Through the Highways of Globalization
It is nice to engage in a space which is eclectic, with platform labour leaders and academics with actual platform workers, in a class discussing key ideas in automation and labour.
Always great to skill up, thank you Dr Kriangsak for the kind opportunity to learn and engage in the most important labour debates of our times.
In this times of polycrisis, fund raising and business development gets harder for impact causes as the ROI discussion gets sharper on the part of clients and funders.
The ROI is often fuzzy, yet it needs to be communicated in dollars and cents. Why pay for an assessment when it’s not required, or why fund a non profit in a core funding basis where MEL is off the usual framework?
In this world of impact fatigue in multiple wars, why is your service mission critical ?
Super intellectually charged day one of the ‘Rethinking traditional arts through regional dialogues’ with thought provoking presentations by Dr Sumit, Dr Vila, the Dr from UKM which are wrapped around questions of creolisation, belonging, identity and voice. The breakout session with Dr Sumit and the fellow participants shed light of strategic decisions that diasporas have taken to belong.
Looking forward to day two!
Grateful to be receiving so much love and support from friends in Malaysia, since i have come back recently. SE Asia is my chosen intellectual home, and have been here for a decade plus across times slots. Every place needs time to sink in, and as a visitor one needs to understand the nuances here. A lot of it Is unwritten, and is understood in silences and the twitches of the eye. Food is a great way to sense a place, the rhythms of how one eats and engages in leisure gives away the ‘vibe’.
A complicated place definitely, but a kind place if one seeks to understand.
While eating sapaadu at a Tamizh Hindu place in the KL area, where Sun Music was on, I was rather surprised to find a Tamil version of Sayoonee by Junoon, the iconic track. A young CM Joseph Vijay was starring in the song.
Things one finds in the diaspora, can be such gems.
Former Minister Dr Ong Kian Ming and Professor Danny Quah from the LKYSPP chat geopolitics of trade in an indie bookstore in Kuala Lumpur. The masterclass on the new world disorder, is something we don’t think with through shocks, electric vehicles and new geometry of alliances. The EV is a common good, for the planetary commons and the global supply chains.
Tintabudi is a chic bookstore and events space with good coffee where this ticketed event was hosted on a Saturday afternoon. Great audience of think tankers, policy wonks, researchers were around to ask the sharpest questions in the Q&A and the after the event.
A sense of intellectual community was found certainly. And Kuala Lumpur/Penang have amazing independent bookstores.
I took copious notes on the New World of Disorder and the China/US Shocks.
I love the fact that Malaysia creates spaces in the civil society to articulate thoughts and narratives which are alternative in character. This evening Imagined Malaysia, Malaysia Design Archive and Rumah Attap come together to host an archivist’s talk on a Friday evening in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.
The archivist spoke about social history and private manuscript collections as a window into everyday life.
@im.imaginedmalaysia does public history amazing work, and is totally volunteer driven by historians who are trained in Cambridge and Yale.
Last year i had attended a fun talk by the history doyen Barbara Andaya organised by Imagined Malaysia on a Saturday morning and it was packed with researchers and historians.
Alternative spaces give life to researchers who work on micro histories and oral histories.
Wish there are similar places in Mumbai although Sarmaya does a great job.
This decadent plate of Bukhara Biryani Kambing is a site of edible Indian Ocean circulations. The taste is a blend of South Tamil Nadu biryani with the format of a mandi, where the laham and biryani rice is separate.
The aachar is deeply satisfying with the mutton soup and the gravy on the side. Food is not merely a source of succour rather than a site of unravelling, a Indian Muslim Place, with a bent towards the Malay culture and a biryani which could easily be a Shuwa sans the spice overload. The patrons this evening were predominantly Malay.
With migrant workers from Tamil Nadu and Indonesia cooking and serving the fare, these are also migrant Foodscapes, although the prices are not migrant friendly at all.
I had presented about the Indian Ocean Nasi Biryani Index of Circulations at ICONSEA 10 in 2023. The index i must say is alive and well.
At the launch of the Literary Magazine, Yellow on South East Asia by South East Asia. Minh Bui Jones of Mekong Review Fame launches his latest platform. He is based in Vietnam, and hence is not a diaspora magazine. Eddin Sir gave a sublime rendition of his essay on his father.
Learning from the masters, is an education especially on a Saturday afternoon. A lot of familiar names in the audience.
Happy to a writer, on some days of the week. Theory or not.
Bangla Subaltern Migrant Foodscapes.
Khichuri amongst chatter on the BJP win in the diaspora. Borders are truly ephemeral, as Foodscapes are carescapes.
Change Thinker 