The South East Asian Library in KL is getting together in less than a year.

Having has an association in the region since 2007 through study and work in three universities, the region is hardly understood in New Delhi which I seek to shed light upon. Life gets accounted in the books we have not read in our bookshelf!

I have been one of few Indian hacks who have written on Singaporean affairs and the intellectual attention is rather limited so far.

The Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair 2024.

A slice of the intellectual zeitgeist in the country. Happy to have seen MP Syed Saddiq and Minister Maszlee with an autographed copy of his cook.

Malaysia takes its role as major actor in the Islamic world very seriously.

The S in the ESG is Soul, where the social, labour, DEI, Human Resources and the Human Rights come together to accord a necessary, pre requisite framework for dignity, which in 2024 needs voluntary and legal standards to enforce that people get the basics.

The problem is that non sustainability folks run sustainability teams and consulting firms, and the trained passionate people in the sciences look for jobs.

Impact happens when people trained in the sciences and sustainability build things and not depend on the MBA types to do it.

Shukran Jazeelan Professor Shafeeq @shafeeq_valanchery for mentioning me in your seminal work on the Gulf.

As a fellow Gulf Kid and PhD researcher, this is the dignity and the kindness which means the world to me.

Today evening, it was a traffic filled ride from Jalan Ampang to Bangsar Village and my Grab driver was a Malaysian Chinese Woman with a very Singaporean accent ma. She was complaining about the traffic and the way that Waze was taking her. We got chatting as I could sense she is up for a conversation and felt like she had a career earlier, to taking up Grab three years back. She was an operator at Micron in Singapore at Bendemeer Road. She got her PR but surrendered it when she moved back to KL to get her CPF money. She regrets surrendering her PR, as she could then drive Grab there and earn as much in a day as she earns in a week.

The Cheras native, drives for 14 hours a day, and drives long hours as she needs the money although the flexible nature of driving Grab is a key attraction, as well as not having a boss to boss over them. She earns RM 200 per day after fuel and car maintenance. She takes a day off per week in which she invests in a massage that she calls it her hobby. So it is a spend of RM 85 for a two hour massage to restore herself.

A lot of Grab Drivers are women in KL, and this aspect of the platform ecosystem is indeed encouraging, although as per my non random purposive sampling, Grab Plus drivers are educated and use good business models to drive revenue, as entrepreneurs which they are at their scale.