While waiting for Facebook's astronomically dizzying IPO, I started to do some research about FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder) in Malaysia. After making a pitch to my Tokyo contact for Newsweek (Japan), I was assigned a story to be printed in an issue that, perhaps unfairly at times, does a bit of social media demonizing. Nonetheless, …
Continue reading Facebook Addiction Disorder in Malaysia (Newsweek Japan)
I won’t pretend to understand everything that Hinduism stands for. When faced with such a foreign belief as this, I’m inclined to fold. That’s how attending Thaipusam made me feel at least: present, yet oddly unaware. Since moving to Malaysia about eight months ago, I had etched out in my mind a specific set of …
Continue reading Thaipusam, Batu Caves, Malaysia: A Burdensome Path
Every once in a while I decide to expand on some of the more telling anecdotes born out of my travels. This happens to be one of those times. --- The Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue sits on a lively corner in downtown Yangon that opens up onto an alley where merchants tinker with a miscellany of metals …
Continue reading Myanmar (Burma): Muslims, Jews and Nazi “fashion”
Over the past three months I've amassed a few cigarette boxes from my travels with large warning labels that -- when placed side by side -- string together a grotesque gauntlet of images ranging from gangrene-ridden feet to cancerous mouth sores (not all of which I've blessed your eyes with above). First implemented in Canada …
Continue reading Graphic cigarette warning labels in Southeast Asia and Taiwan: Are they effective?
Renowned economist at Oxford University Paul Collier follows up his wide success The Bottom Billion by setting out to reconcile the differences between economists and environmentalists in The Plundered Planet. It's enviably explained (albeit in la lengua de economica) and worth the time for anyone seeking to discover the reality behind the sensational slogans of …
Justin Calderón 