Soon-Tzu Speechley 孫子
@speechleyish
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Sejarawan seni bina, lecturer, editor. I like new books and old buildings. Author, Malayan Classicism (Bloomsbury). Views &c. he/him, dia/dia, 伊/伊
吉隆坡 → 新金山
Joined August 2009
Some truly lovely photos from last week's Malayan Classicism book launch by Chan Hao Ong. I'm tremendously grateful to the URA for making this event possible, and to the NUS ArCLab for providing such a beautiful venue for the launch of my book.
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Writing about US food the way the NYT covers Asian fruit: In a nation torn by racial conflict, one unlikely food unites. To those accustomed to chopsticks, the greasy parcel known as a 'burger', a sort of split bao, is crude and messy. Yet it encapsulates a nation's violent past.
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Southeast Asians bullying each other online vs Southeast Asians when other countries try to campur tangan
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Obsessed with this photo of sumo wrestlers waiting to get vaccinated
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Just learning about Fort Tolukko, an old Portuguese fort in Ternate, Indonesia.
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Malaysians: roti canai.Singaporeans: roti prata. nyonyacooking dot com: hon hon hon, regarde les croissants plats d'Asie.
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Who is even the “big 3?”.
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Gotta say, not a huge fan of living in interesting times.
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Refreshing Twitter every five minutes to see if we have a government yet
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Honesty reckon the shophouses of Malaysia and Singapore are one of the best forms housing have ever taken – adapted for the climate, capable of accomodating mixed uses as the name suggests, and pretty to boot.
What exactly do people want? . Apartments are "pods." . Suburban houses are "corrosive to the human spirit." . Rural areas are "dumps in the middle of nowhere with no jobs and no girls.". Is there any acceptable form of housing?.
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I’m choosing to pronounce this the way it’s pronounced in Malaysian sms speak.
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As a scholar of the British Empire and its architecture, I am delighted to confirm this is the only unproblematic statue in the former British Empire. Located in the former British Colony of Sarawak, now a state in Malaysia, the Kuching Cat Statue is purrfect.
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Corner pubs are truly timeless.
Junction of two Roman Roads with a bar occupying the corner unit (bar counter intact), Pompeii
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Gentle reminder that cement is the world's single biggest industrial source of carbon, and that slapping some trees on a building doesn't make it 'eco' – it's just greenwashing 💚.
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Southeast Asia has so much potential. If we could only stop being dumb about race, religion, gender and sexuality, it would be the best place on earth.
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With fewer humans about, native wildlife has begun returning to the streets of Melbourne. Nature is starting to heal.
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When you want masala dosai but all you have is masalah dan dosa.
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racists: coronavirus happened because Chinese people eat weird shit. me, a Chinese person: what is the charge? eating a meal? a succulent Chinese meal?.
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Just received the most Singaporean pandemic content from a mate based in the little red dot
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I love how paper offerings for the Hungry Ghost Festival keep up with the times. Last year there were paper face masks, this year we have paper vaccines.
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Thinking about the memorial to an elephant who derailed a train near Teluk Intan (then known as Telok Anson) in 1894.
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I genuinely love Malaysia's Houses of Parliament, a confident skyscraper in the International Style designed by Ivor Shipley from the Public Works Department. Doing the dishes this morning though, I finally realised what the building reminds me of:
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Someone shared the Indonesian equivalent of uwu meme speak and it's just as saccharine as its English counterpart
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Obsessed with this photo of people swimming in the Klang River that someone posted in a Malaysian history group.
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Gentle reminder that the Queen Vic Market is a wet market, and that if your issue is with animal slaughter and hygiene then this country still does live animal exports too.
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Really into this photo of Kuala Lumpur (and Genting in the distance) by Tan Jun Hong.
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There's a knock on my door. I try to flee, but it's too late. Officers from Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara have traced me to my hideout in Melbourne's inner north. I am arrested and my IC is confiscated, along with my Malaysian passport. 'We know you tak pernah makan ni, adik.'.
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Like Siddharta, Barbie encounters suffering upon leaving the palace and must face the reality that life and its accompanying desires trap people in the cycle of samsara. In this manner, the hit 2023 movie promotes the dharma. In this essay I will.
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Checkmate, flat earthers. This only happens because Australia is upside down.
A severe weather warning for damaging winds and damaging surf is current for Sydney, Central Coast, Mid North Coast, Hunter and Illawarra areas. At the moment, wind gusts of 70km/h are producing several reverse waterfalls in the Royal National Park.
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The only good thing about the Henry Golding/Simu Liu disk horse is seeing Malaysians and Singaporeans defending the Malaysianness/Asianness of a mixed race person has been v affirming to me personally as a Malaysian of mixed ancestry.
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This is appalling. How can a graduate research assistant get by on RM650 per month? Once again, pretty obvious why our brain drain is so bad in Malaysia – the average RA salary across the border in Singapore is about S$3,000 (that's about RM9,370).
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Quitting my job to make an edgy Malaysian political drama remake of the Breakfast Club called Pakatan Sarapan.
