Larger Than Life
2 min read
Ng in his workshop, decorating traditional wooden clogs.Zacharevic at work.Wall versus canvas —what’s your preference?Er...
Malaysia The Welfare State?
6 min read
EVER SINCE THE Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) muktamar in June, which had as its theme the “welfare state” policy concept, there has been a scram...
Penang Hill — Nature’s Gift to The Public
4 min read
INTERNATIONALLY, Penang Hill has little to shout about. It is nowhere near the fame of Huangshan in China or Mt Fuji in Japan. But to Penangites and many Mala...
Now Let’s See How Clean We Can Get
7 min read
Rats, crows, clogged drains, dirty markets… these characterised Penang urban street life for a long time. Over the last two decades, however, the situati...
Mind the child and grow the country
14 min read
Parents with young children tend to also be at the beginning of their career. And keeping both family and work life going is a tough balancing act. Nursery scho...
What’s in the budget for state governments?
5 min read
Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak tabled the 2012 Budget amidst great fanfare, announcing a slew of benefits for almost every possible layer of society. One comm...
Freedoms we take for granted
9 min read
I came to penang to give a paper at Universiti Sains Malaysia’s International Humanities Conference and to see my friends’ first grandchild. My bubb...
How did we tolerate the ISA for so long?
6 min read
Is the Internal Security Act (ISA) really going to leave us? In name as well as in spirit? Will its body be laid to rest forever and its soul consigned, not to...
Road to Nowhere
2 min read
I avoid leaving the house on weekends and going to town (which I loosely use to describe Pulau Tikus and George Town) simply because traffic congestion is a blo...
MCAT: Much room for improvement
3 min read
For those who missed the colourful brochures, advertisement banners and opening of the 1Malaysia Contemporary Art Tourism (MCAT) Festival 2011, it was an a...
Yachting Awaits Development in Penang
9 min read
When you gaze out over the sea around Penang, there is emptiness, the absence of boats of various shapes and sizes, save for the ubiquitous ferries, the occasio...
Alive But Not Well, The State of Penang's SMEs
15 min read
Plenty has been written about Malaysia being locked inside the so called middle income trap. The view is that the country is too expensive to effectively compet...