Angilee Shah

Three weeks ago, I moved from Los Angeles to Singapore. After three years editing an online publication about Asia, I decided it was time to be here, in Asia.

I’m going to spend my time teaching writing to students at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and, hopefully, doing some writing myself. It’s a great gig, to be a writer. You get to meet interesting people, like the excellent folks of Dengue Fever, a Cambodian rock band that showed Asia Pacific Art‘s talented multimedia editor and me a great time in their studio.

The diversity and location of my new home is already affording me some more terrific opportunities. Next weekend, I’ll be in Jakarta for a blogging conference. Its one of the many parts of Southeast Asia that I’m looking to explore — the virtual part, that is. It will be my first time in Indonesia, and I have a feeling I’ll be meeting a lot of interesting people.

And here in Singapore — as a curious onlooker, rather than a curious writer (it’s a slim difference, admittedly) — so far I’ve seen Chinese lanterns, Malay Ramadan festivities and the Zurich ballet.
I’ve been to Little India, Arab Street and Holland Village. Singapore
is an extremely diverse place — an Asian crossroads, as they say. It’s
racial politics are very complicated though, one of most complicated
parts of this young nation’s cultural and national identity. It’s
something I’m very interested in understanding better as the year
progresses.