Category: Essays
Long-form articles about subjects such as personal finance, the Indieweb, technology and writing.
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We survived the 2026 Southeast Asian haze. Until next year!
After months of severe haze from Indonesian forest fires, Malaysia’s skies cleared, restoring life and relief. The crisis, driven largely by land clearing and compounded by ineffective governance, has strained regional relations and fueled online hostility. Although ASEAN faces pressure to act, its non-interference policy and corporate accountability disputes make meaningful solutions difficult.
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How I built Bob, my “chief of staff” and executive assistant
A very long article about how I built Bob, an AI executive assistant with Claude Code.
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China’s first AI movie flops … but probably not for the reasons you think
China’s first AI film, “Sanxingdui,” failed to resonate with audiences. but not because Chinese people are anti-AI
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Excited and exhausted: My honest take about life as a techwriter in the AI age
It’s the best of times, the worst of times. On the one hand, AI has accelerated my workflows and enabled me to create more content than before. On the other hand, I’m overwhelmed and burned out trying to keep up with how quickly the tech is changing and developing.
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Being a minority on social media sucks sometimes
The pressure to self-censor as a minority on US-centric social media platforms is quite real.
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Pangram in Substack? I’m so excited for the AI witch hunts
Pangram could spark an AI witch hunt, and increase bullying and harassment on Substack.
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On the matter of Greek erasure in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
Nolan’s Odyssey isn’t just a movie—it’s the latest act in a 200-year-old tradition of appropriating Greek culture while denying that Greeks should have control of their own heritage.
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The Last Generation of ‘Bananas’? How Malaysian Chinese Identity Is Transforming
More Malaysian Chinese are leaning towards their Chinese roots, and that includes having an education in Chinese.
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Substack writers, you need a website!
Substack is convenient, but treat it as a distribution tool for your content. Your content should live on an independently owned website, which has a domain name you control and own. This way, you can secure long-term visibility and control over your digital presence on the Internet.
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Of abandoning mother tongues and shame
A reaction to a fascinating essay on Substack about the cultural pressure of “leaving the mother tongue” and adopting other languages for class mobility. I reflect on the dynamics of language use among Malaysian Chinese, where the shame is about not mastering more languages or being slow at learning languages.
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Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt
I’m often frustrated by the writing community’s misconceptions about AI in writing. I wish more writers were more open to AI’s potential in writing and stop crucifying those who dare to say they use AI.
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How I conduct UX copy reviews
Sometimes the challenge of UX writing is not what to write, but how we write our copy. Here I share how I streamlined the UX copy review process for my team based on Dr. Katharina Grimm’s methods, aiming to reduce cognitive friction in UX writing.
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The Writing Community’s AI Panic
A New York Times article about Coral Hart, an indie romance author that generates 200 novels using AI has gotten most of the writing community clutching their pearls. Me? I’m just tired of this cycle of unproductive outrage.
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Is it me, or is it just more difficult to find good fiction these days?
This may seem like a clickbait title, but I really wonder if this is a trend because I saw a book blogger ranting that she’s fed up with books being released today and she’s going back to read classic fiction and finding more satisfaction there. It’s kinda me too. 🤔 Currently, I am reading (extremely…
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Does AI help you work faster or is it just hype?
Whether AI makes you more productive really depends on whether you know what the heck you’re doing.
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Conversations about AI are different in Asia
In Asia, the real conversations and developments around AI are focused on practical applications for industry. They are quiet, hardly talked about and are not trendy.
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After Charlie Kirk: Reflections from Malaysia
We Malaysians have learned over the last few painful decades: you need to be united as a people to effect any effective change in your country.
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Should we bring up China’s Nanjing Massacre today?
As the movie Dead to Rights (Nanjing Photo Studio)《南京照相馆》gains attention in China and globally, some critics wonder: Why bring it up now?
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Fiction writing: What tasks will I outsource to AI?
Writing fiction with AI – most people think it’s letting AI generate the text, slapping it together into an e-book and publishing it. In this article I will show you that this is far from the truth, at least for me.
