Sarawak news.

Dr. Monica Janowski, Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, writes that the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded funding for a project called "The Cultured Rainforest," which will start in April 2007 and aims to investigate the relationship between people and the natural environment in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, using archaeology, environmental science and anthropology. The project will be led by Graeme Barker at Cambridge, and those involved will include Chris Gosden at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford (there will be an exhibition at the Pitt-Rivers and at the Sarawak Museum towards the end of the project), Monica Janowski at the University of Greenwich in Chatham (anthropology), Chris Hunt at Queens University in Belfast (palynology), Huw Barton at the University of Leicester (ancient starches), Jayl Langub and Poline Bala at UNIMAS and Ipoi Datan at the Sarawak Museum.

Monica Janowski also writes that she has recently registered a UK charity, the Pa' Dalih Forest and Water Trust, to help to raise money to add to that already raised by the people of Pa' Dalih, the community in which she works in the Kelabit Highlands, for a new water pipe for the community. This will be from the Diit, a large tributary of the river on which Pa' Dalih is situated, the Kelapang (which is one of the two sources of the Baram, the other being the Dappur, which comes from the area around Bario in the north of the Kelabit Highlands). The new pipe will replace pipes from two smaller tributaries of the Kelapang. It will mean a much more reliable supply of clean water, which is particularly important now that the Kelapang headwaters are being logged and the Kelapang has become muddy. It will also mean that, in the context of impending logging of the area, the large Diit catchment will be preserved for the use of the community for hunting and gathering, and potentially also for income generation through hosting ecotourists. Donations to the Trust would be most gratefully received. Please contact Monica at [e-mail].

Francis Bernard Kington Drake, MBE, (1916-2006) died peacefully at Yeovil Hospital, Somerset, on 12 November 2006, aged ninety. Born on 7 April 1916, he was educated at Oxford University (BA) and joined the Sarawak Civil Service on 28 August 1939. After wartime service in the Royal Australian Navy, he returned to Sarawak; by 1952 he had risen to the rank of Administrative Officer with a monthly salary of 750 Malayan dollars (Naimah Talib 1999:243). He then went back to the United Kingdom to join the family business, F. C. Drake & Company. He was President of the East Coker Branch of the Royal British Legion between 1972 and 2005 (A. V. M. Horton; based on The Daily Telegraph, London, 16 November 2006, page 28, column 5, paragraph 3; supplemented by Naimah S. Talib, Administrators and Their Service: The Sarawak Administrative Service under the Brooke Rajahs and British Colonial Rule, Shah Alam: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Professor Kueh Yakoyeow (Chinese University of Hong Kong) is the recipient of a Festschrift edited by Professors Ho Lok-Sang (Lignan University) and Robert Ash (SOAS, London) entitled China, Hong Kong and the World Economy: Studies on Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 4 August 2006, ISBN 1403987424) with forewords by Professor Joseph C. H. Chai (University of Queensland) and Vincent Cheng Hoi-Chuen (Chairman, Asia-Pacific, HSBC Limited). Professors Kueh and Chai were both born in Sarawak and received their early education there in the 1950s, before moving to the wider world, including Harvard University (A. V. M. Horton).

In July 2006 Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, Chief Minister, spoke "at the launch of glossary books in Malay-Kayan and Malay-Melanau Seduan languages, compiled by the Sarawak Language and Literature Bureau" (Borneo Bulletin, online, F.7.7.2006:b4.htm).

On Thursday 27 July 2006 the Sarawak Club in Kuehing, established in 1876 (although the current building appears to have dated only from 1927), was razed in a fire at three o'clock in the morning. Valuable historical records, artifacts, mementos, and memorabilia were lost, including the whole run of membership records. "A part of our history is gone," said Datuk Seri Abang Johari Tun Openg, Minister of Housing, when he inspected the spot that afternoon. The club was a heritage site and the ministry has pledged its help to reconstruct the building (A. V. M. Horton).