When i landed in Changi airport this time, the airport cabbie was a Singaporean Indian who had married to a Morrocan in Holland, and his daughters and grand kids were in Dutch Aruba. He travels to Holland thrice a year and drives cabs as he is a retired businessman.

Kinokuniya KLCC is akin to a spiritual space for a researcher. One can spend hours there, and its shelves turn into archives of excavation for literature review for the PhD, consulting and life in between.

I always serendipitously get the right reads for research which is on carbon markets in SE Asia. The two reads are gems which were present on my reading list for a while. It’s a shame that the Kino at Takashimaya in Singapore is shrinking. Kino in Dubai Mall was my Thursday evening after office spot, in the glitz of Dubayy.

A small anecdote from a major geography conference in a global Asian City, a distinguished Professor of Development Geography at Oxbridge said during one of the many side conversations over the rich week, that her Father served The Sultan’s Armed Forces during the Dhufar insurgency/ monsoon revolution from 1975-83 after he retired as a regular from the British Army. Prof Emma as a young girl went to the frontlines in Salalah in 1977 on a military helicopter as her Father wanted to ‘check’ on the front lines.

Stories from the long shadow of the empire, as her experiences prompted her to study development aid in India from Britain during the 1990s. She learnt to speak Hindi and lived in Delhi for two years. She chatted in Hindi as well, and discussed Shiva Sena, India’s aid policy in Africa and Oman 🇴🇲 ❤️

Typologies of the ‘Global’

As the world order is being remade as we live through a ‘reset’ and a creative destruction, the global with a small ‘g’ will jostle for space with the massive reordering.

Global city states such as Singapore will only get more precious in these headwinds, as science and sense prevails here.

Majulah 🇸🇬