Just Transition is the conceptual cartilage between carbon and community. Transitions are an imaginary which need to be populated with either soulless tech talk or with an ethic of social justice where communities are front and center of the dialogue where worker voices and aspirations find a place in the strategy decks of consulting firms.

Old photos are the fragments of lives lived within one life. Facebook memories can evoke warm feelings and reminders of past versions of the self. Hard copy photos are the best.

Such an excellent work of scholarship on Indonesian Labour Migration to Saudi Arabia.

The long durée communities in Cairo and Mecca are interesting.

I restart my independent writing on migrant worker histories of the Indian Ocean after a hiatus of two years.

The number of risks i have taken in my nonlinear career can safely categorize me as near entrepreneurial and the failures are data points in an algorithm called life. And have many more experiences than YouTube Life Coaches.

Have been really blessed to be listening to the Azaan or Aadhaan on both Eid days from Masjid Sultan on Muscat Street here in Singapore this year, and last year too. Was really a major goosebump moment as i grew up in Muscat next to three Masjids. #eidaladha2022

Asking for momos in a Nepalese eatery in the Singaporean heartlands in Hindi, a mature estate is a presence of a South Asia which is present but hardly seen.

In this season of transitions between the city which taught me to the city of my birth in the Indian Ocean circulatory grid that I have traversed the past decade and a half, is a solemn remainder of the people who have been kind and the folks who have been transaction oriented. The folks who have had your back and folks who have thrown you under the bus once the task ended.

The dum biriyani on a Friday afternoon was a ritual and on Eid eve. Today is one as well.

Eid Ul Adha Mubarak. Selamat Hari Raya Haji.

Salaam aur Duaa.

I will be back.

Due to the pandemic mayhem, there is truly a slight difference between remote work and onsite work. Having delivered programs and projects across geographies during the pandemic across five cities in the Gulf and SE Asia, knowledge work has moved to a new level. I plan to write on remote consulting and research delivery as a mode of work. We must, however, remember that outsourcing of work is not new and has been around for three decades.

Belonging is a feeling

Tugs at the heart

The sense of normalcy

Often reduced to a feeling

As life has other plans.

Disrupt yourself. The market is always looking to deskill you, convert you into a ‘task’ and offshore or automate you. Gigfication is not an informal sector phenomenon, each job has an analogue across the screen elsewhere. What is your usp is the key to retention? Reflect?