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When your copywriters clearly don't speak Bahasa Kebangsaan. 🤦🏻♂️
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I used to live in this building – a pretty good example of a Malaysian shophouse, which combines Southern Chinese and western influences. The front room of the terrace is formal, often with an altar, while the interiors are ventilated by airwells and shutters.
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Just learnt about Su Hui, a 4th-century Chinese poet most famous for her palindrome poem Xuanji Tu, which comprises a 29 x 29 character grid which can be read in multiple directions and portions, allowing for roughly 3,000 readings.
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A friend sent me this image. A powerful warning against cultural appropriation.
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Some distinctly mean-spirited and frankly unhelpful stuff being directed at Sydneysiders right now, so as a gesture of solidarity, here's a master list of comforting recipes that got me through lockdown last year:.
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The Istana Negara has been the backdrop of lots of recent news stories. The current palace on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Halim (Jalan Duta) was designed by Kumpulan Seni Reka and completed in 2011. It combines Middle Eastern featires like domes and muqarnas with a Malay bumbung limas.
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This is appalling. Barbed wire being installed in the emergency stairs at public low-cost housing flats in Malaysia. What happens if there's an emergency? Stuff like this only endangers residents, it certainly doesn't have a public health benefit.
Tangga kecemasan dengan alat bantu mula pun dipasang kawat duri, kalau ada kecemasan atau kebakaran macam mana Dato @IsmailSabri60 ?. Tak mintak advise @bombaJBPM dulu ke?
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Is Sunda okay? 👁🗨 . Also interesting that they included Aotearoa but missed the Hawai'ian 'maka'. Via r/MapPorn.
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The year is 2027. Cops smash down the lecture theatre doors and drag me into a white van. My students look about in shock. The blackboard reads: 'Stay in 2nd place for as long as possible to avoid blue shells in Mario Kart'. I have taught Critical Race Theory for the last time.
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Elizabeth Keith (1887-1956). Woodblock prints of Melaka and Singapore, c. 1925.
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The idea that Chinese Malaysians haven't assimilated is patently ludicrous. When I speak Hokkien with my goa ma, as many as half of the words I use are Malay loanwords (gua ki pa-sat [pasar] bue lo-ti [roti]). The fact we use 'sayang' instead of 'ai' for love says it all really.
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When people ask me what my retirement plans are:.
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Opening a Vietnam War-themed bar in a suburb that has a large Vietnamese community, many of whom came to this country as refugees fleeing the war? You can't make this shit up.
Imagine a war where over a million people died, & then imagine deciding to create an aesthetic out of it, to sell cocktails filled with bullet shells, with an Agent Orange theme. Welcome to ‘Rickshaw Bar’, now open in Melbourne. This is Australia.
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I am screaming at this FB marketplace listing which describes cranes, which symbolise longevity in East Asian cultures, as ‘bin chickens’
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Truly appalling to hold an election during monsoon season. As always though, I’m impressed by how Malaysians rise up to the occasion. Voting shouldn’t be this difficult.
P220 Baram #PRU15 . Suasana di Pusat Mengundi Kampung Long Bemang orang ramai tetap bersemangat beratur demi menunaikan tanggungjawab mereka walaupun dalam keadaan banjir.
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Really great to see the silly and tired 'millenials can't afford houses because they love travel, phones and brunch too much' line hit Malaysia. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the fact wages remain stagnant while house prices skyrocket?.
Kenapa Anak Muda Tidak Minat Beli Hartanah?. Anak muda lebih gemar travel, beli handphone mahal dan makan sedap berbanding komitmen pinjaman 30 tahun. Anda mungkin bangkang tetapi kajian menunjukkan ianya benar.
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Elections are too stressful, I've decided. The best way to form a new government is simply to have a group of elected members meet at a suburban hotel and oust the incumbent. Do this once every couple of years to keep things spicy. I call this the Malaysian model.
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Am glad to see we finally have a Prime Minister who's willing to address one of the worst aspects of Malaysian political culture.
@mirulwrld pls- dont do that.
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Welcome to the Asian community, Ah Lian Grande ❤️.
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I've found this to be really common in Malaysian workplaces, particularly among Chinese Malaysians, and it's clearly rude and exclusionary when Malay and English are generally better choices as linguae francae. But also seeing Cantonese written out like this made me lol.
Tadi ada presentation boss aku suruh take notes lepas tu the whole meeting diorang cakap cina so ni lah notes aku
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@saintsoftness I think a combination of the PM and general public being quite vocal about what’s happening in Gaza. Still odd given we don’t have diplomatic relations.
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Reckon I was much happier before the pandemic, not because of lockdown and the general anxieties around infection, but rather because I was blissfully unaware of how many people in the community have absolutely deranged opinions about everything.
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As the city's name suggests, Kuala Lumpur is built on the muddy confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers. This makes it prone to flooding. Here is the Selangor Secretariat Building (Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad) during the Great Floods of 1926 and 1971.
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There's always something fascinating about a small island off the coast of a bigger island. That's the sort of place an ancient culture can persist for centuries. Good for lairs, schemes, rituals.
