The city embraces visitors with a blanket of smells, from the most wonderful scents of herbs and spices and flowers from street vendors, to the horrific stink of the sewers
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Malin Samuelsson
Malin Samuelsson is our occasional correspondent from Singapore, who will be sharing her insights about trends -- from political to economic and social -- impacting and being driven from Asia. Malin is a political scientist and linguist with deep experience in the region and has worked with the UNDP, NGOs and government agencies, from China to Mongolia, Sweden and Switzerland.
‘Onward Singapore’ says the national anthem, and judging from the view from my balcony, it’s going also upwards and sometimes sideways. It’s hard to keep up with the speed at
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It happened again. A domestic helper in our neighborhood here in Singapore, an Indonesian woman, asked the helper next door for food and clothes. Your occasional correspondent is trying to
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It is a well-guarded compound with a high, whitewashed wall facing the street. Access is restricted to a solid, metal-framed sliding gate, and only a small peephole allows the guards
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One egg after the other into the frying pan, but then straight into the bin. The white is watery and the yolk flat; they are not fit for human consumption,
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Malaysia is a fascinating country, with its variety of natural scenery, architecture and people. The contrast of urban sprawl along meandering highways cuts through the stunning greenery as massive constructions
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We are sitting on a local bus on the lovely tropical island of Penang in Malaysia, longing for the charms of its main city, Georgetown. The old part of town
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My time in Asia over the past decade has been dotted with epidemics and epidemic scares. These have mainly involved different varieties of the ‘flu, but also other less deadly
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Many thanks to former UN colleagues Todd Smith and Odkhoi Bold for your up-to-date perspectives from Mongolia! I will never forget what economist Jeffrey Sachs said in 2002 about Mongolia’s
ContinueThe winds of reform are blowing in Asia at the moment. Or so it seems when one reads the headlines. Are the loosening of the authoritarian regime in Burma (sometimes
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