The Daily Brunei Resources

Not many of this blogsite readers would have read this particular journal published bi-annually by our Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka. This Malay journal contains many articles about the literature of Brunei and those of Southeast Asia. I have read it on and off but the other day during the Book Fair, I decided to buy many of the previous back dated editions - one is that Brunei books and journals printed by DBP are very very cheap and when you consider the amount of knowledge in those books and journals, the prices are ultra cheap; two is that I have not known about many of the things written in the articles. Some I do know but the depth and breadth that some of these articles go to amazed me. For instance this 2007 journal contained a book review about Menyuruki Syair Rakis (two of them), a symiotic (not even sure how to spell that, let alone know what it is) about the use of Pak Hassan icon in a book entitled Hari-Hari Terakhir Seorang Seniman, about Syeikh Yusuf, about buri pu'o (ada...

If you have been a regular reader of this blogsite and of my column in Brunei Times, you would notice that I have several constant or regular references which I always refer to. This includes the Syair Awang Semaun and the Batu Tarsilah or Genealogical Stone Tablet. Sometimes I refer to other classical works. I don't know about you all but I personally have been curious whether out there lies some sort of primer about Brunei's classical works. A primer in American parlance is an introductory but always comprehensive introduction to some principles and major techniques or tools etc. I remembered when I was in the States doing my Masters, the one textbook which I needed to master was 'A Primer for Policy Analysis' written by Edith Stokey and Richard Zeckhauser. My minister still raved about these two professors when he did his a couple of years earlier before I did. Anyway, I am digressing. Last Sunday, I found this one book by accident and I am recommending this book to ...

I haven't done a Brunei book review for quite a while. I thought I will do one on the many books that have arrived over the last couple of months. This book 'Language Use and Language Change in Brunei Darussalam' I thought was particularly interesting to people who study languages in Brunei. We take our languages for granted but apparently according to language researches, our beloved country despite being small both in terms of size and population, has a remarkable variety of linguistic diversity that it provides and I quote '.. a veritable laboratory for linguists in the fields of Austronesian lingustics, bilingual studies, and sociolingusitic studies, particularly those dealing with language shift.. ' There you go, another hidden treasure in Brunei. The book contained 19 research papers some of them written by our own researchers at UBD including Datin Hajah Rosnah Haji Ramly, Fatimah Awg Chuchu and Hajah Sumijah Alias but the majority of them are written by non-...

The Book Fair is finally here. Book fairs in Brunei are a mixed affair. I don't know whether this is a reflection of our society as a whole or is it because of our small size or something else. I have been to book fairs in other parts of the world. There all I see are books and many and many more books. In Brunei, I see books but I also see computers, compasses and carpets among the book sellers. Well.... One can stretch the definition of knowledge to include computers but one would really be hard pressed to think how other items can constitute part of book fairs. Anyway, anakbrunei.org has written a nice piece about the book fair complete with nicely taken photographs (like the one I borrowed here), so you can link here if you want to see the fair in pictorial form and deciding whether you want to come. This year the book fair in Brunei is a dual purpose place. You can see books and you can workout at the same time - the place is turning into a sauna - the indoor stadium's ai...