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People say French is the most beautiful language in the world but atcherly hor.
Kejadian di Singapura. Pemilik kenderaan Rolls Royce mendakwa bahawa kenderaan beliau tidak dapat melepasi jalan tersebut kerana ada kenderaan parkirnya terkeluar. Masalah ego?
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Malaysia might be the only country where it’s controversial to have a slogan suggesting the country should be for everyone who shares the same nationality.
Stop playing victim, drop ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ slogan, MCA veep tells DAP
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Front pages from the Daily Worker during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s. You might also want to read about the Batang Kali Massacre, the use of chemical weapons (before Agent Orange in Vietnam), or the internment camps (‘New Villages’) that housed up to 10% of the population.
Well, you know, I just kinda had to visit this section in Malaysia's national museum. Surprise, surprise: evil Brits forced themselves on hapless Malays who resisted at every turn and finally wrested independence from the scheming colonialists.
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Michelle Yeoh in Crazy Rich Asians is everyone's haughty atas but also kaypoh peranakan auntie who needs to campur tangan in everyone else's lives and I honestly didn't realise we needed that kind of representation till I saw the trailer.
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Parlimen is a cool building but it seems all the meaningful politics happens at five-star hotels scattered around KL.
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Boyfriend: my love, please don’t think I’m racially profiling you, but do you keep tiger balm?. … of course I do.
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Proud to live in a progressive suburb where buses can identify as trams 🚌➡🚋
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What foreigners think Australian men are like vs what Australian men are really like
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This vintage photo (c. 1978) of a girl devouring a mooncake on Smith Street in Singapore's Chinatown is a very big mood.
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Happy birthday, also, to my favourite artefact: this 1964 Malaysia Day poster from Singapore.
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Lanjiao lah, this angmoh kui. Roti bakar and kopi oso can orientalise until liddat. It's eggs on toast with a cup of fucking coffee mate.
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@jack_vening I’d roast both of you for not knowing you’re standing on a 1980s reconstruction of the Pont des Arts, the nineteenth-century original having collapsed in places in the decades prior.
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My father-in-law is a builder. It is difficult to get his attention in a magnificent space because he is lost in wonder. We were in a shopping mall years ago and I asked him what it would cost to build today. I will never forget his answer. ‘We can’t. We don’t know how…’
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Australian vaccination ads: we want YOU to take up arms against the viral ENEMY . meanwhile, in France:
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My favourite genre of news story continues to be 'westerners evacuate building because they aren't familiar with durians'
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Netflix naming their Messiah character the Arabic equivalent of Jeepers McAntichrist and then getting mad that people figured out the 'plot twist' before the show drops is incredibly funny.
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What an absolute delight it is to be back in Singapore. Some architectural contrasts from this morning’s stroll.
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WITHOUT GOOGLING.Name a famous historic battle.
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Me trying to figure out what to do with myself now that I don’t need to refresh Twitter constantly
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@marzipanlord I see your Banana Republic and raise you the now defunct Malaysian clothing company called… British India. This was actual branding copy from them:
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A worrying development in Melbourne’s inner north
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Never considered the possibility of monetising my atrocious Chinese handwriting but props to this person for giving it a red hot go
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My supervisor just rang me to tell me I've passed my PhD. That's Dr Brain Worms From Being Terminally Online to you lot!.
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Whoever started this rumour that is currently spreading like wildfire in all my auntie-unker whatsapp groupchats. kamsia for your service 🙏
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*cool youth pastor voice* you know who else promised to come twice after getting nailed by a bunch of guys.
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Melbourne's preference for hard bluestone over porous sandstone has led to the proliferation of diseases. Moreover, favouring narrow gothic lancet windows over broader classical fenestration has led to reduced ventilation in Melburnian edifices. In this essay.
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Genuinely wild that people who wank on their colleagues' desks oversaw a vote on whether or not I should be allowed to get married.
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Genuinely demoralising to see Indian Malaysian friends tweet about how racialised practices impact them, only to be greeted by a flurry of k-slurs and p-slurs. There's a reason 1.7 million Malaysians are working outside the country – one of the world's worst rates of brain drain.
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You may not like it, but this is what the ideal breakfast looks like. This is peak breakfast performance:.
white ppl: keto 🍗🥩🍖🥓🥦🥜. chinese ppl: I thot u'd like some starch to dip in ur starch
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Feel v uneasy about that 'Bangladeshi worker has beautiful eyes' story that's been doing the rounds because 1) would Msian netizens be having this response if he didn't have pale eyes? and 2) migrants shouldn't have to be attractive for you to see them as human. That's the teh.
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Telling that the same Australian media outlets which vociferously fought to protect the identity of the Aspen COVID-19 couple are happy to reveal the identity of two POC teenagers. Are they not entitled to the same privacy?.
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The Keris exhibition on now at the Islamic Arts Museum in KL is fantastic. Important historical kerises from across the Malay world from the Sultan of Selangor’s collection, plus some amazing work by a new generation of keris makers. But these old talismanic blades were my faves.
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