Author: James Alexander Ritchie

Dr Mahathir and strange bedfellows

We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s sixth Prime Minister As we welcome 2020, we must marvel at the fact that Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad ―the

Unsolved mystery of Tg Kupang air crash

Death by plane crash scares me. I travel a lot, and when you hit turbulence, and post 9/11, that’s in the back of my mind a bit. –        Robert Englund, American actor, singer and director On the night of December 4, 1977 Malaysian Airlines System Flight MH653 crashed into a

A leap of faith

We should make a major financial commitment to improving our roads and bridges. Bernie Sanders, American politician I stood on the ledge of the iconic Satok suspension bridge, looking down at the placid waters of the Sarawak River. If the question in my mind was to leap or not to

Legacy of better communications

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist When Englishman James Brooke sailed into Kuching, Sarawak was better known as the Land of Headhunters. No community was safe as pirates from as far as

Curse of the White Rajah

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective. William S. Burroughs, American writer and visual artist Sarawak’s Astana and its surroundings is a treasure trove of history going back to the days when it was the bastion of Brunei sovereignty. It was “Raja

Saving Ritchie, the Man of the Forest

Last week, I tried to play detective when a gentleman from Samarahan tried to sell me a live porcupine at a very special price. Apparently the Rial “Pasar Tamu” Market is one of the locations where one can purchase exotic wild meat on occasion. During the “negotiation” over the deal,

A prized possession

Limbang is place so near and yet so far. Situated on the banks of the Limbang River, this northern Sarawak region covering 3,976.6 square kilometres is sandwiched between the two halves of the Kingdom of Brunei Darussalam. Once a powerful kingdom, it was a country whose fiefdom stretched half way

Baram’s Father of Development

A visionary eager for change Sarawak’s last frontier is the massive 30,000 sq km Baram district which is watered by the 400km-long Baram River with its network of fast-flowing tributaries and unnavigable rapids. Baram was one of the locations of the 12 proposed dams which the government had planned to

Proud to be Eurasian

Twenty years ago on Sept 2, 1999, a handful of local Eurasians met at the Sarawak Club to talk about the idea of forming the Sarawak Eurasian Association. As a member of Selangor Eurasian Association and friend of the president JP Monteiro, I was armed with the rich history of

Bridging the Sarawak-Kalimantan divide

 For a better future Sarawak shares a border with Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province or “Kalbar”, the acronym for the 147, 307 km² Kalimantan Barat which is larger than the East Malaysian state. Our histories have been intertwined centuries before the era of Sarawak’s White Rajahs and arrival of Indonesia’s Dutch