Tag:labour

I keep thinking about the girls, because everyone else in the Golden Triangle already has language to protect themselves. The men have contracts, titles, security teams, expense accounts. The buildings have permits (maybe). The money has routes and lawyers. The girls have… what, exactly? Dresses, heels, a smile that’s part of the uniform, and the very clear understanding that hesitation is not an option anyone wants to see. You can spot them easily once you know how. They walk slightly behind, never in front. Their eyes learn to look down...

I’ve sat ringside enough times in Southeast Asia to recognize the look. Not the blood or the bruises—those are the easy parts for outsiders to fixate on—but the look in a woman’s eyes just before the bell. Calm. Focused. Almost relieved. As if, for once, the rules are clear. People love to ask me, usually with concern dripping from every syllable, why these girls fight. As if the default state of a Southeast Asian woman is supposed to be soft, grateful, and quietly exhausted. As if living under constant control—of...

I’ve always liked how my Pakistan friends say they don’t talk about love—right before sending a three-minute voice note at midnight, whispering miss you like it’s classified information. Let’s be honest: romance hasn’t disappeared. In South Asia, it has just gone underground. It slipped off the street, ducked under izzat, dodged aunties and algorithms, and re-emerged on phones with emojis, half-English sentences, and the strategic use of “seen.” When I was younger, love sounded like poetry. Not because people were more romantic, but because poetry was the safest hiding place....

Spicy Auntie reads this survey with one eyebrow permanently raised and a very long sigh. Not because Aussie teens are shocking little devils—trust me, they’re not—but because adults keep congratulating themselves for noticing the wrong things. “Oh look, they drink less!” Cue applause, policy speeches, and a smug sense that the kids are finally behaving. Meanwhile, the same teens are quietly vaping like chimneys, experimenting with cocaine and ketamine as if they were flavoured energy drinks, and muddling through sex with half-knowledge and a lot of wishful thinking. But sure,...

I’ve met Japanese female trade unionists. Not on panels, not on glossy brochures, but in meeting rooms with bad coffee, fluorescent lighting, and agendas that run three hours too long. They are some of the toughest women I’ve ever encountered. Iron-willed, meticulous, endlessly prepared — and unfailingly polite. The kind of polite that does not mean soft. The kind that survives decades of being interrupted, sidelined, and thanked instead of listened to. They speak calmly while dismantling bad arguments piece by piece. They wait their turn — and then take...