huang Yongyu produced this Owl in 1973. The owl, with its one eye open and the other closed, is a self-portrait of the likes of Huang. It reveals their attitude: an animosity toward the Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Socialist system" ("PH," p. 27). A grueling chastisement followed the Ministry of Culture's categorical pronouncement. Reprimand sessions ran for months in the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, where Huang was a professor of woodblock printing, to coerce the painter into confessing his antisocialist stance.3
[...] It is easier to settle the political scores than the art historical accounts, and it is easier to exonerate the artist than the painting. There is a consensus now that the painter was a victim more sinned against than sinning, that he became an innocent pawn in a game of high-level power politics, and that the inquisition to which the painter and his painting were subjected made a travesty of art criticism. It is not clear, however, how innocent the painting was. Does the painting contain the message it was charged with?
[...] The owl's wink itself seems to reinforce the impression that the bird's enigmatic expression indeed contains an encoded message. For "to wink," according to the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, "is to try to signal to someone in particular, without the cognisance of others, a definite message according to an already understood code."11 The overwhelming central frontality of the owl, which claims the viewer's attention, makes explicit the painting's impulse to communicate with the viewer. Believing that the painting was wrongly charged with conveying a message it did not contain, one is likely to go about showing that it in fact means something, but not the kind of meaning that was unfairly imputed to it. This is an occasion for some radical alternative thinking. The enduring assumption that a painting is a deposit of meaning not only got this particular artist into trouble, it has also led art historians into a methodological morass. Wouldn't it be better for us to drop altogether the notion that a painting as such has an intrinsic message or cognitive content?

Eugene Y. Wang is assistant professor of art history at Harvard University. He is the author of several articles on medieval Chinese art and modern Chinese visual culture and has translated Roland Barthes's Fragments d'un discours amoureux into Chinese.


Actually owls do wink....I will leave the topic here....

Tokay Gecko

 (Photo from Wikipedia)

No reptile has become more interesting than this Tokay Gecko since Bujang Senang.....This gecko has also been the topic of conversation for many in the last few weeks.

Many of my friends from all over Sarawak are looking for this species behind cupboards  at home and on trees in their locales. Some have even asked my husband to be their middle man..."Please call so and so in Kuching....we may have found one!! and you can have a share too....!!!!!!"

There was talk that one man receiving such a large sum of money that he fainted when he saw the notes given. But rumours being rumours the tall tale will grow taller!!

Unknown advertisers/promoters have asked for this reptile weighing between 450 gm and 700 gm and will pay RM30 000 per gram I was told. Some of my relatives including a few very old men are now in the villages looking for them.....Will the people who are promoting this sale please place their photos on the Net? I feel very sorry for the poor guys who are scrambling around looking for this small reptile and getting themselves into accidents. Rumours are so widespread that even my elderly and sporting father in law aged 91 also got a bit excited and would like to try his luck....He must not hit his head on a tree branch again ( looking for wild mushrooms - smile). His last outing last year got him admitted in the local hospital.

I also heard that one man was killed because he fell from an old tree while out looking for this lizard....

Again and again I read from several facebook postings that the enzymes (which part of the body) may help in research for cures for HIV.....but I could only be convinced if there are references from medical journals.

At E Mart Miri and other places in the Baram this gecko will be the hottest table topic for a while.

Now that every one is talking about this Gecko what will happen next?

A Rare White Baby Pangolin or Tenggiling

These could be the most precious photos of mine for 2011! I was fortunate indeed to have this encounter with a rare specie found in its natural surroundings in Miri!!



Baby Pangolin comfortable on the tail of the parent

Most people would say that pangolins are quite plentiful in Sarawak actually if you know where to find them.

Baby Pangolin - my first ever photo of one. And I wonder when would be the next one?


When I visited my grandmother a long time ago in Ah Nang Chong I often had the opportunities of seeing one or two slaughtered for their medicinal value - their blood for some concoction and their flesh for a medicinal brew. The rubber tappers would often come across a few not to say just one ....as these pangolins rolled themselves up when touched.

And in they would go to the basket on the bicycle. Pangolins love termites and ants and sometimes they would be caught just to be let lose in the rubber gardens to eat termites in those days a long time ago.

Later I would hear from my Third Uncle (Pang Sing) that he caught and cooked one or two more.  By then the riverine villages in the Rajang were emptying themselves to Sibu. And the rubber trees were left untapped finally in the 1990's. And I had already moved to Miri. Did the older Foochows live longer because they had special stewed pangolin?

How time flies and people have different attitudes towards the pangolin. Today the world is crying out that pangolins are endangered. Rightly so if people collect them by the thousands and selling them in the blackmarket.But if pangolins are plentiful and they form part of the food cycle I see no reason for humans to eat one or two once a year!!

