Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 September 2019

Hong Kong: heading towards irrelevance?

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A few days ago a friend in the United States asked for my opinion on recent events in Hong Kong (HK). He prefaced his question with Chine...
Saturday, 18 May 2019

Gaziantep or Antep: it's still mosaics, castles, pistachios and coffee

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It's a short bus journey from Adana to Gaziantep. Antep, as the city is informally known, is almost 200 kilometers east of Adana and...
Saturday, 13 April 2019

Mosques more beautiful than Istanbul's Blue Mosque – maybe?

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Istanbul's Ottoman Turkish monuments and architecture are well known. Istanbul buildings like the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Mosque) ...
Monday, 25 March 2019

Istanbul – not Constantinople

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Turkey is a long way from Singapore. And despite 97 percent of the country's land mass and approximately 90 percent of Turkey's ...
Saturday, 4 August 2018

State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang: a book review

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State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang is that new breed of Singapore novel which treads gently into areas which have hitherto remained unt...
Sunday, 24 June 2018

Confrontation by Mohamed Latiff Mohamed: a book review

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Having lived in Singapore for almost twenty years and as a licensed Singapore Tour Guide I know Singapore well. Academically and ‘in the...
Monday, 9 April 2018

Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shaped the World by Wade Graham – a book review

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After reading this book, it seems amazing to try and understand modern human history without any familiarity with cities, urbanization a...
Sunday, 26 November 2017

The 'Post 9/11' era and periods in history

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World history is conveniently divided into periods. It is likely September 11, 2001 marked the end of the post-war period and the beginn...
Tuesday, 17 October 2017

The Bormann Testament by Jack Higgins: a book review

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After the last few Jack Higgins novels disappointed me, I was apprehensive about starting The Bormann Testament. I kept the faith as the...
Thursday, 7 September 2017

Lemmy: White Line Fever the Autobiography (with Janiss Garza) a book review

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White Line Fever is vintage Lemmy (1945 - 2015): candid, sarcastic and blunt. No ifs and buts, just Lemmy. And Lemmy's personality s...
Monday, 14 August 2017

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide: a book review

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A good book to learn more about an under-researched war: the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war which led to the creation of Bangladesh.  The...

Fault Lines: Stories of 1971 [Pakistan - India war]: a book review

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For those of us are old enough to know there once existed an East Pakistan but young enough to know little other than the nightly air rai...