January 2021 - Penang Monthly

Tracking Human Mobility in Penang During Covid-19

7 min read

DESCRIBED AS THE most tracked economic indicator during Covid-19,1 the release of the Google Community Mobility Data has been lauded as a creative means by a te...

Lee Siu Ming Ng Kar Yong

Rebound is Slower than Expected despite Fiscal Measures

10 min read

2021 WILL BE a year fraught with economic challenges and uncertainties. The spike in Covid-19 cases since September 2020 continues to see Malaysia’s econo...

E-Scooters May Be Penang’s Next Major Industry

4 min read

THIS MAY COME as a surprise to many, but Penang has been pioneering Malaysia’s electric vehicle (EV) industry since 2008, and this was with the establishm...

The Future of Motorcycle Repairs

6 min read

A VESPA’S ALLURE cannot be denied. The scooter first came to public attention in 1946 as a cheap alternative to navigate the cobblestoned streets of bombe...

The Motorbike – Symbol of Penang and its Economic Vibrancy

7 min read

SEE THE AUNTY puttering on the three-wheeler Honda C90, dragging a cart of triple-mixed iced soya bean, “leong fun” and milo; the beverages slushing...

Kenneth Ooi

The George Town Literary Festival Persists through the Pandemic

7 min read

THE INITIAL PLANS for the 2020 George Town Literary Festival (GTLF) were for it to be celebratory – to look back on 10 years of work, while also looking f...

A Year Marked by the Passing Away of Artists Across the World

7 min read

THE DEATH FROM coronavirus of China celebrity watercolourist Liu Shou Xiang on February 13, 2020, in Wuhan, marked the annus horribilis of a lethal disease that...

A Woman, a Bike, and the World under Her Wheels

6 min read

AT HER FRIEND’S insistence, Lin Yeoh clambered on a Honda CB750 one day, slightly petrified at the thought of crashing. The experience instead opened up a...

The Motorcycle in Numbers

3 min read

IN 2019, 66.2% of Malaysian households owned either a motorcycle or a scooter (Table 1), with their ownerships in rural areas (76.0%) being higher than in urban...

Ng Kar Yong

The Gig Economy Comes to the Rescue of the Retrenched, but at a Cost

6 min read

THE YEAR 2020 saw seismic shifts in the job market structure. Soon after the MCO was announced last March, unemployment rates in Malaysia jumped significantly f...

Penang Now a Prime Centre for Wafer Fabrication Equipment Manufacturing

5 min read

THE GLOBAL FORTUNE 500 company Lam Research Corporation (Lam Research) announced last February that it will soon be investing in Penang.A global supplier of i...

Lee Siu Ming

Biking Through the Valley of Death

1 min read

IT WAS APRIL 28, 2019. On my KTM 1290 Super Adventure R, I exited Penang through Bukit Kayu Hitam. The group of us, seven riders in total, were on our way to Ti...

Ong Soo Yong