Dear friends, The Star wrote a couple of pieces about the book in today’s papers. First is a straight up book review written by Neil Khor, a friend of mine, who is a social historian and senior fellow at Think City, which manages the George Town Grants Programme. You can read Neil’s review here. The Star also published an interview that Rouwen Lim, a reporter … Continue reading Malaysia Star’s review of Floating on a Malayan Breeze
Ahead of my book launch in KL this Saturday, Malaysia’s New Straits Times (NST) has published an excerpt from my book, Floating on a Malayan Breeze, today. Over the past few weeks, NUS Press, one of my co-publishers, and I had been lobbying the Malaysian media channels, trying to get them to feature us. Last week, NST confirmed the passage they would like to run. … Continue reading Singapore’s population policies: Book extract in the New Straits Times, Nov 5th 2012
Dear friends, for those who missed the extract in The Straits Times this past weekend, click on the image below. Or, if you’d rather just read the extract right here, here it is. From pages 173-76 of the book: Your first instinct, when approaching the back of a truck while riding downhill, is to slam on the brakes, ratchet down the speed, and play it … Continue reading Extract from Floating on a Malayan Breeze: The Straits Times, Oct 13th 2012
Dear friends, thanks for all the support and encouragement. It’s still a bit surreal holding my very first book in my hands. In some ways, it seems like just yesterday that Sumana Rajarethnam, my best friend, and I were telling people that we wanted to cycle around Malaysia on RM10/day, and most responded that we’re nuts. But the anguish and self-doubt we went through then … Continue reading My first ever book launch: The Ups and Downs
Dear friends, some of you have asked me how and why I asked George Yeo to write a review for the book, SR Nathan to be the guest-of-honour at the launch, Donald Low and Manu Bhaskaran to join me on a panel, etc. There was actually a lot of thought put into all this by the publishers–the Hong Kong University (HKU) Press and the National … Continue reading The politics of personalities: Book reviewers and panellists
Dear friends, CNA interviewed me yesterday about the book. We mostly discussed aspects of the bike journey itself. If you want to watch it, click here. Continue reading Interview on Channel News Asia: Floating on a Malayan Breeze
Dear friends, a student reporter from The Kent Ridge Common, an independent online publication run by NUS students and alumni, came to interview me the other day. In his words, we “chatted for a little over an hour about everything under the sun, from education to economics, from interests to career.” Please click here to read the interview. Continue reading Book interview: The Kent Ridge Common
Dear friends, I won’t spend too much time discussing the actual bicycle trip here, as many of those stories have found their way into the book–please read it!!! 🙂 However, I shall chat a bit about the period immediately after we returned from the trip, and as the actual book writing began. When we got back to Singapore, after 30 days on the road, living … Continue reading Post-bicycle trip, starting to write. Aug–Dec 2004
Once Sumana and I had made up our minds to spend 30 days cycling around Malaysia on RM10 (US$3) per day each, we had to prepare ourselves physically, emotionally and intellectually. Physically, because we had no idea how our bodies would react. The most we had ever cycled was some 50km around Singapore. What would happen when we tried to cycle 80km every single day … Continue reading Preparing for our bicycle trip, May-June 2004
