Options add to the degrees of freedom, and improves the sheer ability to do inspired work. Hand to mouth is the recipe for mediocrity. Always work towards what will increase the optionality in life. Mostly that is money, or the ability to increase the monetary value through specialist skills.

Sustainability Reporting is for transparency, and is performance at it’s minimum, but a necessary evil as it lifts the entire process architecture to include environmental and social data analysis in decision making. Ratings are a critical proxy for many aspects which are really the hidden transcript of every day capitalism, which it tries very hard to shrug under the proverbial carpet.

The simplistic readings of sustainability data is detrimental to corporate performance, as risk is reality in each decision. ESG data reveals as much as it tries to hide, yet the trained eye can read in between the lines, the magic of the architecture is that the data is meant to be read across data sets and against the grain, not to merely consume it on its face value, as the data might not be even assured, even in its limited variation.

The strength of ESG is the plurality in the multiple registers of data it entails, and the attempt to codify it will restrict its ability as a weak signals dashboard for the future.

It’s been interesting to find Bengalis from the Bengali speaking states in India, namely West Bengal and Tripura working in the Indian restaurant sector, aka Mamak’s in Malaysia. Usually Bangladeshi’s were known to be a diaspora all over, but their Indian Bengali counterparts are following suit for very little money.

Not surprisingly Bengali Muslims from Nadia and Mushirdabad dominate, although Hindus are being found too. Bengali migration internally to Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore is well known.

A paper is lurking somewhere for an enterprising scholar from the academic industrial complex of CU JU and PU.

It was a fantastic banana leaf experience at Bala’s in Bangsar in KL, and it truly lives up to its promise.

The food was hot and fresh, and the service was prompt. The Nepali guy serving in Hindi was very nice. The fish fry was the star!

The most wonderful conversations on migration happen at the Pakistani Arabic Habibi Barber Shop, today was on the Yemeni Student Diaspora in Malaysia, and the surge in the 2015-16 during the heights of the civil war. The pandemic was the nadir. His particular salon owner lost a decade long business during the pandemic. Most of his customers were Yemeni students.

During a previous conversation, he recalled his entrepreneurial journey in Al Buraimi and Deira in the Gulf. He then lived for a year in Pakistan then made his way back to Malaysia to rebuild his life.

Migrants have circuitous lives.

The best live music is often as much social commentary as the art itself. Malay Rock Music evening with legendary bands was a peek into Malaysia with over 90 percent bumiputra audience.

ACAB was politically engaged with the Falastin cause and it was refreshing that it was direct.

Professor Shahram Khosravi in his seminar on power and pedagogy, why human rights does not work as some people were not meant to be identified as human.

The power of Facebook or the digital is the access to the best thinking in anthropology and history while being in the global south.

Professor Shahram is a former refugee and a taxi driver, turned anthropologist. His work is something I have followed for years via the Critical Border Studies group on Facebook.

His lecture refreshes the intellect and the soul. The pedagogy of non commodification of knowledge production is a contrast to the h index fundamentalism in Asia.

Poignant during Lent.

Catholic Bombay, a Creole Bombay.

Mount Mary Church Darshan.