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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, 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. 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, 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. 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, Editorial, Penang Monthly July 2025 MY WARDROBE IS overflowing. With no Spring Cleaning habit for tropical people like me, my short-sleeved and long-sleeved shirts hang next to each other, expanding year by year. My trousers are much too few in number, and have been relegated to the lower section. My short … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, June 2025 Editorial in Penang Monthly. “Does Penang Exceptionalism still exist?” That question was put to me recently by a learned and slightly agitated visitor. I assume the query stems from distress over how recent developments in the state have been too much, too hasty, and too uncontrolled. It is a … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, April 2025 editorial in Penang Monthly. I AM IN THE foothills of the peninsula’s main mountain range, off Gopeng. It is early morning, 7am. From the balcony of my room, I throw pellets from a bag provided by the hotel to the multitude of pink and gold fish in the pond. … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly March 2025 Editorial I AM STRONGLY convinced that as long as children continue to be brought up to learn behaviours and imbibe ideas that certain groups of humans are inherently worth less than others, we can expect human civilisation to not be much more than an exercise in Damage … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for February 2025, Penang Monthly IT IS OFTEN SAID—way too often—that “History belongs to the Victor”. There is of course a lot of truth in the dictum. But it faults for being glib, and for being a discussion stopper. What I find more fruitful to consider is that “History belongs … Continue reading
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