Friends have been telling me that if you are lucky you can see a mother and a baby in near by Lusut or Bakam.....these animals in the photos were eventually let go in the jungle!!

And the Foochow name for pangolin is Lah Lee. A great price is place on its scales. Its blood is good for several cures.

perhaps just a few days old. About 10 inches long. Still white in colour

Father Pangolin

Some notes on pangolins.

A pangolin (pronounced /ˈpæŋɡəlɪn/), also scaly anteater or Tenggiling, is a mammal of the order Pholidota. Like other animals some members of the family are already extinct. Pangolins have large keratin scales covering their skin and are the only mammals with this adaptation. They are found in tropical regions of Africa and Asia. The name "pangolin" derives from the Malay word pengguling ("something that rolls up"). There are still many pangolins in Sarawak. These animals should be conserved because they devour termites.

Pangolins are nocturnal animals, and use their well-developed sense of smell to find insects. The long-tailed pangolin is also active by day. Pangolins spend most of the daytime sleeping, curled up into a ball.

Do you know that pangolins are also related to sloths and armadillos?

How do you catch a pangolin? They are nevertheless very slow animals. Once you find an anteater or tenggiling (perhaps it is crossing a road in Sarawak) all you need to do is tap its back and it will roll up into a ball. You thus have the opportunity to carry it away and put it in a gunny sack or strong basket or even a net. It has no teeth so it will not bite through any rattan basket or rope net. Of if you find one in an ants' nest. You do the same too. You need to be fairly strong to carry it because one can be more than 12 kg. in weight. Babies usually cling to their mother's tail and they are indeed tiny with less than 8 inch in length. After two months or when they are double their size they are independent and can find their own food. However they may remain underground with their parents for a few more months.

Adapted from  Wikipedia.

I do hope pangolins are allowed to move about freely in the jungles around Miri. They are such tender and loving animals.And I hope the exotic animal trafficking will stop!!

The Night of the Monitor Lizard

It was fairly dark by seven without the moon in the sky. I was a little scared when my guard dogs formed a circle around some kind of animal in the garden. However I could figure out that it was smaller than my smallest dog. It was not wriggling or standing up so I knew that it could not be a cobra.

By the time the dogs sensed my  presence they had already killed what I thought was a small sawa or ripon( python). It turned out to be a small monitor lizard. This was the first time I actually had a minotor lizard in my garden. Usually I would see them near the river banks (either side) when I stand by my kitchen sink and they would slither away when I made some noise. Or when the neighbours' dogs pick up its scent they would start barking and the intelligent reptile would remain still for a while. Monitor lizards usually come around at about 11 in the morning when they know that the housewives could be killing a chicken or have some food remnants thrown out in the drains. But I have never met a monitor lizard at night!

Foochows have always enjoyed having monitor lizard soup. It would be very simply cooked. Slice ginger and stir fry it for a while and when the ginger is browned pour in one bowl of Foochow red wine and let it boil. When it has boiled add two bowls of hot water.

When the soup is boiling hot throw in the slices of monitor lizard. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This is the Foochow style of cooking this reptile and I have eaten it once or twice in my life. Many of my relatives who grew up in the Rajang River villages would remember stories of having monitor lizard for supper. So here you are some pictures of my encounter with a monitor lizard.

Reptiles are not really on my food list. However as Foochows and many Chinese believe that this soup will do wonders to one's skin we should consider ordering it every now and then. Or if you have a chance to shoot one in the mangrove swamps you should get someone to clean and cook it for you.

As for this dog bitten very unlucky monitor lizard I had it wrapped up in a few plastic bags and thrown into my wheelie bin for the MMC to take away. If thrown back into the river the carcass would stink sky high for a few days should it get stuck on any part of the river bank.

It was quite a night for me and my brave mongrels with Bubba as captain.

Are they twins?

I think my vet Betty would have a great laugh - afterall she has a great sense of humour.

I was walking along a road in Margaret River when I chanced upon these two dogs which you cannot tell apart. So I asked the one who looked like she was the mother in the group (three kids and two dogs and a nice young woman).

I tried to put my best Malaysian foot forward

"How are yar doin?"

"Good. And yar?'

"Good too...Are these two puppies twins?"

The young lady smiled

"YOu mean are they from the same litter?"

I answered

"Yeah!"

She replied

"Yeah they are from the same litter of six (from the same mother) and because they are pure white you cannot really tell them apart.These two are almost identical. Yeah...they are like twins but they are not twins. You see these are different collars. "

People in Western Australia happen to be one of the most dog loving people in the world according to some statistics.

There's always something to learn every day.