I have living near Block 109 Clementi on and off since 2009, studying and working at NUS and NTU. I can see same Uncles drinking beer, grown older exchanging hellos and banter whenever i cross them in the kopitiam including an ex cop Indian Uncle with ancestry from Uttar Pradesh speaking in Hindi about Mohd Rafi songs. It warms the cockles of my heart, drawing from the popular metaphor now a days.

The sense of community comes from familiar glances. The Mamak Halal Restaurant with Satya Sai Baba photos in the same neighborhood has a Gujarati fellow who upon hearing my name spontaneously asked me: Aap kya Bramhan ho? or Are you a Brahmin?

We carry residues in to the diaspora.

#makanwithmoni

History is the buzzing hum, the surround sound of life. Passive yet critical.

Theorising happens from a site of silence, rather the impulse to disrupt the unsettling calm, to create evidence where there is reality yet no narrative. Writing is no PR copy. There has to be sense and meaning.

Where is the line between dignity and representation?

Happy to find PhD scholars in Khaleeji Tarikh write in after reading my The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington article on Omani Bania’s last year. Shukran Jazeelan to Prof @kdiwaniya for the faith. I have more ideas on the Gulf which I have to write hopefully soon!

Diaspora Stores are the nostalgic switchboards of the past : Prof Ato of Stanford on Le Thinnai Research Platform.

In the gig economy, every contract is a limited time entity and the next gig might not emerge immediately. The WFH era, moves jobs remotely to the cheapest location. Work is really becoming networked however, an educated underclass is created. A generation that took loans, studied in private colleges in a hope of a greater earning power than the previous generation is feeling trapped, as they expect salaries to pay off the debt.

College graduates work as delivery executives as there is an income available. Did they study to work as gig economy nodes where every job is a gig for a client. An economy of gig workers is terrible for social mobility as it is a hand to mouth affair perennially.

Having a job is better than not having one, but the gig economy has ramifications for the real estate sector, banking and the most important market; that of marriage.

A different grammar is evolving which is adding to troll behaviour, aided by aspirational Instagram Influencers and a deficit in self confidence. The Total Fertility Ratio is bound to fall in many countries. A steady income elite having work in the public sector will be calcified as work and life as a relationship is redefined.