Facing Fonts
Today I learned the difference between the equivalent of “Times New Arab” and “Kufi Sans.” Instead of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” in Arabic it apparently goes “Nun [an Arabic letter] wa al-qalam wa ma yasturoona” (by the pen and what they write).
I took a cab to the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. It was an impressive collection. The first exhibit I saw showed Chinese Muslim calligraphy. The admixture of calligraphic styles is very unique, Arabic mixed in with Chinese characters, written with a bamboo brush rather than the reed pen used predominately in Arabic calligraphy. An architecture exhibit showed scale models of about all of the most famous mosques and gave details of common “greenprints.”
At one point I was surprised to see on display a kiswah, an embroidered door covering over fifteen feet tall that draped the Ka’bah in 1964.
Across the street from the museum is the National Mosque of Malaysia, built in signature 1960’s style. Strangely enough, while the main train station and other museums are nearby, it is a very pedestrian unfriendly area. After spending about three or four hours reviewing the lessons from my Mideast history class and trying to read what little I can comprehend, I walked around for an hour before taking a cab to the Petronas Towers.
To complete the theme of the day (and maybe a Thanksgiving make-up gorge) I went to a Lebanese/Persian restaurant Al-Marjan there. They had a feast of a buffet. While it wasn’t the greatest Middle East food I’ve had (too mild of spice and tasteless hummus), everything was fresh and it was great to try a little of the different foods and desserts. I tried Arabic coffee, and it seems like an intermediary between tea and coffee, but I’m not sure what’s going on with that. The local drink I’ve liked and had for lunch is teh tarik which is a sweet tea that has the consistency of chocolate milk.
I finished a book I bought about the Krakatoa eruption a few weeks ago, so I bought a new book to start: “A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.” A convenient thing about KL is being in the Anglophone zone, so they have as good selection as anywhere, and a little bit cheaper prices than Hong Kong.
I took a cab to the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. It was an impressive collection. The first exhibit I saw showed Chinese Muslim calligraphy. The admixture of calligraphic styles is very unique, Arabic mixed in with Chinese characters, written with a bamboo brush rather than the reed pen used predominately in Arabic calligraphy. An architecture exhibit showed scale models of about all of the most famous mosques and gave details of common “greenprints.”
At one point I was surprised to see on display a kiswah, an embroidered door covering over fifteen feet tall that draped the Ka’bah in 1964.
Across the street from the museum is the National Mosque of Malaysia, built in signature 1960’s style. Strangely enough, while the main train station and other museums are nearby, it is a very pedestrian unfriendly area. After spending about three or four hours reviewing the lessons from my Mideast history class and trying to read what little I can comprehend, I walked around for an hour before taking a cab to the Petronas Towers.
To complete the theme of the day (and maybe a Thanksgiving make-up gorge) I went to a Lebanese/Persian restaurant Al-Marjan there. They had a feast of a buffet. While it wasn’t the greatest Middle East food I’ve had (too mild of spice and tasteless hummus), everything was fresh and it was great to try a little of the different foods and desserts. I tried Arabic coffee, and it seems like an intermediary between tea and coffee, but I’m not sure what’s going on with that. The local drink I’ve liked and had for lunch is teh tarik which is a sweet tea that has the consistency of chocolate milk.
I finished a book I bought about the Krakatoa eruption a few weeks ago, so I bought a new book to start: “A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.” A convenient thing about KL is being in the Anglophone zone, so they have as good selection as anywhere, and a little bit cheaper prices than Hong Kong.
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7:52 AM
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