Saturday, 21 June 2025

Author: Medecci Lineil

So complex, even ChatGPT blinks

‘One thing is certain, I have never written to express myself, as they say, but rather to get away from myself.’ – Jon Fosse A few weeks ago, I finished reading and reviewing a few books by Jon Fosse, the Nobel laureate for 2023. Included in the list were seven

The slow death of Net Zero

AT the Asian Banker Summit 2024 in Hong Kong, I boldly declared that 2025 could be the year Net Zero dies. Such a development isn’t inevitable, but what was once described as “the climate crisis” is morphing into the climate-crisis crisis as investors and banks lose patience with the project

Unsung but unshaken

Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin to reason can avoid such questions? No, they cannot, and we will not impose on them an impossible restriction. The sight of an unworthy father involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young creature, especially when he compares

Keeping politics out of MAHB’s runway

The saga of taking Boustead Plantations Bhd (BPlant) private in 2023 is still fresh in my mind. It would not be wrong to say that Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera (LTAT) succeeded in taking BPlant private. Without LTAT’s takeover offer, the minority shareholders would not have been able to enjoy such

Life inside the snow globe

Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time. – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Part I, Chapter IX, Notes From Underground (1864). One chilly evening in early January, as snow began to fall unexpectedly on campus, I saw three older ladies transform into little girls. Lugging heavy suitcases,

The weight of expectations

As we step into the first day of 2025, many employees are clearing their annual leave from the past year. Most employment contracts cap the number of leave days that can be carried forward, encouraging employees to take their leave and maintain a healthy work-life balance. For us, though, things

Dare to be different

‘Love is not simply a feeling but a decision to care, forgive, and endure. It is the courage to accept others flaws and the strength to stand together, even when the world feels heavy against you.’   – Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Russian novelist It is around the close of the

The quiet takeover of Chinese cars

CHINA’S global dominance in the automobile industry, particularly electric vehicles (EVs), has not escaped Malaysia. Two China automakers — BYD and Chery — sold a total of 18,708 passenger vehicles in Malaysia in the first nine months of this year.  That is over six times the 2,970 they sold in

The circle of life

The first birth my wife Jillian witnessed was also the first death. It happened many years ago, just a few days before Christmas, when she started her journey as a new specialist in Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB-GYN), working the graveyard shift in the labour and delivery ward. Walking into the

Not-so-handy man

‘… I replaced all the windows, but I made the new ones as much like the old ones as I could, I put the windows into the same frames just with an extra pane of glass instead of one in every window, one pane that opens out, one that opens