Pure reading pleasure from start to finish … bitter-sweet, light and delicate as the kebaya, spiced with the tang of sambal belachan. From the author of the award-winning bestseller Kebaya Tales comes yet another amazing collection featuring the colourful world of the babas and nyonyas. In Sarong Secrets, Su Kim tells more tales of passion and unfulfilled love, of innocence lost, greed and betrayal, of loneliness and the search for a sense of belonging – all of which harken to the unique Peranakan culture, a heritage teetering on the brink of extinction. Filled with humour, wit and vivid details, her compelling stories will delight and excite. Includes a colour section of beautiful sarongs, accessories and artifacts from a unique community renowned for its love of colour and sumptuous material culture.
After Kebaya Tales and Sarong Secrets comes a rich, gutsy collection of short stories immersing the reader into the vivid, multi-hued world of the Peranakans. Here, the babas take centre stage: masculine perspectives, voices and protagonists are put under the spotlight, even as fiery and headstrong heroines pursue their passions in the face of powerful obstacles. The cast of characters seek to forge individual identities within a unique cultural heritage facing the challenges of modern times. The stories are accented with photographs peppered throughout – of exquisite beadwork, bejewelled adornments, vintage fabrics, gilded artefacts from private collections, personal belongings of the babas, and of course, twinkling, manek-encrusted accessories.
Ten years after its initial publication, national bestseller Kebaya Tales: Of Matriarchs, Mistresses and Matchmakers returns with a brand-new story. This collection of short stories teems with fascinating characters, plot twists and turns, and cultural idiosyncrasies of the Peranakan community. Laced with humour and occasional satire, Kebaya Tales kickstarted the three collections of stories centred on the nonyas and babas of the Straits Chinese people. Kebaya Tales won the 2011 Popular-The Star Readers’ Choice Awards for fiction, Malaysia’s top literary prize.
The Babysense Secret provides an easy-to-follow method to care for a baby during the first year. It explains how to read a baby's body language and signals, so that parents can know how their baby is feeling and what he wants. They can use this knowledge to guide their baby into a gentle routine which is convenient for the whole family and good for the baby's physical and emotional development. Some of the most common parental concerns in a baby's first year are: • Why is my baby crying? • How can I get my baby to sleep well? • How can I encourage my baby's development? • How can I make some time for myself? The Babysense Secret reveals that the answer to these concerns lies in a baby's senses and signals. At birth, a newborn is bombarded with new sensations that can make him over-stimulated; if parents can regulate his world during the first few months they will find that their baby is calmer and happier. All babies give signals to communicate with their parents-by learning to read these signals, parents can structure a flexible routine around their baby which will be beneficial to both. Babies go through a cycle of different states throughout the day: asleep, drowsy, calm-alert, active-alert, and crying. Parents can tell which state their baby is in from his signals-his body language and facial expressions. A routine can be structured around the states the baby goes through, so that parents aren't trying to get their baby to sleep when he is awake and wants to play. This baby-centric approach is the key to having a child who is happily awake, learning from his world or falling asleep with ease and sleeping peacefully for long stretches. Being able to interpret and respond to a baby's signals will keep him at ease, minimize colic, and provide the best environment for encouraging development. This ebook in PDF format contains at-a-glance charts which will show parents what to do in the middle of the night when their baby is crying inconsolably, and flow diagrams to work out exactly what their baby is trying to tell them, and the best methods to help.
"Beauty Secrets" explores the links between appearance, gender and sexuality; it empowers women to share the secrets of their relationship to imposed standards of beauty showing how women are constantly required to 'pass' by wrapping their 'unacceptable' and 'undisguised' selves in layers of conformity to acceptable beauty standards. -- back cover.
When archaeologist Annja Creed is hired to find the lost city of Promise in Brazil, she is more than intrigued. Legends abound of a magical place where slaves were rumored to have discovered the secret to eternal youth and life. But strangers are not welcome in Promise. Annja soon learns that the residents have gone to extreme lengths to guard their precious secret. Making her way from the steamy port of Belém to the brutal slums of Northeast Brazil, Annja faces unexpected peril, from poisoned arrows to Amazonian anacondas. As she navigates through a land where spirituality collides with the material world, Annja must distinguish between what is real and what is imagined for fear of making a wrong move. Because anyone or anything could be her enemy. And she's getting too close….
The Dotmocracy Handbook provides a unique set of easy-to-follow instructions for finding useful agreements among many people.At its core is the deceptively simple Dotmocracy sheet, designed to provide participants with equal opportunity to contribute to a reliable and transparent large group decision-making process.From grade school students to technical professionals, grassroots organizations to government institutions and private corporations, Dotmocracy has universal appeal and application.
Clifford, a rather shy and inexperienced young man, volunteers himself for missionary service in Thailand. In so doing, he escapes a restricted life in the American Midwest. Although a loner, and finding himself in a culture very different from his own, he learns to accept, and is in turn, accepted by a wide strata of Thai society; ranging from Hill Tribe people to a police general. His involvement in providing information on drug movements to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and Thai police, places him in dangerous situations, and even attempts on his life, which continues even after his retirement.
