November 2014 - Penang Monthly

Local government in Malaysia: Types, functions, organisation, members and budget

4 min read

Figure 1: Types of local government in MalaysiaSource: Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 2014.The local government or local authority, or &ldq...

Who says you can’t make videos in Penang?

4 min read

Entering the premises of local production house RisingOneMedia, I half-expected high-tech cameras lying scattered on the floor and an important creative discuss...

An explosion of art shows

7 min read

The whole country is in Art-stasy with all the frenzied year-round celebrations of art festivals, expos/fairs, camps, art-auctions, expeditions, workshops, demo...

A festival that is small, and therefore big

4 min read

As a holiday destination, Pangkor Island isn’t as well-known as Malaysia’s other islands in the north and east. And as a heritage and cultural site,...

Christine Das: Stroking animals to life

6 min read

They say that, like the proverbial spinning wheel, nobody can reinvent art. I believe it’s true because, today, very few works of art manage to surprise m...

Kyogen : An awesome tradition seeking a future

6 min read

At a time when traditional performances – be they wayang kulit, Hokkien puppet theatre or bharatanatyam – cling to the fringes of our society as TVs...

A personal experience at GTF

5 min read

No politics this time. Let me talk instead about my experience participating in this year’s George Town Festival (GTF) as an actor in the play 2 Houses, w...

Indonesian responses to the IS challenge

8 min read

In the last six months, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) militants took over a number of local mosques and preached for Indonesians to join the growing rank...

Malaysian bank giants merging?

5 min read

The proposed merger between CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, RHB Capital Bhd and Malaysian Building Society Bhd – which has yet to be approved by regulatory autho...

A history of local elections in Penang Part I: Democracy Comes Early

13 min read

Fifty years ago, in March 1965, local elections were suspended throughout the newly founded Federation of Malaysia.Those were turbulent times in many ways, no...

Decentralisation offers solutions – and snags

9 min read

De·cen·tral·i·sa·tion: the dispersion or distribution of functions and powers; specifically: the delegation of power from a c...

Injecting gender into the Penang Agenda

6 min read

Budgeting isn’t strictly about dollars and cents. Gender, for example, plays a role, too. But what exactly is gender responsive budgeting, and how is it d...