It is said that reading broadens perspectives and open minds and we have no reason to dispute this age old saying. We think it is quite saddening that many Malaysians tend to read very little with some statistics quoting that the average Malaysian only reads a total of two pages of print a year. Reading is in fact a very cheap way of exploring the world and experiencing much of what it has to offer from the confines of your own home while expanding your vocabulary and communications skills. It’s particularly important to inculcate this habit from a young age.

We still need to be mindful, however, that the ability to indulge in reading is really one of life’s little luxuries and that it can be too much for the most disenfranchised amongst us. With that in mind, a former Microsoft executive, John Wood, left a high flying corporate career in order to Read the rest of this entry »

With just a few simple cooking techniques at home, you and your family can enjoy better health. Here are some tips that we’ve gathered on how to cook more healthily at home:

Reduce the amount of salt you use in your cooking. Most of the time we get used to a certain quantity of salt but, in fact, if you cut the amount of salt in your diet by a half, you might not even notice the difference. Reducing your salt intake is essential in keeping your blood pressure and health within a healthy range, and prevents you from getting a whole host of kidney problems. If you find the taste change unacceptable, you can always substitute salt with any natural herbs to make up for the taste change, and even get the health benefits from some of these healthy herbs. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve recently seen this short film that describes gorillas as 98.6% close to humans. While we can’t exactly say whether the number is accurate or not, it is undeniable that the genetic codes of many of the great apes (of which gorillas are only one of the family) are extremely similar to those of the human race, and it is in the slight differences between the genetic codes that make the great apes all vastly dissimilar to one another. The film follows a few families of gorillas and we think one thing is immediately striking, although gorillas are commonly depicted as aggressive and dangerous animals, this isn’t necessarily the whole pictures. In fact, sometimes human aggression can be a lot more scary and dangerous than gorilla aggression.

Admittedly, we haven’t seen any gorillas up close in the wild so we will have to fall back on the work of pioneers such as Dian Fossey and the many groups of conservationists and field biologists who spend a lot of their times with gorillas. It turns out that, in the wild, gorillas are remarkably social animals who are practically never violent with members of their own family or other species. The only times when gorillas get aggressive with one another is when there is competition between two families and the two dominant males of each family engage in a fight to the death. Although Read the rest of this entry »

This is something that we normally don’t think too much about since we get so much sunlight here in Malaysia. In fact, we even try to go out of our way to avoid as much sunlight as possible since it just makes us hot and sweaty, which is something we don’t particularly want during the day. Nevertheless, sunlight has some useful benefits for all of us in moderate doses and can play an integral part in maintaining our physical and mental health.

Perhaps the most important function that sunlight allows the skin to naturally produce vitamin D, which is actually the most convenient source for this important vitamin. Of course, vitamin D has been added to many foods now – as humans have moved on to a more sedentary lifestyle indoors, humans no longer get enough sunlight to naturally produce as much vitamin D as is needed to maintain health. Read the rest of this entry »

In the 1980s, Malaysia made a critical decision in moving from an agricultural economic base to an economy based on manufacturing and remains on the cusp of moving towards a knowledge society. The idea seems to be sound – by moving to a more “value added” economic activity, the country and its people can benefit from greater returns on their investments. So, it was interesting to find a group of articles on Bloomberg today on how some big international investment funds are starting to look at investing in agriculture again as a way of generating good return on investment.

According to this article from Bloomberg, some international private equity funds have invested in free range goat farming projects in Australia, which promise 12% returns on investment, and according to this article also from Bloomberg, George Washington University in the United States is planning on raising its investments in agricultural projects to 10% of its total endowment. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve only recently heard about this universal city in India called Auroville, which isn’t really timely news because it was founded in the 1960s, but we think it deserves a mention because it is probably something that we haven’t really heard about and it does sound like a worthy project. The whole idea of the universal city as embodied by Auroville is to create a place where the only values uniting every resident of the city are those human unity and celebrating the diversity of all humans. And Auroville really does live up to its ideals, with people from more than 30 nations around the world living on its premises and being a part of the community.

Apart from being a place attuned to spiritual and human development, Auroville has also been designed with sustainable principles in mind. Water for the city is drawn up from underground aquifers using a combination of diesel and sustainable energy for the use of its residents, and Read the rest of this entry »

It has been said that the greatest opportunities arise from the most trying conditions and there really aren’t as many trying times as the recession that most countries around the world are going through right now. Nevertheless, it’s good to know that there are some enterprising businessmen in Malaysia who still see opportunities in some of the unlikeliest places. We recently saw this story from The Star that tells the story of an enterprising Malaysian who saw a hill of discarded rice husks, commonly thought of as industrial waste, and saw an opportunity to reprocess and convert them into household items. Better yet, it appears that his industrial process doesn’t even need to use any harmful chemicals and is eco-friendly.

In fact, waste management is a huge business although it’s the type of thing that we tend to keep at the back of our minds. Most people certainly don’t want to be thinking of waste all the time! However, throughout these blogs, we have always been attracted to the idea of reusing “waste” products and turning them into something desirable again – after all, so many of the planet’s resources are non-replenishable. We’ve also written in these blogs about some companies around Malaysia who are in the business of collecting used cooking oil and converting it into biodiesel. Read the rest of this entry »

For most Malaysians, rice is an essential part of almost every meal during the day and no meal is complete without a plate of fluffy white rice. Many parents like to tell their children to make sure they finish their rice because it’s good for them, but what if we told you that white rice isn’t necessarily as good as some people think it is? In fact, white rice actually got off to a bad start – the technology to profitably make white rice has only been available since the 19th century and it was found that those who ate white rice were susceptible to a disease known as beriberi, which is caused by a deficiency in vitamin B1, because the process of converting the raw rice grains into white rice was removing this essential vitamin from the rice. Because there was a lot of lobbying to the governments, manufacturers started adding back the vitamin B1 to the rice to prevent beriberi from spreading, but they were never obliged to replace some of the other essential nutrients lost in the process of preparing white rice.

Enter brown rice, which has started seeing more attention from the health conscious although there still remains a stigma against brown rice which is seen more as “poor man’s food”. Until the technology was around to process white rice, brown rice was actually what people ate for most of human history, although we are now much more accustomed to eating white rice. Brown rice is basically Read the rest of this entry »