25.8.2026 Tuesday - Prophet Muhammad's birthday

we have a japanese chef

 Today is a free day, so I split it up into home, work and play. Most days there is work and play but on 'free' days - there is the extra component of home, which for today means the tidying up of some plants to take to the office. It is highly successful as we manage to move a large monstera to the office lobby. I will slowly add to this collection of plants in the coming weeks. 

I finish off the campus presentation, and then we go play p-ball again. I joke to Sam that it has taken 40 years for us to find something that we can play together. It is a nice outing with Daniel and Soh Koon, Derrick and Sally, and Foo. Sean joins us as well.

In the evening, we cook a simple dinner, Yoshi cooks Hamburg Steak and Leong joins us for a chat and something to eat. He asks after June.

24.8.2026 Monday - dinner bouquet

An interesting work day - half the office is away; site, slight illness due to the haze - my request for an office meeting falls through but it is ok, we talk anyway. I worry about fees, but Sam tells me not to. I worry about 49 but Sean finds out that the authorities have given their first comments which gives us something to work on - good news. 
Just as I am about to leave for pickleball, the team wants to chat; I am running late but they have put in the efforts so I listen and offer suggestions and confirmations.  We play, and then rush off to a nice dinner with the Hongs to celebrate Judy's birthday. It is always nice to sit and chat with Kelvin. It is nice to see the two young ones sat next to each other, chatting and distributing to the conversation now and again.

23.8.2026 Sunday - missing the garden

The highlight of the day is the potting of a stray fern from next to the drain; it has been there for 6 months. I moved it from one place, I can't remember where to here. It had been neglected for this whole time, and is still thriving, so I reward it with a home. 

another highlight of the day is the game with our architect friends, we have not played together for 6 months - it is good to see everyone again. let's see if they continue playing every Sunday.

22.8.2026 Saturday - lazy hazy day

 Today marks the 4th or 5th day of waking up early to write in this blog, I like this routine - an fresh recalling and recording of yesterday's thoughts and happenings. Setting up an office in Sean's room is a smart move, I use it to make sketch-books and note-pads from old drawings. Pages of old magazines are used for their covers, they are not very thick  about 20 sheets and can be held together using staplers.

Making things is good therapy; the repeated movements, the familiar results, the sound of the paper when I run a thumbnail along a fold and the satisfying lining up of the straight edges. I found myself doing this while waiting to come on an on-line meeting. While GW and FL were chatting about lobbies and mezzanines I found myself folding the A1 sheet into sketchbook size. 

A1 submission dwgs are folded and cut, folded and cut, and folded to become A4 size

 

the edges are trimmed, the spine is formed by leaving one edge wider to create a 'foldover'

 

21.8.2026 Friday - Physio

Sam takes me to the physio, the one in Sekama - she is young and thorough; she tells me to be careful with my ankles, she tells me not to run for now, she tells me squash is 6 months away. I am not surprised to hear this, and tell her I don't mind not running or playing squash. She tells me to keep up with the swimming and the trampoline, pickleball twice a week is fine - she tells me. 

Sam probably expects me to be disappointed with this news, but no - I expected this. I will use the time to exercise in other ways, and to watch what I eat more closely. I am glad that Sam is playing pickleball now, it is something we can do together.
 

20.8.2026 Thursday - several highlights today

The campus mall is accepted as a concept to develop into the next stage; the two young ones present while FL and I sit and provide support when needed. EJ is pleased, he is excited about the steel framed buildings on a concrete plinth next to a pond. 

The young men continue their good work into lunch so I ask Sean to buy us lunch downstairs; the air is thick with haze. I won't swim today. Laurance shows up for our K2 coordination meeting No. 1, which is good to see. He picks up some engineering issues for the Springvale Hotel - he is a good reference for the young people in the room.

The next highlight is an invitation to play pickleball this Sunday by the architects' group; I find myself accepting quite automatically. I am looking forward to that. And finally, the Fukadas come over for dinner, Jowie is buzzing with travel excitement, and Yoshi has some questions about job applications; Sean helps explain.

My application to be a PAM Fellow is going on smoothly, with JC's help.

19.8.2026 Wednesday - re-visiting Alfred Russell Wallace

 In 2013, Louise* from Friends Of Sarawak Museum approached us with an idea for an exhibition on Alfred Russell Wallace (8 Jan 1823 - 7 Nov 1913), the renowned English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and illustrator. Wallace was a contemporary of Charles Darwin, who independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection, and the creation of the Wallace Line; a distinct zoogeographical boundary dividing Asian and Australasian species. Notably for us in Borneo, Wallace spent some time in Sarawak (1854-56) where he wrote his seminal paper 'Sarawak Law' about species distribution. 

The former Sarawak Museum building (photo from Wikipedia)

The gallery would be located in one wing of the Sarawak Museum and is intended to be temporary lasting 2 – 3 years, targeting the general public, especially children. Our aim is to explore a different way of exhibiting the artifacts while considering educational intent, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness.

In line of the intrepid character of Wallace's work, we proposed the idea that the exhibition can be a 'traveling' exhibition; relocating from one place to another, and perhaps reaching the smaller towns in Sarawak.

Wallace spent a significant portion of his life in Sarawak and made several important discoveries here. We drew inspiration from Alfred Wallace’s ‘moth nets’ — a device he rigged in the jungle using bedsheets hung like a three-sided room, with a hurricane lamp in the middle to attract insect specimens.

The gallery in the museum is a tall open space. We propose to create a prolonged journey through the exhibition space by constructing a series of rooms using his ‘moth nets.’ The displays will then be printed or mounted on the ‘walls, of these rooms. The walls are hung from a ceiling grid and would have display information printed on them. Underfoot we proposed a layer of crushed fabric that would rustle and shift as visitors move through the rooms, mimicking the leaves in the jungle's undergrowth. 

We prepared some presentation material, made a model and presented it to the relevant authorities who were at the time busy with the construction of the New Borneo Cultures Museum. Without a firm plan, this proposal remained unbuilt; a fortnight of ideas compiled into a refreshing and nifty way to communicate with a younger museum audience. 

Recently, at the international art exhibition between Malaysia and Taiwan titled 'Tanah+Air: Navigating Asianness from Malaysia, (土地與水：從馬來西亞出發探訪亞洲性) I was pleased to see a section on Alfred Wallace.

* Dr Louise M. Macul is a prominent museulogist, widely recognized for her extensive work and research on the Orang Ulu murals.