Editorial - Penang Monthly (Page 2)

Taking Physical Space or Making Cultural Space? Multicultural Peace Depends on Which We Prefer

4 min read

SPACE: The final frontier… Good slogan. Classic. Melodramatic, evocative. And totally anthropocentric; to be sure, Space is after all 100% of the Universe, minu...

Penang Institute Pushes for Economic Ecosystems Development

4 min read

SINCE THE THEME for January 2024 is Penang’s Economic Development, it seems appropriate that I present in somewhat truncated form the document produced in March...

Fight for Your Man Caves and Your Comfort Foods

3 min read

YOU HAVE YOUR favourite places to be in. Favourite rooms within whose walls you feel safe, where you feel at home. There, you relax. The knot in your stomach lo...

AI—Boon or Bane, Intelligent or Illusory?

3 min read

These are the days of miracle and wonder. Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry. Don’t cry. — Paul Simon, “The Boy in the Bubble”, 1986.

Urban Mobility and The Sense of Common Purpose

4 min read

MODERN ECONOMICS and modern living are paradoxically based on sustained advances in means of mobility, on the one hand, and in the human ability to live in huge...

Excelling Every Day Is Easier Than You Think

4 min read

ANYONE WHO HAS achieved something they are proud of, when revisiting the memory of it later in life, tends to feel a warm and tingling sensation of “Wow, did I...

Books Are the Preferred Medium: Even for the Gods

3 min read

“BEST PRACTICES” is quite a clever term. I had trouble accepting it at first, trained to be relativistic as I am by the social sciences. I had to ask questions...

Insular Yet Global. Is That Not the Essence of Penang?

3 min read

GROWING UP IN the foothills of the Penang highlands, the towering heights — ever verdant, ever extant — always acted as the backdrop to my young life. It comfor...

Do You Remember Having a Memory?

2 min read

Have you noticed that one easy way to look cool nowadays is to carry a book with you? It can sit leisurely in your hand or be lightly squeezed under your armp...

Middle Bank – Penang’s Central Park

7 min read

HISTORY seldom follows a distinct and predictable line of events. Contingencies, serendipities, good luck and bad luck, all come into play. Naturally, therefore...

The Future of Tourism—Only as Bright as We Make It

3 min read

SINCE INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL became possible post-Covid, I have, for various reasons, been staying in at least five countries for substantial periods of time, inc...

E&E and E&E: Penang’s Two Economic Legs Showing Strong Muscles

3 min read

As with Singapore three decades later, Penang, on being taken over by the British in 1786, immediately depended on the benefits of being a free port. The contin...