Sultan Mahmoud and other fictional writings

The fabled folk-hero Sultan Mahmoud started out as a joke among a small circle of friends, and has since taken on a life of his own. He's a pretty intense guy. Let's wish him luck!

2014, March 6: The Letter
2016, April 21: The Later Letter

Some works have been presented in so-called verse form. I call them such because I sometimes find it interesting to block out the information in lines and organise them in a certain pattern, as what happens in Chinese poetry. They don't rhyme though, because I suck at that.

2007, July 8: And then there was a temporary calm
2007, September 29: The Woman at the Top of the Mountain (hormones)
2009, February 21: Wrong Personified (Army in-joke)
2010, July 19: He Must Always Believe In Himself (after Milan Kundera)
2014, August 15: Sparrow in a Sea of Trees
2015, January 16: The Demon of Hunga Ha'apai
2015, November 26: You have never left my side (prayer)
2016, September 28: Johnny's Lament (reflections on TOB)
2017, July 14: Idiot Son (part of the Little Ocean series)

Short stories are from your run-of-the-mill brainwaves involving current events, spiritual meditation, or what have you. Warning: they are really short!

2007, October 25: Political Swearwords
2007, November 2: The Alternative History of Yuri Gagarin (my only work in Mandarin)
2009, November 21: Portions for Sixteen (Korean War)
2014, January 5: Criminality (Congo Free State)
2014, March 8: Lenten Passage (difficult times)
2014, June 8: No, Peter! (The Passion Narrative)
2014, August 10: Tresha Remembers (Verbum Dei mission trip to Tagaytay)
2014, December 4: Chayka (ethnic unrest in Kondopoga)
2015, October 8: A visit to an old friend, the park official (the Glass Bridge of Zhangjiajie)
2020, March 4: Shrove Parade (The most Ohio thing I ever wrote)
2020, October 26: The Inner Life of Shaun the Psychopath (how does he live?)
2024, November 22: The Babiest Babe (a vision of the afterlife)

The Adventures are frivolous snippets of what goes on in my mind during lectures or casual reading:

2010, August 3: A Baudolino Spoof (after Umberto Eco)
2013, August 15: The Education of Captain Michael (after Nikos Kazantzakis)
2014, January 17: The Adventures of Roger Casement and Joseph Conrad (after Mario Vargas Llosa)
2014, February 7: The Adventures of Brahmagupta and his Algebraic Proof (Introduction to Geometry)
2014, February 11: The Adventures of Yusuf Al-Muʾtaman ibn Hud and Giovanni Ceva (ibid.)
2014, February 18: The Adventures of Professor Oliver and the Principle of Uniformitarianism (The Biophysical Environment of Singapore)
2015, January 9: The Adventures of Péter Bartók's Father (Béla Bartók's biography)
2017, September 2: Adventures with Ignatius Noogent (a bad dream)
2018, July 28: The Adventures of AlphaGo and Lee Sedol (Game 5) (Advances in Artificial Intelligence)
2019, August 26: The Adventures of Zhang Qian in Alexandria Eschate (a famous Chinese explorer discovers Chinatown)
2020, June 5: Adventures in Condensed Matter Physics - Literature Review (reading physics manuscripts is a real pain)

Some snippets of writing were written and presented in French or Spanish class. I take the liberty to be as creative as I can in these settings:

2011, June 8: Une petite histoire sur l'homme dans la peinture «L'Art de Vivre» (Describing a painting by the famous surrealist painter, Magritte)
2011, June 9: Une petite histoire sur l'armée de Napoléon en Russie (The Adventures of Napoleon Bonaparte in Russia)
2011, June 24: La première nouvelle en Anglais (A story in English, except with French grammar)
2011, October 17: Le Cher Dirigeant (The Dear Leader and normal life in North Korea)
2015, March 20: Sobre mi habitación (Describing my room)
2015, April 13: Sobre mí barrio ideal (Describing the village of Näsåker in the north of Sweden)

Short stories presented in dialogue form are not among my favourites. I write these only because I find it really hard to place dialogue and description in the same space. But here you go:

2007, January 30: The Old Scene Four (Dramafeste entry)
2007, November 23: The Cook, the Sergeant and the Janitor
2009, October 29: The Skeptic King (part of the Little Ocean series)
2014, December 11: The Radio Television Bidadari Chamber Orchestra

I didn't mention the ones with a bit more personal content. If you're really interested to find those... I'm afraid you'll have to dig around for them yourself!

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