#Thailand - Visa-free stay to be cut to 30 days

> The period of visa-free stays in Thailand is set to be reduced from 60 days to 30 days as related authorities have agreed in principle to the move in an effort to curb the risk of illegal businesses exploiting the visa exemption scheme, according to the Tourism and Sports Ministry.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2981803/visa-free-stay-to-be-cut-to-30-days #SouthEastAsia #expatasia #TootSEA

Singapore academic Donald Low writes about the thing I've been worried about: Singapore's 'born again Chinese', or ethnic Chinese people in the diaspora who have been targeted by CCP propaganda in social media and chat groups

I was starting to see people say things like 'oh, I will only use the Chinese vaccine, it was created for Chinese people' and I just could not believe what I was hearing. Not isolated cases too: lots and lots of people. Especially Boomers.

A lot of this is just step one towards challenges to national sovereignty (Singapore is also a Chinese state so you belong to us), and worsens racial issues in the country by emphasizing more 'Chineseness' (already the majority group there with oppressive features)

Sometimes I think about how the world would taste so different without Maggi. Who would’ve thought they would have figured out the different flavor profiles for each part of the world. I don’t think about Swiss food very much, but their impact in world food cannot be underestimated (mostly through Maggi).

One of my comfort foods is maggi brand instant ‘curry noodles’ (the one made for the Malaysian market). My friends from India love the Indian one, but I don’t, it’s not my comfort food (also Malaysian Maggi is spicier, hehe).

Maggi sauce also has a distinct flavor. The bánh mì around me would all taste different without it, and so would a lot of Latin American and African foods.

I can get nearly everything I want from ‘home’ here in SF but Malaysian maggi is what I get people to bring me. Especially the too spicy for most other flavors, like the one called kari api (curry fire) noodles.

This Malaysian chef in London has a video about how to recreate it from scratch: https://youtu.be/V_0UknLho5U

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project manager (rtds, demo days, incubators)

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I just spent 10 minutes zooming into every dish and menu item from a Cambodian restaurant in Seattle to check if it was truly serving the Cambodian Teochew food that I was wanting (very similar to the Vietnamese Teochew and Singapore Teochew food I like). I think it is, but the best way to confirm is to check by eating there (tomorrow).

One of the challenges of looking for familiar foods is I can find it across many 'countries' but it's the same dish but with a different name in another language. There are some hints, though.

Kuay teow in Thai, Kuy teav in Khmer, kway teow in Malay, all from the same root words in Teochew

A lot of Singapore propaganda but this video is an interesting premise. It compares the political / social aspects of life in various city states.

I always felt that being from a city-state-country is a very strange thing not many other people have experienced. This video mentions Singapore / Monaco / Vatican City etc. Mostly through the Singapore lens, but there aren't many others.

For people who haven't considered what it might be like in a city-state: imagine you don't like living in your city (or a city), but there is literally nowhere else to move to without leaving the country?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxTD62fSB4Q

I just found out that my country has an agency that bargains with pharma and the healthcare industry to drive down prices

They also publish Plain English summaries (PES) of key drugs

Cool!

https://www.ace-hta.gov.sg/

I’ve not really seen a Singapore politician speak so openly and frankly about American foreign policy. There was always much more hedging and reading between the lines

“The US is the moving spirit behind most of the post-World War II constructs, together with its alliance, particularly for globalisation based on inclusive free trade. We signed a free trade agreement with the US some years ago. But now I am sure you have your own characterisations of what American foreign policy is, but in my mind, it is that America's primacy has become the overriding consideration. Not that it never was, but I think that it has now become the Pole Star of foreign policy, even at the expense of bilateral ties or multilaterals. It is a great disruption, so we have got to recognise that. How countries and regions respond to this significant shift in US foreign policy bears watching.”

“For Asia, the US in the last 60 years since President John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech – that one form of tyranny (colonial control) will not be replaced by an iron tyranny, that was the moral legitimacy in which US presence was in our region. US has now willy-nilly – the image has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent.”

tl;dr ‘we would very much prefer if America would do what they set out claiming to do. In the last administration, America ignored this region, which sucked, but now we expect active hostility that will drive us towards being okay with a multi-polar region in which China plays a lead role, which gives us more work to do re protecting our sovereignty from China’s ambition in the area, but America is no longer a trusted partner’

https://www.mindef.gov.sg/news-and-events/latest-releases/15feb25_speech

This thread will be full of unique #PreservedLemons related recipes.

Chicken with Preserved Lemon Soup.
A delectable #Khmer ethnic dish known for its aromatic flavors. This traditional comfort soup features chicken & preserved lemons.

https://cambodiarecipe.com/recipe/chicken-with-preserved-lemon-soup

A rare open and illuminating article about incels in Singapore:

"He started distancing himself, but says he still sees similar rants in many of Singapore’s mainstream online communities, even among those who do not identify as incels. He notes that many incel narratives are distortions of “traditional conservative ideas”. "

I agree! There is a lot of overlap between 'traditional Asian gender and social beliefs' with 'incel ideology'. It's interesting that a former incel was able to identify this, shows he did more work on himself than most 'traditional people' there.

https://www.straitstimes.com/life/involuntarily-celibate-inside-the-minds-of-incels-who-blame-women-and-society

If thine eyebrows are not raised at this, that's ok, move along
https://www.mindef.gov.sg/news-and-events/latest-releases/15feb25_speech

"...but in my mind, it is that America's primacy has become the overriding consideration. Not that it never was, but I think that it has now become the Pole Star of foreign policy, even at the expense of bilateral ties or multilaterals. It is a great disruption, so we have got to recognise that. How countries and regions respond to this significant shift in US foreign policy bears watching.

"...that one form of tyranny (colonial control) will not be replaced by an iron tyranny, that was the moral legitimacy in which US presence was in our region. US has now willy-nilly – the image has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent. "

Mudik adalah visual novel pendek tema Lebaran yang digabungkan dengan romance, family, friendship, dan slice of life.
Menceritakan bagaimana Yono mem-balance pekerjaan dengan relasi keluarganya.

Download secara gratis di itch io (Indonesia language only)
https://cyborgnekosica.itch.io/mudik

83 years ago around this time, my grandparents were 9 and 7 years old when British forces lost Singapore to the Japanese, after the British confidently declared that those Orientals could never defeat them.

The Japanese crossed into Singapore on a fleet of bicycles, bypassing British naval power.

What followed was 3 years of occupation as Singapore was renamed Syonan-to. My grandparents remember singing the Japanese anthem.

3 days after the Japanese won, they began a purge of mostly ethnic Chinese people in Singapore as retaliation for perceived overseas Chinese assistance to China, a few years earlier. 50 000 people died.

My grandparents never wanted to eat a single sweet potato or yam or tapioca ever again later in their lives, because that’s all they had to eat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Singapore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_Singapore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sook_Ching

I was telling a friend about the old Teochew names for Southeast Asian cities.

I wrote it down somewhere and I want to make a map of old SE Asian port names in Teochew

Swatow, homeland of the Teochews, was one of the first ports in China to open internationally hundreds of years ago. Many of these names I heard from my grandparents, still hear among older people from Vietnam and Thailand, but all the names are being replaced by Mandarin place names now.

I did this research some time ago

- Pontianak, Kalimantan was 坤甸 (khun diang)
- Jakarta was 巴斜 (pah sia)
- Phnom Penh was 金塔 (ghim tahp)

https://popagandhi.com/posts/tan-boon-chye/