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By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly Editorial, December 2025 NOTHING PROVIDES MORE inspiration for coinage of terms than our five senses. We fashion fundamental words to describe the wide range of information that flows from without onto our body and brain. For example, I am told that the sense of Touch relies on our Skin … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 1, 2025 – December 7, 2025 For centuries, the Pearl River delta had been the trading hub for anyone wishing to trade with the Chinese Empire. When one considers the dynamics of China’s political economy over the last millennia, this makes a lot of … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly November 2025 Editorial FESTIVALS are basically a picnic at community level, aren’t they? And just like family picnics, festivals seek to bond. Favourite snacks are brought along by uncles and aunties, favourite games are arranged for the children, and favourite drinks in all colours are prepared to avail all … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, in The Edge Malaysia, Oct 27 – 2 Nov 2025. The deepest legacy that colonialism left behind in Southeast Asia are the nation-states that now control the colonialists’ contingently-defined territories. By and large, all these countries were born during the Cold War that followed the Second World War. This tells us … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng. Editorial, Penang Monthly October 2025 I am past 70 years of age, so I shall pull rank on my readers—most of you anyway, and talk about Birth, Life, and Death. My parents are both dead. I was at their wake, funeral, and burial. There is much one can learn from the … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, for The Edge Malaysia Weekly. September 22-28, 2025 The passing of the Gig Workers’ Bill 2025 by the Malaysian parliament is significant, encouraging and inspiring. For a country whose political culture pathologically encourages racial consciousness, confrontation and intimidation, this legislation is a rare acknowledgement of society’s struggling classes — and gig … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial, September 2025, Penang Monthly WE LIVE WITHIN narratives, don’t we? Our identities are built on them. Our collective identities are definitely group memories woven by time into stories and narratives, and into memories and myths. For places and times for whom there are few stories, we use terms like “prehistorical”, “no … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) may be proudly considered one of the great achievements of diplomacy in the world. For the region itself, the initiative has allowed for the various member states to be cognizant of each other’s differences and difficulties. Be that as it may, it has yet … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng. Penang Monthly Editorial for August 2025 THE MOON WAS full two nights ago. I sit now on the first-floor patio of my friend Fazil’s beach house. This is in Marang, just south of Kuala Terengganu. It is 5.30 in the morning. The regular passing of trucks and cars pulsates at an erratic … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, “Picking on the Present” column in The Edge Malaysia 21-26 July 2025 THE SHOCK AND AWE approach that President Donald Trump’s Project 2025 clearly depends on, when exercised on the international stage, has brought about a whole range of reactions from governments all over the world. At one pole, you have … Continue reading
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