Oktoberfest
1 min read
Penangites and Germans bonded over bratwuerste, beer, and Bavarian beats at the Malaysian German Society’s Oktoberfest—an evening of dancing, drinking, and delightful cultural chaos.
November 2025
This November, Penang Monthly explores language, place and memory. As GTLF returns, we highlight Penang’s multilingual streets and the dialects that keep local history alive.
Islamic matters in Pakatan states
5 min read
Political competition between the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat coalitions is predicated on numerous fronts, the more sensitive of which involves religiou...
It’s been an exhilarating year
2 min read
The revamped PEM has now been around a year since the preview issue came out in September 2009. The response has been consistently good.As we expected, imme...
George Town Festival
3 min read
In July, the Penang state government held the inaugural George Town Festival, in celebration of its listing as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Initially a one-day...
How will nationalism evolve?
2 min read
The biggest trick that the nation-state concept has pulled on modern man is the proposal that there is an essential line between the external and the internal...
Remembering Yong Mun Sen (Born Kuching, Sarawak, January 10, 1896. Died Penang, September 29,1962)
12 min read
THE LEGEND OF Yong Mun Sen is one of the most gripping of an art of a people and time in the formative years of Malaya and after.Painting pioneer (oil, waterc...
Penang's Pride - 25 years of the Penang Bridge
4 min read
1985 WAS a memorable year for many. Malaysia was then an "Asian Tiger" with its own newly launched national car, Asia's tallest building was about to be complet...
Jewel of Muscat
2 min read
REFERENCES:• "Traders, Teachers, Pressmen and Pilgrim Brokers: Penang Arabs in the Regional Network" by Abdur Razzaq Lubis• wwwjewelofmuscat.tv...
Youths Learn that a Crisis is a Time of Positive and Negative Change
9 min read
From colleagues to friends. Farhanah enjoys a morning workout with her colleagues from Vouk Hotel Suites. Photo: Farhanah AzizanFarhanah (second from ri...
Changing recipe in industrial production
9 min read
Every recipe needs the right ingredients for success; get the mix right and walk away with a winning formula; get the mix wrong and the dish could fall flat....
Speakers’ Square
2 min read
Kwong Wah Yit Poh“ Lend me your ears...”As trite a saying as that may be, Penangites are taking advantage of Speakers’ Square at Esp...
The Present comes before the Past
2 min read
A friend once desperately and exasperatedly wished to know what he had been in earlier lives.“Why?“ I asked him with half a mind.“Well,&rd...
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