To almost anyone who knows anything about me, it might seem strange that I’m taking such an interest in politics recently – I transitioned so suddenly from Pathways To Excellence to suddenly talking about so many different controversial topics and ideas that somehow your feed is now filled with a range of YouTube videos that hopefully are a little bit legible.

I get it – you feel like I’ve changed as a person.

You know what?

I probably have – but maybe not in the way that you might have expected.

I think I was always interested in politics, for one thing, and that somehow meeting the smartest people of my generation and of the next generation was the way that I managed to allay my discomfort with Malaysia – a systematically broken, thoroughly divided society when you look at it beyond the enclaves and the confines of everyday reality; it was somehow easier to fill up the hole in my heart whenever I thought about this place and how I had my lot connected to it with the feeling that somehow, even if the place were to be a dumpster fire, at least we had all of these talented people.

But soon, this bandaid, had to be taken off, as all bandaids eventually have to be – and so it was, as I faced reality, with a single and enduring rip.

At some point, I realized that talent on an individual level is not the solution to this country’s problems, and moreover that it is not necessary for me to solve them – but only to play to my internal conscience. It was I think at that point I saw Malaysia for what it really was, and what I would create from then on out.