Tan Yu Kai

is a Penangite biologist-cum-artist passionate about human relationalities with the natural world.

7 posts

Appreciating and Defending Penang’s Glorious Local Food Supply Chain

5 min read

MARKET SUNDAYS WITH Grandma was always an exhilarating experience. I am always a four-year-old when I gingerly shuffle across the slippery pitted concrete. The...

by Tan Yu Kai

Plantdemic: The Rise of Pretentious Rarity

6 min read

THERE IS THE pandemic, and then, there is the plantdemic – an emerging social phenomenon of mass buying exorbitant houseplants for, among other reasons, plain b...

by Tan Yu Kai

When Did You Last Look Up at the Stars?

5 min read

MAY IS A stifling month in northern Malaysia. After a tempestuous monsoon season, it is a clear night tonight in Penang — something of a rarity. A few dissipati...

by Tan Yu Kai

Rediscovering Paradise Lost

6 min read

It has been said that the day you think about the future, is the day you leave your childhood behind. In that sense, the day our children consider “you are goin...

by Tan Yu Kai

Radio Telescopes: Seeing through Clouds

5 min read

GLOOMY SKIES. There is a disappointment condensing out of the air as the stargazers stare at the blank clouds. Months of anticipation, marking the calendar, ask...

by Tan Yu Kai

Invisible No More: Esteeming Housewives and Household Chores

5 min read

THE DIALOGUE THAT follows may seem tenuous to some, and will, as Virginia Woolf has aptly stated, “bring one into very grave disputes with certain very good fel...

by Tan Yu Kai

Pet Release: An Act Not as Harmless or Merciful as You Think

5 min read

THROUGH THE SMOG that hangs perpetually over the Goddess of Mercy Temple on Lebuh Pitt, the last cage of pigeons take to the skies, scattering like frightened d...

by Tan Yu Kai