Editorial - Penang Monthly (Page 4)

Creating a City of Culture Costs – But We Should Happily Pay

2 min read

Artists – be they painters or sculptors, musicians or even authors – need sponsors. They need patrons. In our commercial age, there is of course t...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Enough With Penang Food Already! What About the Drinks?

3 min read

Yes, Penang has amazing food, be it fusion or hybrid, street or mall, traditional or accidental. And yes, it has amazing desserts too, like the Penang Road te...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Penang Should Make the Most of Transiting Cruise Tourists

3 min read

I assume anyone reading this has some time or other been one of those strange global creatures, disliked by some for their transient but disruptive presence a...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

It all seems so simple now...

3 min read

INTO THE GREAT dining hall, the children came. The guards at the gates do their best to keep as many of them out as possible, but they are too few, and the chil...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Naming Modern Means of Mass Transport

3 min read

In the age of speedy technological innovations, thinking up names for totally new things that are not created by Mother Nature but by this innovative ape we c...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

A Tsunami of Cultural Disruptions is on the Horizon

3 min read

The digital revolution that in recent years has been pigeonholed as Industry 4.0 in reality transforms modern life in more ways than merely through new products...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Words and Music—Two Sides of the Sense of Hearing

3 min read

MUSIC HAS ALWAYS been a phenomenon to savour for the great thinkers. One can sense how these master craftsmen of words relished being stumped when it came to an...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

What Are We to Do With You Millennials?

3 min read

I HAVE TO admit something. Before returning to Penang to work in 2017, I had hardly ever used the word “millennial”. Looking back, I think that was because I wa...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

The Educational Origins of Penang’s Skills Mismatch and Brain Drain

4 min read

EDUCATION IS REGARDED as a human right today. Therefore, most modern states, barring those who expressly consider public education to be a threat to their conti...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Physical Needs Set the Standard and Pace for Intercultural Relations

3 min read

THERE ARE CERTAIN aspects to human cultures which are more universal than others – largely by virtue of the fact that they deal with physical needs more than wi...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Penang: Once Cosmopolitan, Always Cosmopolitan

3 min read

URBAN CENTRES, by their very nature of having concentrated populations, tend also to place people from different backgrounds in close proximity to each other. T...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Of Urban Parochialism And Rural Cosmopolitanism

2 min read

The thing is, the line between urban and rural is no longer as clear as before, and therefore the association between urbanity and cosmopolitanism—a tie that has been shaky from the start in any case—becomes ever more tenuous.

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng