Colonial Penang's pre-modern roots
3 min read
Penang under the East India Company 1786-1858Andrew BarberAB&A. 2009; Hard cover;160 pagesReview by Ooi Kee BengThe salience of the approach Barber ch...
Moving beyond manufacturing
7 min read
AS A MAJOR manufacturing country, Malaysia is necessarily a huge market for many imported commodities. It is important to clearly identify the more expensive im...
PSDC 3.0 - bridging the gap between Policy-making and industrial needs
4 min read
IN MARCH 2010, members of the PSDC Management Council were in Phuket for its highly important bi-annual Offsite Meeting. Such gatherings are now a tradition and...
Information in restricted public space
7 min read
ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL pillars of any modern democracy is a free mass media. It is through transparent and responsible reporting by independent journalists that...
The 1867 Penang riots
6 min read
Volunteers manning a barricade.FORTY-YEAR-OLD Lieutenant-Governor A.E.H. Anson, a veteran of the Crimean War, had just arrived in Penang to take up the ap...
Curitiba - an ideal city of buses
4 min read
Dylan PassmoreLIKE MOST CITIES, George Town has traffic problems. This is illogical as the city has less people today than say, 40 years ago. The populati...
Building the Penang Bridge
8 min read
LIAW YEW PENG could have been a doctor. His grades were good enough, and he enjoyed subjects like biology. Many of his peers had chosen to go into medicine. Car...
Sign of the times
5 min read
DATO' KERAMAT in Penang is a rundown, crowded neighbourhood just outside George Town's CBD and heritage zone; putting it bluntly, not exactly the location of...
The serious brain drain problem
18 min read
MALAYSIA SUFFERS a voluntary emigration of people of different races and religions who possess talent, skills and knowledge. Their decision to settle in other c...
Penang's Place in the 10mp
9 min read
Active local governance needed more than everThe 10th Malaysia Plan is now announced. Analysts have generally found it wanting in detailed information. More i...
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
1 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...