As I get older, I realise how much of life is really about restraint. What I say. What I react to. What I allow to take up space in my head. I no longer feel the need to explain myself to everyone, or to correct every misunderstanding. Peace is not…
Brunei Darussalam
The Silence We Mistake for Strength
The elderly lady in the featured photo is my beloved maternal grandmother. She lived with us for as long as I can remember. She was Chinese. We were a Malay Muslim household — but my father, to his credit, gave her generous leeway to keep her own customs and traditions….
Brunei Darussalam
25 Years of AnakBrunei: From Pixels to Perspectives
Twenty-five years is a long time in any medium. In the digital world, it is several lifetimes. When this blog first appeared on the nascent internet — in an era when a dial-up connection was the only gateway to the World Wide Web, when “blogger” was not yet a word,…
Brunei Darussalam
Hired Help, Not Indentured Labour
The other day’s incident stayed with me. But the truth is, it’s not an isolated moment. It’s a pattern. Across many homes, not all but enough to matter, domestic helpers are treated less like employees and more like something in between obligation and ownership. One helper expected to serve an…
Advocacy
Dignity Should Not Be Optional
It wasn’t dramatic. No shouting match. No crowd. No one pulling out a phone. Just an old man in a wheelchair. An Indonesian helper beside him. And a stream of words that didn’t feel right. You don’t stop because you want to stare. You stop because something inside you tightens…
Thoughts
Thoughts While Watching a Distant War…
The news over the past few days has felt surreal. On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched a massive coordinated strike on Iran. Within hours, airstrikes were reported across Tehran and ballistic missiles were flying across the Gulf. Just like that, the Middle East tipped into a…