I found this when cleaning my laptop harddrive (how much space do we need anyway? I used to be happy with a floppy). It has been sitting quietly in a digital corner quietly gathering static for years, mostly due to my inability to name my files properly (untitled100.txt? wth happened there, eh?). I can't remember who I did it for, though. I'm ( Read more... )

In 1963, A. A. Navis, through NV. Nusantara (a publishing house in Bukittinggi), published Bianglala ('Ferris Wheel') a collection of 5 short stories. In 1990, it was reprinted by Pustakakarya Grafikatama (a Jakarta-based publishing house) under the same title, but was greatly expanded to include 10 short stories ( Read more... )

This was the story that one of my friends chose to tell at the new year's story-telling wotsit. It was a fairly standard story about a vainglorious hunter. But, due to both A. A. Navis's way with words and my friend's masterful comeditragic performance, it became a very entertaining story. Here I try to translate it the best I could, but please ( Read more... )

'Malin Kundang' is a famous folktale from the Sumatran peninsula. It's a story with an age-old premise, a disgraceful, ungrateful son cursed by his own mother into stone. It's not an exclusively Sumatran story, either, shared by many countries in Southeast Asia. A. A. Navis wrote this version of the story, where both Malin and his mother ended up ( Read more... )

Took a few tries, but finally! Hope I can post the Malin Kundang story after this, too.

Yesterday I was angsting about whether I could finish the translation to Robohnya Surau Kami ontime. I managed to steal hours here and there (like the unexpected delay in moving from one site to another, stealing lunch times, and whatnots) and got a very rough ( Read more... )