Palace of Ghosts: Singapore's Untold History

Overview The skillset I want to highlight in the third and last post of this mini-series on transferable skills (that is ones that I gained in corporate life and I find extremely useful now in my new career as a full-time writer), is the ability to recognise a process that requires a number of its integral components to link up effectively in order to create value by delivering a product to a consumer. After several decades in business leadership, being a keen observer of how markets evolve and having a masochistic interest in economics, I can say with some confidence that one of the things that needs to be quickly understood by anybody entering the corporate world is how distribution, and by extension disintermediation, works. Distribution–how a product gets from its point of creation to the consumer–is at the core of any business, and although all industries have their nuances and peculiarities, the basic principles are similar wherever you look. Understanding such principles, the ba...

A flurry of news reports this week inform us that Malaysia’s sultans are imminently scheduled to meet and elect the next King of Malaysia from among a set of candidates consisting of only themselves. From the perspective of the Palace of Ghosts story the election, and its outcome, is potentially hugely significant. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his wife Madam Ho Ching (centre) hosts the Johor Royals in Singapore in October 2023 The position of King of Malaysia, known in Malay as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, or simply Agong, was created in 1957 when Malaya gained independence from the United Kingdom. It is, rather uniquely, a rotating office where the Agong is elected by a Conference of Rulers which is made up of the nine traditional rulers of the Malay States. Once elected the Agong remains in office for a period of five years, whereupon another election takes place and a new Agong is elected. The term in office cannot be renewed and what has happened in practice is that ...